21 Stolen Kisses

by Lauren Blakely

  My face is warm and I can’t help but smile. “I love it.”

  “Try it out.”

  “It’s not raining.”

  “So?”

  I open the umbrella and we stroll through the streets of Scarsdale like that, looking in shop windows, commenting on the oh-so-suburban garb of passersby, then stopping for a seven-layer bar to share on the return trip home. As we walk to the station, he puts his arm around me.

  “I’m going to prom,” Lane says abruptly.

  “You are?”

  He nods and looks at me. “Yeah. To try to be normal. To try to have fun. My mom wants me to. Will you go with me? You’re my closest friend.”

  “Yes,” I say, and in this second I don’t care about who my heart belongs to. Lane is here for me; he knows my everything, and so I will go. As his friend.

  “I guess that makes you my prom date now,” he says, after we buy our tickets and sink into a pair of seats on the train back to Manhattan. I tense at the word date. I thought he was asking me as friends.

  “I guess it does,” I say in a flat tone, because I’m not sure what being Lane’s prom date means, or if it means anything, or even why I feel like I’m betraying him.

  Prom was never in the cards for Noah and me. Unless it was a prom held in his office.

  But something about being someone’s prom date just seems so normal, and for now I like that. As the lights on the train dim, I tell Lane, “I love the umbrella.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Kennedy

  I suppose it was his office where we came together. Ironic, because we never did business together, but in the safety of those four walls, we removed the biggest barrier—not age, not jobs, not station in life.

  But the physical presence of my mother.

  A week after Noah and I listened to 42nd Street at his desk, my mother finalized a deal for Lords and Ladies in Russia. She handed me the papers and I happily delivered them to Noah’s office in the afternoon. It was the summer before my senior year and I was taking a pre-college course at NYU, so I stopped by after class.

  I knocked twice on his open door.

  “Hey. Come on in,” he said.

  I gave him the envelope and helped myself to a chair.

  “Sit down,” he joked.

  “Don’t mind if I do. What did you study in college?”

  He shifted in his chair, surprised by my quick segue to a question.

  “Psychology. Why do you ask?”

  “Just curious,” I said. “Did you enjoy it? Your major?”

  “I did. I’d thought about studying business, but I read an interview with another agent who said he wished he’d studied psychology, that it would have been more useful than econ. So I picked psychology. What do you want to study when you go to college?”

  “Art history. Like my dad.”

  “You’re close with your dad, aren’t you? He’s where your love of musicals comes from?”

  “Totally. We saw Wicked and Billy Elliot and Chicago and the Evita revival. We even went to see this one-night Patti Lupone concert at Lincoln Center two years ago, and I teased him that we were the only two straight people there.”

  Noah laughed, then corrected me. “Three. The only three straight people. I went to that Patti Lupone concert.”

  “You did?”

  “Hell, yeah. Wouldn’t miss Patti for the world.”

  “You went alone?”

  He shrugged. “Not everyone shares my musical taste. But that’s okay. I didn’t mind going alone.”

  “That’s cool. That you like Patti Lupone.”

  “I don’t just like Patti. I love Patti. But really, it’s not as if I had a choice. My mom sang Patti Lupone songs every single day of my life.”

  “Do you miss your mom?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Yeah, I do,” he said, and he sounded wistful, lonely even.

  “It’s just you now, right?”

  He nodded. “Man against the world,” he said, like it was a joke, but I could tell there was a kernel of pain beneath the offhand comment.

  “It must be hard sometimes. To feel that way. To miss her,” I said quietly. I got the sense he didn’t talk freely about himself. Maybe he needed someone who wanted to know him, truly know him, and to listen.

  He looked down at his hands in his lap, then back up at me, his blue eyes meeting mine. “It is hard,” he said in the barest voice.

  “How long has it been now?”

