Kiss Crush Collide (3 page)

“Keep it close,” Roger requested as he leaned in to read the embroidered name on the red nylon club jacket. He clapped his hand down twice on the broad shoulder next to mine and said, “Porter,” with a small smile and a folded five-dollar bill.

Then he cleared his throat, slid his hand up to check that his hair was at full attention, and proceeded to circle his entire car once, admiring and assessing it before he reached for Yorke again and pulled her across the warm blacktop toward the stairs leading up to the club.

I could feel Porter’s green eyes on me as I crossed the parking lot, my sharp heels stabbing into the soft tar that had spent the day in the sun.

My face flushed and my pace quickened as I realized that at this moment I was not jealous of Yorke, not at all. Not of her engagement, or her huge diamond ring, and especially not of Roger, a man whose shoes and belt matched the interior of his car.

I reached the stairs and paused, burning a memory in my mind, one that was all mine, that didn’t involve my sisters.

His eyes, the green so bright, the sideways smile, the way it felt when he held my hand. My fingers tingled still, and I wrapped them into a fist, trying to hold on tight.

“Hurry up,” my sisters called out to me from the entrance, and I followed after them, one step behind. It was Yorke, Freddie, and then me, like always, up the curved stairs and into the club.

My parents lean in to each other, looking like the picture-perfect, if a bit inebriated, married couple, and give each other a quick peck on the lips before dropping their napkins onto the cluttered table and rising out of their chairs.

It is time for them to make the rounds, to say hello to old friends, giving people a chance to congratulate them on Freddie’s brilliance. Time to spread the news of Yorke and Roger’s engagement.

The lights are low in the private alcove my mother reserved for this special family occasion, the knotty pine paneling and framed mallard and drake prints muted by the candlelight and windows swagged with thick velvet drapes.

“Ready or not, Leah,” Shane says under his breath. Beneath the long dark tablecloth he clamps his thick hand over my knee with such force that my front teeth knock against my wineglass just as I am taking a sip. I start steadying myself for the impending approach of my mother.

She’s making her way down the table, kissing everyone as she passes behind our chairs. My dad is giving out handshakes like a politician to his shiny pink family now full of expensive steaks and red wine.

I set my glass down and shove my dinner plate away. The meat, red in the middle because that is the way my family eats it, is untouched.

Strings of summer squash dangle from the tines of my heavy sterling fork. I moved the carrots and fancy piped potatoes around on the plate but didn’t manage to actually consume any of them.

My mother’s hand, cool and smooth, presses lightly on my right shoulder when she arrives behind my chair. My head is heavy, sloshing full of wine, and I feel slightly trapped. I attempt to cover up my plate with my napkin, pulling the edges of the napkin down over the thick steak. I’m kind of a mess.

She leans down near my ear. She is an intoxicating mix of Chanel No. 5, grilled meat, and merlot. “And next year?” she asks, her eyes locking on to mine meaningfully before she finishes her thought. “Should I expect to be up there again?”

She lifts her glass toward the head of the table, where my sisters, the engaged and the graduating, sit wrapped in dark plaid wallpaper and cozy candlelight.

Avoiding her gaze, I watch the wine in her glass swirl. It coats the inside of the crystal, like a good wine should, before slipping back down into the bowl.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” my dad says with a rumbling laugh when he arrives at my side at last.

I lean toward her, and she gives me a quick kiss on the cheek, dismissing me. My dad catches her up into the crook of his arm, his dark suit coat crinkling against her as he pulls her away.

Reaching over Shane, I grab the sweating silver ice bucket from the middle of the table and dangle it by its curved handles in front of my face. There it is: the dreaded coral lip print. I smudge it off with the back of my hand, looking past my curved reflection to see my parents in miniature, disappearing hand in hand into the crowd of tan faces, highlighted hair, and friendly smiles.

I feel Shane’s hand slip from my thigh as I lean forward to set the ice bucket back down and spy Freddie near the end of the long table, hovering over the blown-out candles and half-eaten cake. Thick chocolate slabs are missing, but yellow roses still sit primly around the edges. It’s just like our driveway, but in cake form. Freddie is calm and amazingly composed, considering that Yorke is stealing her hard-earned graduation thunder with an overstarched, shrub-haired frat boy and a diamond ring. I guess she’s had a lot of practice at being second.

