21 Stolen Kisses

by Lauren Blakely

  “I’m not sure. But I trust you will find a way.”

  Because I’m not one who does anything halfway—I don’t drink, smoke, swear, eat meat, or beg off lacrosse practice when I have a headache, and I hardly ever miss a day of school—I know I’ll find a way to make amends. Not for things I did. But for the things I didn’t do. I didn’t stop my mom. I didn’t say No, mom. I won’t tell lies for you.

  Noah

  Jonathan raps on my door with his knuckles.

  “Come in,” I say, but it’s perfunctory. Of course he’s coming in. He’s the boss. He runs this talent agency. Runs it with an iron fist and a pin-striped suit and the sartorial perfection of Don Draper. Gotta give it to the guy; he looks the part of the agent shark.

  “How’s it going?”

  “Great,” I say, because that’s all he wants to hear, and besides, work is great. Work has always been great. Work has never been the problem in my life.

  “I hear The World on Time is blowing critics’ minds,” he says, miming an explosion with his hands.

  “Yep,” I say, because I’d have to be an idiot about the entertainment business not to know that. The darkly comic TV show about an ex-CIA agent gone undercover premieres this Thursday night. Word on the street is the writer-creator, David Tremaine, isn’t happy with his agents and is looking for a new ten percenter. Tremaine is a genius; I’ve been following his career since he wrote a humor column for a local paper.

  “I want Tremaine,” Jonathan says, as he sinks into my leather couch and crosses his legs.

  “Who doesn’t want Tremaine?” I toss back.

  He points at me. “Get me Tremaine, Hayes. You’re my top man. I need you to woo him. There’s a charity shindig event this weekend at MoMA. Some art and literacy thing. He’s going. Bring a date, so you don’t seem like you’re just there to schmooze him,” he says, raising his eyebrows and pointing at me.

  I wince inside, but show nothing. Finding a date isn’t hard. It’s just hard when you don’t give a crap about the woman on your arm because you’re still hung up on the one not on your arm. “Sure,” I tell him.

  “Are you still dating Mica? I haven’t seen you with anyone in a while. Did you start batting for my team?”

  I shake my head and laugh, glad he inadvertently let me avoid the issue of why I haven’t been seen with anyone in a long time. “I still like girls, sir. Mica and I split up a year ago. She’s a nice one though.”

  He waves his hand in the air dismissively. “Whatever. I don’t care if she’s nice. I just care how it looks at the party. Make sure she’s pretty, your date. Not that you’d bring a cow.”

  “No cows on my arm, sir,” I say drily.

  He laughs. “Love that sense of humor, Hayes.”

  Later that night, I’m thumbing through my contacts, trying to figure out who to invite to the shindig, when Kennedy’s name appears in a text. My chest goes warm. My heart thumps. This is why I don’t give a crap.

  I already gave everything I have to someone else.

  Listening to 42nd Street and thinking of you.

  I flash back to the time I took her to see the revival. To the way she threaded her hands in my hair and kissed me in the alley outside the St. James with the marquee still lit up from the show. She loves Broadway musicals and their big, showy, over-the-top declarations of love. We had that in common. We had everything in common. It was almost too much to bear.

  I run my thumb over the screen, picturing her with her earbuds in, so I cue up the soundtrack too and start playing her favorite tune.

  Some other time, I’ll figure out who to bring to MoMA this weekend.

  I write back: Which song?

  In seconds, she replies with the name of the one I’m listening to, and I might as well be lost in that kiss outside the theater one more time.

  Our Stolen Kisses

  We’d just seen 42nd Street, and you were humming “Lullaby of Broadway,” and I told you you had a good voice. You laughed, and claimed you couldn’t hit a note if you tried. “I’m terrible at singing.”

  I said, “You’re great at kissing though. And just in case you doubt me, let me remind you.” Then I ran my hands through your hair. God, I love your hair. How it feels in my fingers. I kissed you outside the theater, and in that moment we didn’t care if anyone saw us even in the alley. We didn’t care because the only thing that mattered was your lips on mine. The feel of your breath. The way you curled your hands on my hips, bringing me near, but keeping a distance too, in case we got too close in public. Like it mattered. Like anyone who saw us couldn’t tell how we felt.

