Almost Kisses

Almost Kisses
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

I remember the time she almost kissed me; really, it was several times.

The first I recall was in her bedroom, before I had to leave one day. We'd been doing nothing for hours, our favorite pasttime. It was two years ago--but maybe three, the lines have begun to blur from time and my need to forget. She hugged me; I hugged back; I've always been physical with people I love, and I certainly loved her. Like a sister. I panicked when she leaned in, the blind breath on my cheek triggering a hot-pan sort of reaction, jerking back so as to not get burned. Blind to the look on her face, the lights of my mother's car swept across the window set into the back wall of her room; I ran.

Remember that. I ran. It is a common occurrence in my life. Running.

We went back to school that Monday with the aim to forget, and--at least for me--forgetting came easily.

Remember that as well. I like to forget. I try so hard, but it's not always easy.

From then until the time my heart switched on, things were good. She was still a touchy person, but, then again, so was I, so it wasn't a problem.

Her fourteenth birthday arrived; I burned her two CDs she wanted--both ones I haven't listened to in ages now--and went to her party. Somehow we ended up on the couch together, the other two guests on another, and somehow there was a pulse in my chest that wasn't there before, a renewed awareness of the weight of her legs on my lap, watching Elf for some reason (it was November, honestly, Christmas movies? Only at her birthday party would that happen) and trying to ignore her warmth soaking through my jeans. Somehow we ended up lying down side-by-side, her head tucked under my chin and my hands pressed to the small of her back, and somehow she was half-asleep while I was singed, wide-awake and struggling to breathe. Again my mother came to get me (she never let me sleep over there, that girl's father was indeed a creep) and this time she walked me to the door, and this time it was me, hurriedly leaning in and clumsily (a regular teenage wreck) pressing my lips to hers.

(I still think I missed. In any case, it was awkward and horrible and there was a new sort of twist in my gut and that twist was named guilt. It was also named shame, and embarassment, and being really fucking stupid.)

Again. I ran.

(I never heard the end of it.)

I put up with five years of just plain loving her. Two years of being in love with her, of listening to her boyfriend problems and about how her older brother knocked her around and how her parents were so horrible and every time any time I tried to talk about my own issues she shut me out and I shut up. I never yelled at her, no matter how much she made me mad. I never snapped and told her that if Mrs. Porter was ragging on her about not doing her homework and putting effort in, then maybe she should do it and show some fucking respect because then the teacher would have no reason to harass her. Not once. I never even yelled at her when she pulled Claire and I over one lunch period and whispered that I might be pregnant. Not once. I never yelled, not even when she told me that she'd lost her virginity months ago. Not even when I found out that Alyssa, her other best friend, had known about it the day it'd happened. Not once. Not once.

Summers were when we drifted apart, barely saw each other, and every autumn we'd fall right back into it again. She always used to kiss me on the cheek, hug me and tell me she loved me or shout something about having my babies and fuck that, I wanted the real thing. But I never got it. I still don't have it. I never will have it. I don't want it anymore.

I got over her at the beginning of ninth grade. Two years. Two years of keeping mum. Lips sealed. Even when she was almost pregnant and her boyfriend was getting her into drugs and she still didn't love me like that (she barely loved me as a best friend at all). Even when the slices on her wrist were occurring more frequently, and every time I begged her to stop she promised she would, and only a little while later they'd be back. I cried over those cuts (truly, they were wasted tears) and begged. I begged. I never beg; I am a proud person, raised in a proud family, and we never beg.

But I did. Because I loved her.

(I was a fallback. I hate being a fallback. I still hate that I was the shoulder she cried on, because everyone else was busy. I still hate that I let her get away with this for so long. I hate it. Even now it tears me apart, reliving every moment of what if and how could she. Five years of that. Five years.)

I was always the last to know. Last summer, not even a week after my fifteenth birthday, she came to my house. I hadn't seen her in months. I was busy that day (preparations for the yearly beach party to celebrate my extended family's summer birthdays, mine included) but I made time for her. I always made time for her, even when it made my parents get mad at me, made my friends miffed. Even when I knew she wouldn't do the same.