  He scrubbed a hand over his jaw and swallowed. “Three years.” Each word was a scrape. Dry and harsh. I wanted to take away the hurt, so I did the one thing I could do. Keep talking. About musicals. About art. About Patti Lupone. Until the raw edge left his voice.

  When it was time to leave, I stood up, but Noah told me to wait. He handed me an envelope.

  “Can you believe they’re making Lords and Ladies fragrances now?” he said and laughed. “Just got these from the licensing team. But it’s kind of a rush.”

  “Should I bring the papers back tomorrow?”

  He nodded, but didn’t say anything more. The smallest sliver of a smile told me he was glad I’d be coming by tomorrow.

  After I settled into my regular chair the next day, I dived into more conversation. “You don’t drink,” I said.

  “Not at the office, at least,” he said, with a wink.

  “But you don’t drink at all. You never have at any of the parties or events,” I said, because I’d been curious about this for some time. He drank water or iced tea at my house. He never had the wine or champagne my mom served.

  “That is true.”

  “Why is that, may I ask?”

  “My mom was an alcoholic,” he said, speaking plainly. He didn’t try to avoid it. He simply owned it. His truth.

  “Did she ever stop?”

  He shook his head. “Nope. Drank till the day she died.”

  “And you just decided you didn’t want to be like that?”

  “Don’t want to be like that at all. So I never touch the stuff. Never have, never wanted to.”

  “I’m the same. I mean, obviously, I can’t drink. But I don’t want to be buzzed. It just seems …” I trailed off, and he nodded.

  “I know what you mean,” he said. “It’s just not your thing? It’s not you, right?”

  “Exactly,” I said, and the way his eyes were steady on me told me he understood everything. “I don’t want something else controlling me. I want to be aware of everything.”

  “Yeah, that’s how it is for me too. I don’t want to be beholden to something. I don’t want to be chained up.”

  “Did she drink the whole time you were growing up?”

  “She did,” he said heavily. “She was a great mom, don’t get me wrong. She was always there after school, did homework with me, took me to her shows, came to my games, cheered and clapped the loudest, and brought all her actor friends along to my games too. She was this sort of big personality, always laughing, always singing, always wanting the spotlight. Know the type?”

  Did I know the type? I was raised by the type. “I think I can picture that.”

  Noah

  The next day it was India for Lords and Ladies, and I picked up where we’d left off.

  “Do you ever want to write, like your mom?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Never. I don’t even watch TV.”

  I laughed, and tapped my pen on the desk. “That is awesome,” I said, shaking my head in admiration.

  “Really? It’s awesome that I don’t watch TV?” she asked, quirking up an eyebrow.

  “Hell, yeah,” I said, dropping the pen, and leaning back in my chair. A warmth spread through me because talking to her was easy, it was peaceful, it was fun. It was free of obligations or expectations. “It’s just so different from everyone else I deal with. All everyone wants to talk about is TV, or some new deal, or script, or what have you.”

  “Do you want to talk about TV? I can pretend I watch,” she said, tilting her h
ead, her eyes sparkling in a playful way.

  “No,” I said, drawing it out, like a pronouncement. “Let’s not talk about TV.”

  She didn’t answer right away, and I watched her, waiting. She sat up straighter in the chair, fidgeted briefly with the cuffs on her blue shirt, then raised her face.

  “We could talk about Chess,” she offered, saying it like it was ours, like it was the connective tissue between us. Her voice rose, and my heart fluttered.

  In that moment, everything slowed. I considered what was coming next, and whether I was going to step over the line. I wasn’t a teacher falling for a student, I wasn’t a doctor tangoing with a patient, but I wasn’t immune to risk either. Jewel mattered to me. She was the foundation of my client list. She should have been top of mind. But she was nowhere in my head or my heart then. Kennedy was, filling me up, making me feel things I didn’t want to stop feeling.

  I had more to lose than Kennedy did. I had, in retrospect, everything to lose. I stood up, walked to the door and gently closed it.

