Kiss Me Again

by Rachel Vail

  “How much does that sucker weigh?” he asked.

  “A lot,” I said. “More than it seems.”

  “Surprised it doesn’t sink.”

  “We’ll see,” I said. “Kevin, please just tell me what I should say to Tess, about us.”

  “I don’t—Listen. I’m not interested in getting caught up in Tess’s drama. It’s all gossip with her, all Drama all the time, and it’s stupid,” Kevin whispered. “I don’t want to go there. Been there, done that, and it sucked for both of us. Right?”

  “Right,” I said. His hands were gripping my waist again.

  “It’s so middle school.”

  “True,” I admitted.

  “I’m not like that. I don’t …” He touched my chin gently with his long fingers. “No craziness. Huh? We’re so separate from that. You and me. We’re different.”

  “Yeah,” I said, somewhere between agreeing and asking.

  “You want to be with me, be with me,” he whispered, and kissed my lips lightly. “You don’t, don’t. I don’t care what people say or think, and neither should you. None of anybody’s business. No bull. Just us, in that cool space where nobody else exists. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I said.

  twenty-one

  WE WERE ACROSS the lake in the canoe, me up front, Sam in the middle, and Kevin in the stern, when the sky darkened.

  “I’m cold,” Samantha said. “Is it supposed to rain?”

  I turned around. Kevin was biting his lower lip, the paddle resting across his lap. Samantha was hugging herself on the middle seat.

  “Maybe we’ll head back,” I suggested. The wind was picking up, and the current was pushing us toward the clubhouse, exactly across the lake from home, where we needed to head.

  “Hurry,” Samantha said. Her teeth were starting to chatter. “Why is it getting dark so fast?”

  “Chill,” Kevin said. “Everything’s gonna be okay. Tell us what you’re learning about in science these days.”

  “Gotta be better than our science class,” I said.

  “Migration,” Sam said. “Is a storm coming?”

  “Oh, I remember migration,” I said. “When Ms. Channing first asked us if anybody knew the meaning of migrate, somebody said, ‘Yeah, it’s a really bad headache.’ Some boy.”

  “Me,” Kevin said.

  “That was you?” I asked, rowing harder. Sam was right; it did look like a storm was rolling in, and fast. “That was hilarious. Didn’t we all think that was so funny?”

  “Maybe you did,” Kevin said, pretend-abashed. I turned around. He winked at me. “I was being serious. Migraine, migrate. I was nine!”

  “See those three birds?” Sam asked, pointing. “They’re flying low. Birds fly low when it’s about to rain.”

  “Three little birds.” I smiled as reassuringly as possible at her. “You like reggae?”

  “Bob Marley is the bomb,” Kevin said. “We love reggae, right, mon? Sam?”

  Samantha nodded. The silence hung thick around us. Nobody else was out on the lake. We’d worn fleeces under our life jackets, but it really had been pretty warm, warm enough to work up a little sweat on the way across. But now the temperature was dropping, and we were wasting time, me and Kevin, staring into each other’s eyes, smiling at each other. It was nuts. I just felt so loopily happy, smiling at him in the gathering gloom, like a six-year-old at her own birthday party as the cake is coming out, brightening all her best friends’ faces in the warm candle glow.

  A drop of rain plunked down onto my nose.

  “It’s raining,” Sam said. “It’s raining and we’re in a metal canoe on the lake. This is not safe.”

  “We’re fine,” Kevin told her, picking up his oar. “Call the route, Captain.”

  Kevin was the one who was supposed to steer; he knew how, he’d assured me, from summers at camp—and it was true, I could tell as we rowed out—but it was my lake, his first time on it. I had to choose our route.

  Tess would have chosen, from Kevin’s seat. I started to shrug, but I liked it that he wanted me to choose, trusted me to. Called me captain. Kidding, but not entirely.

  So I stopped the shrug and thought. Across the lake was the straighter, shorter path; along the shore was longer but maybe easier than fighting the wind and the current. Or maybe not. “Straight across,” I said, sounding more certain than I felt.