We sat in the driveway; it was chilly, even on the eighteenth of July. I was fed another story to digest, force-fed her sorrow, because she said she wanted me to know and because she said she could trust me and because I was always there for her. (I never wanted to know any of it, I never thought she proved her trust in me, I never once thought that she was always there for me.) Masochism. Pure, sweet masochism was what I had with her. She fed me a story of a friend from Florida (do you remember, she asked, and of course I remember, it was the same friend she'd told my mother she had vodka and orange juice with. My mother never trusted her; I never should've either.) who wanted her to marry him.

She was thirteen then, so what the hell was this, who proposes at age thirteen? She fed me more, of telling him she couldn't and that he raped her, he was fourteen then, so what the hell was this, who does that at age fourteen? At age anything? I listened and wrapped an arm around her shivering shoulders as she cried.

My mother waited for me inside. I had a pinata to finish making, a cake to bake, ten dishes to cook for the next day, a Sunday that would be spent at the national park fifteen minutes away. But I stayed. And listened.

I was the dedicated friend, through thick and thin, her now-diagnosed schizophrenia, her cutting, her sob stories and dramas and the fact that so many people hated me for caring about her. I excused myself, said my mother needed me, and the story ate away at me.

I couldn't wrap my mind around rape that day; it was a familiar enough concept--physically sexual violation, tearing mind and body all at once. But with someone I knew, it was incomprehensible. But with her, well, it was just another page in her ongoing tragedy, the book that would never end unless she drew a line, fixed herself up, turned her own damn life around instead of waiting on the people who loved her to do it.  

Early that fall, this year, tenth grade, I still cared. A bit. Enough to wish that she'd stop smoking pot and start giving a damn about her homework. Enough to wish that we could be in seventh grade again, the golden year of the Claire-Becky-Kristi trio. Enough to wish that she'd realize the people she cared about didn't care about her, and the ones that really did were fallbacks. Always fallbacks.

Early that autumn, this year, her tenuous hold on reality collapsed. It wasn't as though we didn't see it coming. I wasn't there to witness it, but I've heard stories. That she started shouting, threw her books, pushed and screamed at anyone who tried to pick them up, anyone who tried to help her. In late September, she vanished out of my life. Gone. I heard all of it through other people, other friends. One contacted her, found out she was being homeschooled. That she had been sent to rehabilitation. The hospital. Arrested not once but several times. I was told by them she was doing better.

It didn't matter.

I had stopped caring.

(She didn't care enough to let me know she needed someone, to let me know what was happening. She had enough time to reply to myspace messages, but not enough to pick up the phone and call me. She never returned a phone call. She never did anything to help me help her.)

She called me mid-November, two days before Thanksgiving. I had ten minutes before I had to go to swimming, picked up the phone with a hurried yes? When it was her, I was torn between smiling and throwing up. I tried to fake compassion, fake what I once held for her. I still wonder if she sensed the despisement in my voice, the bitter throw of my words. She fed me another story, but I was full of them. I was sick of them, curled in on myself in an effort to survive the brunt of her suffering. She fed me a story about being in hospital several times, speaking of it as though it was nothing. She fed me a story about her parents calling the police on her, told me that she bit one, and that he hit her.

(For her it is incomprehensible that you cannot bite cops. I had to tell her several times.)

It's illegal, I said.

He was wearing a thick jacket! she protested, as though that excused it.

It's assaulting a police officer, I insisted again.

I barely bit him that hard! she whined.

I was sick of it, literally sick, and a decision was made right there, right then.

I have to go, I said. To swimming.

I hung up, cutting her goodbye in half. I didn't want to hear it, still don't want to hear it. She had taken so much from me by then that I didn't want anything she might give back. The important things were irreplacable. My trust in people, my first love in life, several of my favorite books. She has wrecked quite a few of mine.

Blood and Chocolate has a pencil-smeared page from where she stored a colored drawing as a bookmark.

Glass has a water stain, most likely from coffee, that has warped the hardcover into an irreparable curve.

A Great and Terrible Beauty is probably vanished somewhere beneath her bed.

Crank, I know, she lent to a friend of hers who despises me. I doubt I'll ever see it again.