  Her cheeks were turning red. My mouth was dry.

  I didn’t return to my desk. Instead, I sat down in the chair across from her. “Kennedy,” I started, the words threatening to stick. But I was an adult. I was the adult. I had to act like one and at least discuss the elephant in the room. “Do you really think you should keep coming by here?”

  She looked crushed as her lips curved down. “You don’t think I should?”

  “I just wonder if it’s a good idea,” I said, trying to be careful with each word.

  “You don’t like it when I come by with the papers and stuff?” she asked, as if she felt foolish. That was the last thing I wanted her to feel. I leaned forward, reaching for her, but then pulled back my hand. We weren’t there yet. I didn’t have permission to touch her knee or to hold her hand.

  But reassure her of my feelings? That I could do. “I do like it,” I said quietly, telling the truth. “That's kind of the problem.”

  Her smile reappeared for a second, then she seemed to rein it in. “Why is it a problem?”

  “I just think it could complicate things. You know, professionally,” I said. Admittedly, I might not have been resisting too hard, but this was the best I could do.

  “Maybe I should come here and talk about professional stuff then,” she said playfully.

  I smiled. “You’re the only one who comes around and doesn’t want to talk about that stuff. That might be why I like your visits so much.”

  “I could talk about business. In fact, I have this idea for a TV show I wanted to pitch you.”

  I groaned, and ran my hand through my hair.

  “But wait. Really. You’ll love it. You have to hear it,” she teased.

  “You just said you don’t watch TV!”

  “Not only do I not watch TV, I don’t even like TV,” she said, stabbing the air with her index finger. I loved that we were back on familiar territory. We’d acknowledged what was happening without letting it define us.

  “You have no idea how refreshing that is to hear. Do you watch anything? Like online videos or something?”

  “There’s this Internet comedian I like. He does these random New York things. Like dances on roller skates in jean shorts in Times Square.”

  “Show me,” I said, and we moved back to my computer, where she found a video of a guy in too-short shorts who was skating through orange cones he’d set up amid the tables and tourists. The video cracked me up, and so did her response to it. The sweetness of the sound of her laughter touched down somewhere deep inside me.

  “I love it. Haven’t laughed that hard since I found an old copy of one of David Tremaine’s columns. The TV writer,” I added.

  She nodded. “I know who he is.”

  I shrugged sheepishly. “Of course you do. I love his work. Anyway,” I said, tapping the screen. “I’m going to have to watch all of this guy’s videos.”

  She flashed me a smile. “I hope he makes you laugh.”

  “One of my favorite things to do”

  “Me too. I guess I better go.”

  She started to walk to the door, and some kind of emptiness took hold, rooting around in my gut at the prospect of her leaving. I reached out and placed a hand on her arm.

  “Are you going to come by again?” My voice was crackly and dry. I wasn’t sure if I should be asking the question. But I was doing it anyway.

  “I don’t want to complicate things,” she said, her voice low and breathy.

  “They’re already complicated,” I said, my chest rising and falling as it did when I was a little bit nervous. Right then, I was a lot nervous.

  “I’ll come by. Do you have papers for me to have signed?”

  “No.”

  She smiled, reeling me in more. “I will, Noah.”

  “You know that no one calls me Noah, right?”

  “Are you saying you want me to call you Hayes again?”

  I shook my head. “No. I want you to call me Noah.”

  She stepped closer, the distance between us halving. She was so near, I could have wrapped my arms around her and tugged her in for a kiss. I clenched my fists, as if that would keep all my desires in check. The matter became more complicated when she whispered my name once more, letting it slide off her lips, like she’d lingered on every letter.

  Kennedy

  My heart was a hummingbird, its wings beating wild and fast. He’d given me the keys. I was the only one who had them.

  I didn’t ask why. I suspected he used the name Hayes as a shield, so he’d have a wall, a barrier if he needed one. But I’d already broken down some of those barriers in the simplest way—I only wanted what was on the other side. Him, just him.