  “Aye-aye, Captain,” he answered. “Straight across it is.”

  I pivoted in my seat and started rowing. We lurched forward with pretty good power and speed. I kept my eyes on the speck of beach that was our property, and calculated we’d be there within ten minutes.

  That’s when the deluge started for real.

  The drip, drip of the tentative first drops gave way to a ferocious dousing. The silence was roared away by the percussive rain, and by Samantha’s screams.

  Kevin and I just kept rowing, though we were barely making any headway. I turned to gauge how far we were from the clubhouse and consider maybe turning back, waiting out the storm there.

  “What are we gonna do?” Sam shrieked.

  “We’re gonna row like hell for home!” I yelled back.

  “We’re gonna DIE!” Sam howled.

  “Someday,” Kevin told her. “Not today. Today we’re just gonna get wet.” He shook the water from his hair like a dog.

  I rowed as hard as I could. When my shoulder burned beyond bearing, I switched sides. Behind me, I heard Kevin say something, so I yelled, “What?”

  “Nothing!” he yelled back. “Singing.”

  Through the thumping rain and my thrashing paddling, I made out the tune. Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds.” I joined in: “Every little thing’s gonna be all right. Don’t worry about a thing …”

  We were slightly closer to shore when we finished the song. Sam had stopped screaming. Kevin and I kept rowing, the rain kept raining, though a bit less insistently now. Behind me, I heard Samantha start singing. It took me a few strokes to figure out what the song was: “You Are My Sunshine.”

  Kevin and I joined in with her, tugging at the lake, fighting for each inch: “… You make (pull) me hap (pull) py! (two strokes) when skies are … (row, row) You’ll (closer, closer) never know (pull) … how much I (row) …”

  “Love you.”

  The rain eased up. Not completely, but enough to make those words, LOVE YOU, sound like we were shouting them.

  All three of us started laughing. I had to catch my breath for a second. I turned around. Kevin, rain dripping off his hair onto his face, winked at me.

  I wiped my hair off my face and smiled at him.

  “You guys!” Sam said. “We’re not there yet.”

  I went back to rowing. We got through that song and then “This Little Light of Mine” and eventually “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” which we all agreed was way too annoying, so, with our patch of beach in sight, and on it our parents in bright-yellow rain gear, we sang at the top of our voices “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

  Our parents helped us pull the canoe in as they praised our patriotism and asked if we were okay. “We almost died,” Samantha said calmly. “But instead we just got wet and sang.”

  “Good choice,” Joe said, wrapping her shivering body in a towel. Mom handed me and Kevin each towels. She started to rub my arms to warm me up, but I stepped away.

  “We were worried,” Mom said.

  “We weren’t,” I said. My arms felt as wobbly as Sour Power Straws, and I was that nauseating combination of hot on the inside and cold on the outside—but I don’t know if I ever felt better.

  Joe and Mom, with Samantha between them, started up toward the house.

  Kevin was rubbing his hair with the towel, so he didn’t see them step away. I hung back. When he emerged from inside the towel, he draped it around his shoulders and reached out to touch my damp back, right between my shoulder blades.

  “What’s that amazing smell?” he asked.

  I breathed it in. “Honeysuckl
e, I think.”

  “Mmmm.” He pulled me closer. “Awesome rowing, Captain.”

  I leaned into him, just for a second, as we followed the others up the hill, and whispered, “Right back at you.”

  twenty-two

  SAMANTHA’S EYELIDS WERE droopy, so Joe carried her up to bed. Mom sat in the living room chatting with me and Kevin. Kevin complimented her on the mac and cheese she’d made us while we were changing into dry clothes.

  “From the box,” Mom admitted.

  “Where are you guys going to dinner?” he asked.

  “Maybe we ought to skip it,” Mom said.

  “No,” both Kevin and I said.

  She looked a little surprised. “You should go,” I added. “We’ll hold down the fort.”

  “You sure?” she asked.

  Joe came down holding his shoes. “Out like a light,” he announced. “Should we go?”

  “You feel okay about it?”