  Chapter Three

  Kennedy

  Technically, lacrosse is not a contact sport.

  If you looked in the rule book for girls’ lacrosse, you would see all sorts of warnings to keep your hands and elbows and sticks to yourself. But that’s not how I play. In my rule book, lacrosse is a contact sport. Life is a contact sport. You’d better woman up.

  I make my way downfield, determined to pummel the ball into Keeland Prep’s waiting net. Their top defender tries to slam into me and keep me from scoring. I turn my hand in and my arm out, fashioning my elbow into a weapon. She plants her feet in front of me, so I jam my right elbow hard into her side.

  She loses momentum and lunges a bit, her white-blond ponytail swinging out sharply to the side. She’s fast and recovers quickly, and now she’s an angry bull and she’s chasing me down because she’s a ferocious player.

  But so am I and I plow ahead, then fling the ball into the net.

  The Agnes Ethel School for Girls’ crowd erupts. I raise a fist in the air and shout a loud, “Yes!”

  My teammates high-five me, and I’m flying, soaring, laughing into the sky as everything good rains down.

  “Woo-hoo! Go, Kennedy!”

  My mom calls my name from the stands. I wave to her then return my focus to the field and hammer two more goals into the net as we hand Keeland Prep a 12 to 6 defeat. She’s the first one to greet me when the game ends. She’s already on the field, pumping her fist in the air. “You. Were. Amazing,” she declares.

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  “And if memory serves, only three more wins for the division.”

  I’m impressed she remembers. It always surprises me that she remembers these details, but she always does. “Don’t jinx us.”

  She waves a hand in the air. “Jinxes? Who believes in that? Now, shall we celebrate tonight? I can get us a fabulous table at Sushi Ko like that,” she says, snapping her fingers, her sapphire ring glinting in the sun. “And they have absolutely delicious vegetarian rolls.”

  Every victory, small or large, requires a celebration—a swank dinner out, a new pair of shoes, a decadent dessert.

  “I have to go to Dad’s exhibit tonight. Opening night,” I say, wishing for the old days when my mom and I would have gone to the gallery together. When my mom would have waltzed into the gallery, kissed my dad on the cheek, and then delighted in his work. When the three of us would have all gone to Sushi Ko together. We did dinners out exceedingly well. Nobody could rock a restaurant visit like the Stanzlingers. We were New Yorkers; dining out was a mandatory skill in this city. “I’m going to say good-bye to my teammates.”

  I run back to the other girls in green-and-gold lacrosse uniforms.

  “Slasher Girl!”

  My teammates call out my nickname. It’s a joke because I don’t slash. I don’t hit uncontrollably. When I hit it’s with impeccable control. “Slashing? Who slashed in this game?” I say as I high-five each and every one, because I get along with all of them. Even though prep school can be a wild beast in Manhattan, I’ve both survived it and thrived in it by following a few key guidelines—I keep my own secrets, I focus on schoolwork, and I kick ass on the field. That triple combo has been my road map, and I’ve followed it to the letter. It’s also allowed me to have the life I have after school, where I flit in and out of the adult world, and no one here at school has a clue ab
out my family or my own love affairs.

  I clasp hands with Amanda last, and she grabs my arm to pull me aside. “I have to tell you something.” A drop of sweat drips down her face. She brushes it off. “My dad came to the game.”

  I give her a quizzical look, like she can’t be serious. This is front-page news. “Your dad never comes to games. What’s the deal?”

  “My mom lit into him the other night. She was all over him about not showing up for my brother or me at any of our stuff.”

  “And he listened? I thought he didn’t care.”

  “She told him all the other parents were there. She told him she was going to cancel their vacation to Tokyo if he didn’t show up and he loves Tokyo.”

  “Wow, that’s big time,” I say because Amanda’s mom wears the pants in the family. Her dad lost his banking job a couple years ago and hasn’t found a new gig since then. Her mom is CEO of an advertising tech company, so she’s doing just fine and she sets the rules and books the vacations and generally dictates what they do, where they go, and where they spend her money.