  And so he became Noah, and I was the only one who called him by his name.

  “’Bye. Noah.”

  I swore I heard a low groan from him, then he collected himself. “’Bye, K,” he said, calling me K for the first time, calling me by an affectionate name. It did not go unnoticed, or unenjoyed.

  I stopped by another time. Then another, then another.

  I never tried to look older. I didn’t get dolled up or apply extra makeup. He wouldn’t have been fooled anyway. He knew the score; he was either willing to handle it or not. When I’d arrive at his office, I came from summer class, or summer lacrosse practice, so I was dressed casually. My hair was usually in a ponytail. I looked like me. If he was going to like me, he was going to like me.

  We talked about everything; he told me more stories about his mom, the shows she performed in, the things she said and did, even the sadder times, how he’d come home and find her drunk, how she’d started performing tipsy sometimes too, how she died of liver disease when he was only twenty-one. He’d never known his dad; his dad left when he was two and he never had any siblings, so he was alone. I almost wanted to ask if he was drawn to my mom because she was so similar in some ways to his mom, and she technically could have been his mom too, since she was twice his age. But I didn’t want to go there and dig into their relationship, the way it spilled over from work to friendship, because then I’d be reminding him of the biggest hurdle between us—not age, but her. Instead, I told him stories about school, about the headmistress and her rules, I talked about lacrosse and recounted the games we’d played, and the goals I’d scored, and the plays I made. I wanted him to be impressed with my prowess on the field, that I was a jock like him.

  “You should come to my games sometime,” I said one afternoon. I wasn’t planning to ask him out. It just came out then. It was the natural moment to say it.

  “I should,” he said with a nod.

  “But will you?”

  He cocked his head to the side, considering my question. He narrowed his eyes. “Do you really want me to?”

  “I’m asking you to, aren’t I?”

  He paused, licked his lips briefly. “Kennedy, do you think it would be weird if I came to a game?”

  “Weird in what way?” I as
ked carefully, sensing we were circling the real issue, and also wanting to be circling it.

  “Weird as in obvious.”

  I grinned slightly and stretched my hand across his desk to touch the handle on his coffee mug. He’d finished the coffee earlier and his hands were in his lap. Still, I was touching something he’d touched. “What’s obvious?” I asked playfully.

  “You know what I mean,” he said, his voice slipping away from him, gliding into dangerous territory.

  “Do I?”

  He nodded, never taking his eyes off me. “You are a very smart woman, Kennedy.”

  Woman. He called me a woman. “I know,” I said.

  “That you’re smart or what I mean by obvious?”

  I laughed at the way he was now playing, teasing, fishing even for information. “Both.”

  He reached for the empty mug, tapping the handle where I’d touched it, then stroking it once. Flames lit up inside me from the gesture and what it seemed to suggest.

  Contact.

  “If I went to your game, I would think it would be obvious how complicated this has become.”

  The moment slowed down, revealing the potential. Anticipation clung to the air, and then the hope that this was the turning point. A quick burst of nerves roared through me, but I ignored them. I was ready for what was next.

  Keeping my gaze on his beautiful blue eyes, I spoke softly. “Do you know I know all the lyrics to Chess?”

  He didn’t say anything right away. His lips were parted, and he looked at me, as if he were considering what to say next, and whether to say it at all. Then he did, in a voice that almost wobbled. “If they ever did a revival, I’d take you to see it.”

  My heart nearly flew out of my chest. “I wish there was one,” I said, and the words came out all breathy sounding, but I didn’t care. “There’s this great chocolate café down in the Village,” I added before I had time to think about it, to take it back. My heart was beating all over, pounding across every inch of my skin. I squeaked out the next words. “We could go there and talk about who we’d cast in a revival.”

  I didn’t have to wait long for an answer. It came immediately as his lips curved into a grin that said yes. “I cannot think of a thing I’d rather discuss.”