  “Great about it.” He wrapped his arms around her.

  “We’ll be fine,” Kevin said.

  “Let’s go,” Joe said, his hand on my mother’s shoulder. “Back by midnight. Be good.”

  “I’m always good,” Kevin said.

  Joe sucked in his lips. I was getting used to his expressions, especially because Kevin had the same ones.

  After the car pulled away, taillights blurring in the rain, Kevin and I stood somewhat awkwardly across the kitchen from each other.

  “So,” I eventually said.

  “So.” He leaned back against the counter. His hair was a little wavier than usual, with one whorl hanging onto his forehead. I had an almost irresistible urge to touch it. “Wanna watch TV?” I asked, stepping close to him, but keeping my hands to myself.

  “Uh-huh, soon.” He reached out and touched my hair. “That was fun, the canoe.”

  “Yeah.” I wasn’t smiling just about the canoe adventure but also the fact that he had a hair-touching urge at the same moment I did.

  “What?” he asked.

  “I like …”

  “Me,” he finished.

  Well, yeah. And your hand in my hair. And how you smell, and how I feel shot through with electric current when I’m so near you, and how intimate it feels sharing secrets with you, and … “I like how you are with Samantha.”

  “Me too,” he whispered. “I mean, I like how I am with her, but also, how you are with her. Cool, but sweet. Strong. And sure. Fun.”

  I touched his arms with my hands. “You too.”

  “Mmmm. Plus I have an excellent singing voice.”

  “Well,” I negotiated. “It is loud.”

  “Hey! But you have to admit I’m a champion rower.”

  “In your dreams. Though I did like how you followed my orders.”

  “You like that, huh?” He pulled me closer.

  “I do.”

  “We’re good, together. You and me. A good team.”

  “You think?” I asked, almost silently, so close to his face I had to close my eyes to keep from seeing double.

  Not often, Tess would’ve answered.

  “No. I know,” Kevin whispered instead, and kissed my lips lightly. “We are.”

  “I guess we are,” I agreed, kissing him back. “Good thing, because there’s no escaping each other.”

  Our smiles dissolved. No escaping each other hung there in the air between us, as invisible and undeniable as cigarette smoke.

  “Race you there,” Kevin whispered.

  “What?” I asked his back. “Where?”

  I chased after him to the living room. He beat me by a step, and only because he boxed me out.

  “Cheater.” I grabbed the clickers while he flopped onto the couch. The sound came on blastingly loud. I lowered it and then sat down on the couch, in the corner, and clicked around looking for something decent to watch.

  “This is good,” he said, so I left it. The Red Sox were playing, down by two to the Yankees in the seventh. Our feet touched each other on the bench in front of us, and by the first commercial, my head was on his shoulder.

  “This is really good,” he whispered, lowering his mouth to mine.

  By the bottom of the next inning, with men on first and third, we were both yelling at the TV.

  During the commercials, Kevin muted the sound. I really like that in a person, but I didn’t say so. It would have come out weird, I thought.

  He returned my smile and asked if I could keep a secret. I swore I could.

  “My dad’s putting up a hammock tomorrow morning. He got it for your mom, a really nice one, as a wedding present. He’s waking me up at dawn to help him. So I’m thinking, maybe you should stay in your own room tonight. Just saying.”

  I shoved him off the couch for that.

  The game came back on and the score was tied, top of the ninth, so we had to focus. The dreaded Yankees scored, so we were both cursing, throwing hexes I’d learned from my grandmother at them. When the Sox came back with a game-winning, bases-loaded double, we jumped around like a couple of lunatics. Kevin swore his true love to my grandmother and hexes and lefty clutch-hitters. We toasted them and each other with our water bottles and switched the channel to wait for SNL.

  “She hates hammocks, by the way,” I said. “My mom.”

  “Not this one. This one’s sweet.”

  “All hammocks. She gets seasick on them.”

  “Maybe you’ll be surprised,” Kevin said. “I think it was Gandhi who said, ‘The time to make up your mind about people is never.’”