  Amanda points to the stands and her dad is still sitting in the bleachers, his head bent down over his smart phone. “I bet one of his stupid college friends just e-mailed him and was like ‘Hey, I know somebody who knows somebody who might know somebody who’s looking to hire,’ so of course he had to answer it right away. Do you know he spent the entire game on his dumb phone?”

  Then Amanda snorts. It’s a derisive snort and I know this not just because I’ve heard it many times before, but because Amanda and I once made a list of all the varieties of her snorts. She is a champion snorter and has mastered imbuing them with a range of emotions: her laugh-my-ass-off snort, her this-lunch-food-smells-nasty snort, her this-is-the-lamest-assignment-I’ve-ever-gotten snort, her derisive snort, her comical snort, her embarrassed snort, and her isn’t-that-guy-across-the-street-hot snort.

  Her dad stops typing, takes out a tissue and blows his nose, then glances down at the field and nods to Amanda. I bet it’s the first time he’s noticed his daughter. Then he walks down to the field. But the world’s most fascinating e-mail must come through, because he’s now answering another message on the way, so he manages to bump into my mom and they begin chatting.

  My pulse races. My shoulders tense as the dangerous possibilities bob and weave before me. The last thing I need is to have my mom start flirting with my best friend’s father. I grab my sports bag with the speed of an express train and say good-bye to Amanda at the same pace, then extract my mom from the conversation. I breathe easily again once we’re away from the field.

  I listen to my mom do her usual recap of the game as we slide into the cab that shoots us away from the lacrosse field on Randall’s Island and back into Manhattan. She acts out every great play, mimes every moment of glory, and I laugh and I don’t even pretend she’s ridiculous, because I don’t think she’s ridiculous. I think she’s actually kind of awesome for never turning her phone on during a lacrosse game.

  Ever.

  I want these moments to be the defining ones in our relationship. I want to erase all the other moments, like the ones involving friends’ fathers, and wallpaper them over with these instead.

  When we walk inside the brownstone the three of us used to share, my mom tells me she has a surprise for me. She covers my eyes and walks me to the foyer.

  “Ta-da!”

  And Joe, my sleek, sexy, silver fixed-gear bike, is waiting there, glistening and gleaming, the broken chain fixed.

  “I picked him up this evening for you. And I went ahead and got the works. A full tune-up.” She presses the handlebar brakes. “See! I even had them tune the brakes too. And shine the frame.”

  “He looks awesome.” I run my palm over the frame and it feels like steel silk. I give her a kiss on the cheek. “You’re the best, Mom.”

  “Anything for you, my darling.”

  This is why I can never hate her. This is why my hate is reserved only for them—her lovers. Never for my mom, who I love like crazy.

  I head for the fridge, for my postgame ritual of a cold Diet Coke. I crack open a can, savoring that first sip. It’s then that she turns her phone back on. It starts buzzing instantly. The messages must have piled up. I hear her call her agent back, and my face flushes momentarily when she says his name. Hayes. That’s what everyone else calls him. Everyone but me.

  I imagine Hayes in the office being all agenty and business sexy in his colorful shirts, the red, the purple, the dark navy blue, and most of all I picture the way they fit his tall, strong, sturdy frame so well.

  “I was quite productive today and wrote three smoking-hot scenes for the upcoming story arc,” she says to him. Lords and Ladies is the top-rated nighttime soap opera she birthed several years ago and still pens to this day for TV’s hottest premium network LGO. As the showrunner for Lords and Ladies, she created it, she controls it, and she writes the smoking-hot scenes. Sure, she has a whole staff of writers at her beck and call over at LGO’s West Fifty-Seventh Street studios, but the story line is hers, the intrigue, the affairs, and the double crosses are all courtesy of the mind of Jewel Stanza. It’s a pen name, shortened from her married name.

  I stare out the kitchen window, this time hearing bits and pieces of his sexy, strong voice on the other end of the conversation. The voice I want to keep just for myself. Only he belongs to so many people. He belongs to her, and to his clients, and to the business, and to everyone who wants a piece of him.