“Congrats, Freddie,” I yell in her direction. She lifts her rosy face, and we raise our glasses toward each other. I down mine in one, the wine amplifying my pride and my volume.

Shane pushes back from the table, his plate scraped clean, decorative garnishes and all. He grabs a bottle from the middle of the table and refills my glass with the dregs. Chucking the spent bottle upside down into the silver bucket with a splash, he holds up his empty glass and tips it back and forth in my direction, his fingers looking freakishly large on the thin stem.

“Shall we?” he asks.

Knowing we will need adults for any possible refills, he is eager to stay close to my parents. I nod and stand too quickly, my brain filling with booze until I slide sideways against the overstuffed country club chair and find myself sitting again, hands resting in my lap.

Shane reaches for me. I put my fingers in his, feeling no electricity, no warm tingling, just the calluses and rough skin left over from his championship baseball season. I let him pull me up.

“Hey, Rog,” Shane yells as soon as I am steady. His hand presses on the small of my back as we walk toward the end of the table. “I haven’t had the chance to congratulate you personally.”

Their hands meet like two leather baseball mitts, and Yorke looks ready to burst. You can tell they are measuring each other up. Looking at Roger’s trim pinstriped suit and gelled bangs, I hope Shane wins.

Yorke reaches past Roger to hug me, maneuvering her way to get closer to the open dining room and the masses that haven’t heard about her impending marriage.

She squeezes me halfheartedly with one arm, and her drink, brimming with mint and ice, drips down my back, soaking my dress and my hair. She lets go quickly, grabs Roger, and leads him away. She smiles back at me over her shoulder, dangling her drink in one hand and Roger in the other, before melting into a sea of sparkling silverware and well-fed families.

I feel my hair lying damp and sticky against my back. Thanks, Yorke. I lean over to wipe my fingers on the soft linen tablecloth.

“I am going to—” I start explaining to Shane, but he is busy dragging a chair across the classic tartan carpet, pulling in close to Freddie with a big smile on his face, his teeth stained dark and grayish by the wine. He holds his empty glass out in front of him like it’s some red plastic cup he paid three dollars for at a keg party.

Freddie and Evan are still sitting at the end of our table. Leaning in very close to each other, speaking in French, they are lost deep in a conversation. They have been in advanced languages together since the first semester of their freshman year, seriously dating since the second. Oblivious to Shane and the fact that they are huddling around the last bottle of wine and it’s at least half full, their voices lilt and trill above the din. I wish Shane luck, knowing that the best he can do in French is a butchered version of “
Je joue au tennis
,” and head off for the bathroom.

As I pass the buffet near the front door, I swipe a handful of the pastel-colored dinner mints usually reserved for alcoholics and small children. I pull out the pink ones and drop the rest into a potted plant.

For years, at the end of every Friday night family dinner, I have secretly gobbled them down. The first time they appeared on the buffet near the host stand, mounded up in that silver tray with a tiny silver caviar spoon, they sparkled at me like little candy diamonds. Yorke, bold even at eight, stepped right up and scooped a small spoonful for all of us to share. They were three perfect shades of pastel, just like us.

Huddled in a tight circle in a pool of light in the parking lot, we stretched out our hands and discovered that they were not blue, yellow, and pink, like our matching dresses. They were, under closer inspection,
green
, yellow, and pink, practically perfect but not close enough for Yorke. She threw hers down onto the pavement with a loud “Those are for babies!” and stomped off to the car, the heels of her little blue dress shoes clacking loudly along the blacktop.

The green candies bounced away, out of the circle of light that had given them up as impostors, and rolled off into the dark, lost under the bellies of our friends’ and neighbors’ cars.

I knew those candies weren’t for babies. I also knew that Yorke wouldn’t eat them just because they weren’t blue, her signature color, and that there was
no
way Freddie would eat the yellow ones, not now.