  “Really? Gandhi?”

  “What?”

  “I like that, and it sounds familiar, but are you sure that was Gandhi?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I know stuff, too, you know. You’re not the only … ugh, never mind.”

  “The only what?” I asked.

  “Nothing. I don’t know why you’re mad at me all of a sudden.”

  “I’m not,” I said. “I’m not. Sorry. I’m just, I can’t find my phone, and I haven’t talked to Tess since this afternoon, when she was in the middle of—damn, it must be in the shed.”

  “You don’t need it. Shhh.”

  “No, you don’t know Tess. She gets mad, and …”

  Kevin shrugged. “She’ll get over it.”

  “Yeah. No. Not really.”

  “You are not going out to the shed right now. Mice, bats …”

  “Ew, no. Really?”

  “Absolutely. I’m not going out there tonight. Stay here with me.”

  He kissed me lightly on the mouth. “Okay.” I kissed him back. “Maybe you’re right, and Gandhi’s right. Or whoever.”

  “Mark my words. She’ll love this hammock. Bet you a kiss.”

  “You’re on.”

  Soon our arms were wrapped around each other. Whatever was on TV, and my mother’s opinions on hammocks, the news anchor’s blather about an earlier traffic snarl-up in Jamaica Plain, and whatever Tess wanted to gossip about—none of it mattered at all. Only Kevin and me, and the soft couch below, the warm blanket above.

  “Hey, seriously. Don’t fall asleep,” I said when his sleepy eyes closed.

  “Same mistake twice,” he murmured.

  “Yeah, not,” I said, beside him.

  Then Mom was whispering my name. I opened my eyes. Not my room, living room. I was asleep on the couch. Mmmm. Mom smelled like white wine and fresh air. For a few seconds, I just breathed in the beauty and comfort of her, my eyes blurring her pretty face.

  “Charlie,” she whispered again. I rested against the sound of my name in her voice as she pushed my hair off my forehead gently, like she used to when I was little and woke up in the car at night, having arrived somewhere.

  “Mmm,” I said.

  “I’ll walk you up,” she whispered. “Joe’s already upstairs, taking a shower.”

  “Who?”

  “Oh, Charlie.” Her chuckle might be my favorite sound in the world, especially when I am sleepy and off-balance.

 
I jolted awake and looked around. Kevin wasn’t there. It was just me and my mother. Maybe the whole thing had been a dream. “Mom.”

  “Come on.” Her arm was around my shoulders as we walked up the stairs together.

  “Joe … your husband.”

  Mom laughed. “Yup.”

  “I thought maybe it was all a dream.”

  “Sometimes it feels like that to me, too,” Mom said. “But no. It’s real. Come on, no, don’t sit on the steps. Up to bed.”

  “Where’s—was—are Kevin and Samantha already in bed?”

  “Yes,” Mom said. “Only my rascal stayed up to fall asleep in front of the TV.”

  I pretended to scowl at her, to cover my smile of relief that at least Kevin had dashed upstairs. Though why hadn’t he woken me up, when he ran? My pretend scowl morphed into a real one. “Why is your husband in the shower?”

  “He likes to shower before bed,” Mom whispered.

  “That’s just odd.”

  She giggled a tiny bit, conspiratorially. Like I was her best friend, and we were gossiping about a boy a grade above us.

  “Maybe you should trade him in,” I suggested.

  “You think?”

  “Not often,” I said.

  Mom giggled as if I had come up with that bit of wit on the spot. At the door of her room, with the shower water cascading loudly in the bathroom and, I swear, the sound of her husband singing “Wonderful Tonight,” off-key and exuberant, Mom turned to me. “Well, good night,” she said.

  I had to walk the rest of the way to my room alone, trudging past the dark other bedrooms with their slightly open doors.

  twenty-three

  WHEN I GOT down to the kitchen in the morning, Samantha was sitting at the table alone, looking glum.

  “What’s wrong, Sam?”

  “They’re fighting.”

  “Who?”

  “The parents.” She closed her eyes and kept them closed. “Already. Fighting.”