She bent my soul in half. And she didn't care. Probably never knew it, either, because she never listened to me.

Sometimes I wish I could grip her thin neck, her pencil-thin limbs, and break her in half. Sometimes I wonder if I could ever cause enough physical pain to her body to match the mental pain she bestowed on my mind in the five years I put up with her. Sometimes I wonder if anyone will ever tell me my eyes are pretty without remembering her standing in my garage and saying your eyes are so pretty when you cry, smiling as though that would cheer me up. Sometimes I wonder if I will ever hear Blaqk Audio, The Hush Sound, A Fire Inside, without thinking of all the times we laughed or sang or danced or the times I dreamed about kissing her when the music was playing.

Her schizophrenia might explain a lot, but it doesn't excuse anything.

I don't care about Rebecca anymore.

I only care about the damage she did.
_ _ _ _ _

I remember the year I always wanted to kiss that senior.

She was in ma classe de francais, but spoke it awkwardly because she had taken Spanish for four years. I never knew much about her, still don't know much about her. But I was enthralled. Here was a person, a few inches taller, the perfect mix of thin and soft, who seemed to like me. Me, the girl who burst into laughter at random moments, spouted French like a boiling teakettle, liked yaoi manga and lesbian books. For a while, I idolized her. She wore no makeup, had hair that barely reached her chin in front, was chopped short in the back. She was perfect.

I once wrote something for her. About her, though she never knew it. It was a story about a girl on a rooftop, watching an empty apartment across the street. It was summer, the girl was dressed in a cotton nightgown, perched near the edge, dreaming about the woman who lived in the apartment. The girl wanted to know what color the woman's eyes were; she was in love with the woman, watching her, wanting to be with her. A voice spoke in the story, and the girl jumped up, fell off. The last thing she ever saw was the woman's eyes. Hazel.

(She liked the story.)

She graduated, with my desire to kiss her still hidden behind my lips.

I almost told her once. Hinted many times.

But she left, her name departing from my lips as well.

I don't love Arissa anymore.

I do, however, hope her life is happy.
_ _ _ _ _

I remember every swim season that I held myself back from her.

She is a year older than I am. She goes to another school, about fifteen minutes away. Most of the kids on my town team are not from my school.

(We're still on the same team together, share a lane every now and then.)

I always admired her, but it was only a season or so ago that I became aware of her skin, her smile, the way her arms curled around me in a pleasantly warm embrace. Every time I went without seeing her for a while, I managed to convince myself that the knot in my stomach was only nervousness, wanting to impress someone older.

(It took me a while to realize she wasn't worth impressing.)

Every season, when I came back to find her the same as ever, endlessly fascinating, I fell right back into the pit, the trap of liking someone far too much to say you like them. Each year was a cycle, forgetting and remembering and reliving every moment of thinking whatifwhatifwhatif? All the times I saw her contained a tight hug, her childishly sing-song I love you, and my anticipation that she might mean what I wanted her to mean. She touched me a lot, laying in my lap at meets when she was cold, hugging me whenever and wherever, called me sweet nicknames, and now I wonder if she knew what she was doing, if she took satisfaction in bringing my hopes up just to let them plummet to earth with a sickening thud.

This year bore the same outcome as many of my attempts at romance: Failure.

(I'm never sure whether to be dispirited by the fact that I fall for deadbeats, or cheered up by the fact that it's not me that screws up.)

A few weeks ago, an hour into practice, she walked in. The group of us were standing, stretching before the next set, behind the blocks, and she joined us with barely a word.

Everyone told me I smelled like smoke, she leaned over, whispering to me, so I figured I'd put in an hour and smell like chlorine instead.

A dark chill froze my mind for a moment.

Why did you smell like smoke? I whispered back, hoping that I was wrong.

Why do you think? she rolled her eyes, and the sick sinking in my stomach was terrible, and the practice was ruined, a whole hour left of painful pushing.

(I wonder why I attract losers. Or why losers attract me.)

I don't despise Vail the way I despise Rebecca.

I've just given up on loving her.
_ _ _ _ _

I remember thinking about all the times I almost kissed her.