I watched Freddie drop hers one by one on our way to the car, like a trail of bread crumbs on the blacktop. I held on to mine tight when my dad scooped me up and put me in the car, and I clung to them all the way home. Even though they leave your teeth kind of fuzzy and make your breath even worse, I have been eating them on the sly ever since.

In fair weather the dining room at our club opens up to a humongous wooden deck that overlooks the golf course and, beyond that, the lake. I veer to the left onto the deck when I should be veering to the right and into the ladies’ room.

I step out into the evening air, and the sun is right now making its last stab at daytime, painting the sky the same bright pinks, oranges, and reds that flood Freddie’s bedroom.

Leaning up against the railing, my hair still damp and my glass still almost full, I take a sip and wonder if Paris really does look like a sunset or if that is just Freddie’s interpretation. I guess I will find out eventually.

I’ll probably go abroad like Freddie. My French is not nearly as good as hers, but Freddie had to overdo it like she always does and master the language in one semester. I don’t have much interest in French, really. When I was picking classes for my freshman year, I had to pick a language, and both my sisters had studied French, so it seemed like the way to go.

I didn’t realize it might lead to something someday, like actual French conversations or a trip to France. I am not sure if I even like French people. I am fond of shaved armpits. I detest stinky cheese. And I am pretty sure my hair won’t work with a beret.

Yorke didn’t go abroad, but she did get engaged to Roger. Hmm . . . nine months of smelling armpits on crowded European streets or a lifetime with a man who just might trim his hair with a hedge clipper. There must be another option.

I turn around, resting an elbow on the railing, and look through the floor-to-ceiling glass windows that run the length of the dining room, searching the crowd for my sisters. The setting sun bounces off all the sterling, crystal, and glass. I narrow my eyes against the glare.

There they are, standing side by side, talking to the lady that lived next door to us at the lake house.

I move myself to the right until my reflection fits in and joins them. There is my hair, my smile, the way my hand covers my mouth when I laugh, my ability to make chocolate chip cookies, my best back tuck, the dress I am wearing right now, the pride I should feel when I am named valedictorian, and the sparkle I will have when wearing my engagement ring for the first time.

Gazing through that window, I see my sisters reflecting my past and presenting a prefolded map of my future. No need for me to open it up and navigate. I can simply follow the path they have laid out for me.

I drain the rest of my drink, the tannins biting at the back of my tongue. I shift, then turn and walk away, leaving my sisters and an empty glass behind me.

Somewhere down around the seventeenth hole, where the driveway curves in pretty close and almost hugs the fairway, I see the M3 speeding smoothly along in the distance, its bright redness moving through the cultivated green of the golf course.

Walking slowly through the soft, short grass, my sandals hanging loosely in my hand, I stop and watch it slow down before it whips a quick U-turn and heads back toward the club.

I hear it roaring toward me over the last hill. I align my toes along the edge of the asphalt drive and wait for Roger, trimmed and pressed, to squeal to a stop in front of me.

The car rolls up and comes to an easy, effortless stop at the tip of my toes. It’s Porter. His wild brown hair sticks up all over his head, thick and messy, and his green eyes look me up and down, burning through me, finally resting on my bare feet.

I tip my head to the side, fingers lost in my hair, already twisting as I ask, “What are you doing?”

Not the smoothest of lines, but I am surprised to see him there, his hands looking so familiar as they rest along the top of Roger’s steering wheel.

“Keeping it close,” he says as if it were obvious. He smiles that crooked smile again and stretches his long arms out far and wide around the interior of the car, almost grazing the passenger door with his fingertips.

I feel bolted to the ground.

“Umm . . . ” I flick my hair over my shoulder and eye the clubhouse, a couple of greens behind us. “I think he meant close to the building.”

It is just dark enough that the candles on the tables in the main dining room have been lit. They look like fireflies caught in a really big jar.

“Nah,” he says, shaking his head, very sure of himself. “I think he meant me. Keep it close to me.”

“Highly unlikely,” I say, dropping my hand.

Shaking the loose broken hair from around my fingers, I look him straight in those sparkling green eyes and make the understatement of the century— “Roger is pretty attached to this car.”