  Most of all, he belongs to the eight years that separate us.

  “Let’s have you over for dinner and we’ll chat about the scenes then,” she says casually to him, as if this is a mere suggestion. But it’s not optional to disobey. “We’ll invite the usual suspects.” She rattles off the names of LGO’s chief publicist and her husband, the studio’s international distribution head, and the show’s head writer and his wife. “And Warren, of course. I’ll call Warren and we’ll make it a party.”

  She ends the call and turns to me. “Could you do me a huge favor? I need you to read three scenes. I know you usually read before bed, but I really need your feedback. I’m terribly nervous. Especially because of the”—she stops to sketch air quotes—“content.”

  She waits for my reaction. She wants me to be eager to read the scenes with content in them, like I’ve just won a prize, an advance early screening of what any Lords and Ladies fan craves the most. My mom, the woman who single-handedly brought back the power of the nighttime soap to TV, who rejuvenated a once-dormant media form with her twists and turns on Victorian Englishmen and -women and their machinations over life and love—is known for her weekly cliffhangers, her shocking reveals, and the show’s wicked-hot sex scenes. This—the show’s rep for causing hotness under the collar—pleases my mom the most.

  The last thing I want to do is read the scenes her own sex life inspired. But I know where telling the truth leads to. It leads to splits and splinters and a fifty-fifty life.

  “Of course. I’ll read right now.”

  It’s just easier.

  After I shower and scrub off the remnants of the lacrosse game, I pull on my favorite skinny jeans and a fitted T-shirt, then lace up my Converse sneakers. As usual, I wear my charms necklace. I position it just so—he won’t be able to miss it if I see him. I want him to know I wear it all the time, that he’s with me, next to my heart, even when I can’t be near him.

  I send a silent wish to the universe that he arrives early. That I’ll catch a glimpse of him. A smile, a twinkle in his eye, a look just for me.

  I grab the script pages my mom left on my pillow, close my eyes so I can’t see a single word, and move each page behind the next. When I’ve counted to fifteen I open my eyes, confirm I’m back to the start and that the pages look read, and head downstairs.

  “The scenes are just totally absolutely splendiferously amazing, Mom,” I say loudly, as I slap the pages on the counter, then open the fridge and crack open anoth
er Diet Coke and take a big gulp.

  “Tell me everything.” She nods to the pages in my hand as she wields a fat blade and chops carrots into fine slices. She’s changed too, her bleacher-wear cast aside for a low-cut magenta blouse, the color so blazingly rich she looks like royalty. She’s paired her top with trim black slacks and four-inch black leather pumps. “What did you think about the scene? About what Gerard does to Pauline in the stables? Tell me what you liked.”

  No. God no. There is nothing at all I can tell you about what Gerard does to Pauline in the stables. Especially not when I heard what Warren did to you the other night, which was surely the inspiration for the characters’ romp in the stables, and I had to play the soundtrack to 42nd Street the rest of the night to drown out the sounds.

  “Hot. Just totally hot,” I say, unspooling the exact words my mother longs to hear. “And sweet too. It was like this perfect mix of sexy and sweet, and the viewers are going to love it.”

  She smiles deeply, like a weight has been lifted from her shoulders. “Thank you. I don’t want to disappoint any of the viewers.”

  “They love your show, Mom. They love all the lords and ladies,” I say, reassuring her properly, because I’m steeped in just the right words, said in just the right tone, to reassure her. Because I love her, even though I hate so many things about her. My love is stronger than my hate.

  It has to be.

  Chapter Four

  Noah

  Two seconds after I step off the elevator in my office building, the doorman calls me over.

  “Hey, Mr. Hayes. I have something for you,” he says from his post at the gleaming black desk in the lobby. He waves me over like he’s got a secret to share.

  “Hey Randy. What have you got?”

  The mustached man in the navy-blue uniform lowers his voice to a whisper. “My cousin Joey has a script. New action series centered around a group of coworkers, and each one has special powers. It’s gonna be epic. I’ll bring it to you tomorrow,” he says with a wide smile.