The Kiss Test (10 page)

“I did bang Amanda Wells.” Chris tossed his napkin into the fire, followed by another piece of wood.

“No way!” Amanda Wells had been the epitome of badness. She stirred up trouble, especially between any couples in our group who hooked up, because she couldn’t stand the idea that some girl had some guy she couldn’t have. It didn’t matter if she didn’t want the guy in the first place. It only mattered that, as long as she couldn’t have him, she wanted him.

“Sure I did,” Chris replied, turning hazel eyes on me. “Lots of times. During
and
after the camping trip.”

“God. I have lost
all
respect for you. She was such a skank.”

“And damn good at it. I still miss her sometimes.”

I shuddered. It wasn’t the first time Chris slept with someone I didn’t like, and probably wouldn’t be the last.

“Wonder what ever happened to the old gang from school.” I put the vision of skanky Amanda and Chris going at it like rabbits out of my mind.

“I saw Mick Peters last week. He’s an attorney upstate.”

“Really? I always liked him.”

“He married that chick from the debate team. Had about six kids and got divorced a year ago.”

“What about Abe? What was his last name?”

Chris remembered everyone from college, and probably high school, and seemed to run into them a lot, so I knew he’d remember.

“Canfield. He married a blind date someone set him up on. They divorced about two months later. I think he said he married a third or fourth cousin or something.”

I sneered.

“That one didn’t last either. I think he’s collecting disability and watching soaps all day. He didn’t sound like a very motivated guy when I talked to him. What about that Mary Waite? You guys were good friends, weren’t you? I always wanted in her pants, but she played hard to get.”

I laughed. I’d have much preferred Chris to get into Mary Waite’s pants than Amanda Wells’s, but Mary wasn’t that kind of girl. “No one got in Mary’s pants. I think she graduated college a virgin and proud of it. She might be a nun now.”

Chris shook his head, a serious look on his face. “Damn shame. She was fine.”

“What about Becker?” I suddenly asked, after a few moments of silence. “Yum. I’d have let him in
my
pants.”

“Okay, I really don’t want to think about that, so don’t go there.”

I turned to stare at him. “What? Me and Becker?”

“The thought of you having sex. With Becker or anybody else for that matter.” He shuddered violently.

I rolled my eyes and settled back down, our shoulders brushing. “Yeah, Kevin and I were celibate for the last two years. You just go ahead and keep thinking that.”

“Fine with me.”

I snickered at Chris’s hypocritical attitude. Sex was good enough for him, but not for me. Well, I admit I didn’t really go out of my way to imagine Chris having sex either. It was kind of like picturing your sibling getting it on. I frowned, wondering if my brother, Rob, was still a virgin. He didn’t get out much.

“Anyway back to Becker,” I said.

“Last I heard he owned a bar on Beale Street. In Memphis.”

“Really?” I brightened up. “We should look him up when we get there. I’m free now.”

“Sure we can look him up. Not for sex, but because he used to be a great drinking buddy.”

I chuckled. Not like I’d seriously take up with a guy I hadn’t seen in seven or eight years. I was vacationing, not trolling for a fling.

“I wonder how many of our friends are married,” I said, thinking briefly that I felt sorry for any of them that were, but doubting, knowing how high the divorce rate was, many had
stayed
married, even if they had decided to take the plunge.

“I know of at least nine or ten who got married,” Chris commented, staring absently at the tree line where a group of crows sat eyeing us, probably hoping we’d head for the tent before dark so they could forage for our leftovers. “And probably eight of those also got a divorce or have been married more than once. Shit, I think I heard that one guy who’d been on the football team was on his fourth wife or something.”

I shook my head. “It all goes to prove my point. If Kevin really thought about it, marriage is highly overrated. Heck, even Elvis got a divorce.” I shrugged off the uncomfortable topic, though I’d been the one to bring it up. “Did you bring marshmallows?” Suddenly s’mores sounded good.

“No. I packed light.”

“Humph. Remind me to pack next time.”

“You didn’t even want to come.” Chris nudged me good-naturedly with his shoulder as I yawned.

The sun drifted down, behind the trees at least, giving our little patch of the world a shadowed, ethereal look. Without the sun’s rays, the temperature began to drop. I slumped a bit down on the log, leaning into Chris’s side to absorb some of his body heat.

“It’s not that I didn’t want to come,” I assured him. “It’s that I didn’t want you taking over my trip.”

“Would I do that?” His look was one of practiced innocence.

After twenty years of friendship, I knew better. “This trip is really important.” Unexpectedly, I needed him to understand. “I feel like my life has fallen apart bit by bit. Remember that game we used to play as kids? Don’t Break The Ice? Where that little guy sat on a chair in the middle of the ice blocks and the players took turns pounding out one block at a time, until he finally fell down?” I reached over and snagged a long stick to poke at the fire. Showers of sparks floated up into the dusky air. “That’s how I feel. Like each day for the past few weeks somebody else has taken a turn at the hammer, banging out one more little ice block of my life.”