She was two years older than me, and I loved her warmth during the summer before her senior year. She is tall, thin, strong from karate, and she is a playfully smart, good person. She is responsible, dependable, sweet, affectionate, beautiful, intelligent. She is so close to perfect, and I suppose that is why I'll never have her. She is a tolerant, accepting person, voices her views on marriage when the topic arises with calm purpose; she believes anyone should be able to get married. She isn't hesitant to say it in front of the religious friends, the teachers, the ignorant, the accepting, whoever, whatever.

But she also says that she doesn't understand why someone would want to be gay. I remember that conversation with a small amount of pain (nothing spectacular, just a small twinge of understanding).

She held me a lot that summer, friendly, comforting embraces. I sat on her lap, her arms slung loosely around my waist while her chin rest on my shoulder.

It was a relatively brief thing, my romantic ideas of Sarah.

My love for her as a friend, though, still remains as strong as ever.
_ _ _ _ _

I remember all the times she touched me when it was dark, and I wanted to kiss her.

She was Filipino, an AFS student who would be here for a year, no more, no less. She auditioned for the musical the same way most of the foreign exchange kids did, became a parishioner the same as I, sang to the audition to cut loose, Footloose, and kick off your Sunday shoes!

She touched people a lot, as a sign of friendship, smiled endlessly with slightly crooked teeth. She hid her soft, shiny black hair beneath a hat, for modesty's sake, and wore her pale yellow, flower-printed dress with cautiously enthusiastic satisfaction. We held hands almost constantly backstage, soothing each other's anxiety for the show. We were both first-years, new to the tingle and flash of the stage.

She was so incredibly pretty, I remember thinking, in the dim light as we stood, arms wrapped around each other's shakily excited shoulders, breath close on each others necks. At the afterparty on the third night, we danced together, slow-danced to Love Song (even though I dislike Taylor Swift) with my hands on her waist and hers circling behind my neck. She was tired, and we sat on the couch, somehow ended up in a tangle with her on my lap, curled close to my chest.

When she left at the end of last year, all the kids in the musical exchanged e-mail addresses and memories with her.

I haven't heard from her since.

It was a sweet (and bittersweet), short sort of love, my affair with Faridah.

I wish her the best, the pretty little thing she is.
_ _ _ _ _

I remember the last three months, backstage with the pale girl I like to hug.

She is another touchy person, two years younger than me. She bears no romance towards girls, bears goodwill towards lesbians, politely declined the girl who asked her out a while ago. She smiles and giggles the same amount that she is sadly silent, distant to the world. It takes a shoulder-shake, a soft call of her name, to bring her back. Unexpectedly, she will come up behind me, wrap her arms around my neck and lean into me until I turn, wrap an arm around her waist and smile at her, watching the stage so we don't miss the next entrance.

There is nothing sexual between Katie and I.

There is nothing but comfort and little-girl love.
_ _ _ _ _

I think all the time, of a girl I'd like very much to kiss.

She is smart and funny, shares all of my interests. She likes to write and read and draw and create, the same as I, likes to turn crazy ideas into feasible stories. She makes me wish we were five years into the future, that I had a passport and the money to travel. She makes me want to live in Europe, to have been born there, to live a few hours away instead of a few thousand miles.

Five time zones between her and I, the whole Atlantic Ocean and still, I want to kiss her more than Rebecca and Arissa and Sarah and Faridah combined. I still wish I could just even talk to her, hear her voice.

(I really do wonder what she sounds like.)

I wish I could hug her, hold her hand, find out the exact texture of her skin and her hair, how soft her lips are against mine. I wish for the time we've imagined before, living in an apartment where we split chores and I write all day and she draws all day and all our brainstorming sessions lead to the bedroom.

(I really hope that I don't wish too much for fate to deliver.)

I wish for the money I save up these coming years to be enough, that my parents won't tie me back, that I can find a publishing company eager to print my words.

I wish for Lucy.

I hope for the future, for the dream of almost-kisses being real, proper kisses. No more dreams, no more ghost-lips on mine. I hope for solidity, the reality of a tangible person.

I wish.