Chris laughed, draping his arm over my shoulder. After a second of feeling startled by the move, I decided to just enjoy the warmth and scooted closer. “Don’t worry,” Chris said, “I won’t let anyone else bang you. I’ll take care of you.”

“Very funny.” Even teasing, his words hit a nerve. “I don’t
need
taking care of. I need to be allowed to live the way I want. I need people to take me seriously when I talk, whether or not they agree with what I say. I need my life to go back to the way it was before.”

“You can’t go back,” Mr. Philosophical said.

“Okay, then I want to go forward to perfection.”

“So how does communing with Elvis accomplish that?”

“It’s not the communing with Elvis that will accomplish it.” I eyed him to make sure there was no Elvis bashing in the works. When he didn’t make any snide comments, I continued.

“I just need to get away. Not think about jobs or relationships for a few weeks. I figure it’ll give me a chance to figure out what to do with my life and where to go from here.” I tossed my flaming stick into the fire. “I could’ve done without seeing my mother on this trip, however.”

“Uh, uh, uh. No whining. That was our deal.”

“No, our deal was that I’d go to the wedding and you’d drive. You never said I couldn’t whine about it.”

Chris just smiled and settled in, pulling me closer to him as I shivered in the chill air. I had to smile back. A peace I hadn’t felt in too long settled over me. I decided not to analyze it and just enjoy it.

“Look.” I pointed up as the first stars winked awake.

We watched the stars for a while, while the fire popped and sparked. Though this spur-of-the-moment camping trip hadn’t been on my agenda, I had to say it felt pretty welcome right then. I didn’t have to think about how to find a job. I didn’t have to think about Kevin’s harsh words and obvious dislike for just about everything I’d said and done in the last couple of years. I could simply sit and be…with the one person in my life who didn’t judge me.

The cold morning air further awakened me as I brushed my teeth with bottled water, spitting into the bushes at the side of the camp. Chris must have been off taking care of business. The birds practiced their morning scales, and the dew rose up off the ground wherever the sun touched it.

I scratched at a spot on my left arm and then dug around in our packs to see what breakfast would entail this morning. There wasn’t much to choose from, so I decided to wait to see what Chris had planned, praying we weren’t testing out any kind of backpacking rations or anything. I wanted real food.

“Morning.”

I remembered to rise slowly and was pleased to find I still didn’t get dizzy from the new position change.

“Morning, yourself,” I answered, rubbing at what felt like a zit forming on my forehead. Great. Just what I needed the day before a photo shoot.

“Holy shit.” Chris moved closer, staring at my face like I transformed overnight into something hideous. “You look like hell.”

“Gee, thanks.” I moved away, scratching the side of my neck. “You look mighty terrific in the morning, too.”

“No, Margo. Really.” Chris took hold of my shoulder and turned me back toward him, cringing a little when he got too close. “Did you put on that mosquito repellant I left on your sleeping bag last night?”

“That bottle of stuff I couldn’t read in the dark?” I snapped, arching my back to scratch a spot between my shoulder blades, which burned and itched at the same time. “How was I supposed to know what it was?”

Suddenly my whole body itched. I looked down at my bare legs, still in the shorts I’d worn yesterday and slept in last night. Bright red circular welts the size of quarters covered me from thighs to shins. “Shit!” I lunged for the car, yanking open the door and rolling down the driver’s window so I could see into the side mirror. My face, too, had sprouted a multitude of angry mosquito bites overnight. “I can’t believe you didn’t just tell me to use that stuff!” I attacked a spot above my right brow with a vengeance.

“Stop scratching.” Chris pulled my hand away from my face. “You’ll just make it worse.”

“It can’t get worse,” I shouted, staring back into the mirror in a combination of horror and fascination. “I have a photo shoot tomorrow. I can’t go looking like this.” Slamming the car door, I attacked my arms with my fingernails, scratching like a dog with fleas. “Get me to a store. Now. I need calamine lotion or something.”

We packed fast, skipping breakfast, and were in the car within thirty minutes. Thankfully, there was a country store not too far down out of the hills, fully stocked for stupid campers who didn’t take the proper precautions.

“The way my luck is going,” I growled, slouching in my seat and using the Braille method to dab each mountain-sized bump on my face with calamine, “I’ll get malaria or West Nile virus on top of everything else. Oh, but on the bright side,” I said sarcastically, “then, I won’t have to go to my mother’s wedding.”

Chris ignored me and I went back to painting myself in pink lotion. Getting tired of dotting each spot individually, I briefly toyed with the idea of slathering it on like regular lotion, but a warning from Chris not to get the stuff on his car seats kept me from following through.

We found a McDonald’s and Chris fed me, probably to keep me from biting his head off for the entire rest of today’s car trip. I was in no mood for niceties and sure as heck didn’t feel like being pleasant to the person who hadn’t even thought to warn me about the voracity of Virginian mosquitoes.

I’d barely finished my Egg McMuffin, washed down with OJ, when my cell phone rang.

“Margo?”

I threw Chris a pained look, but he didn’t notice so keen was he on waving at some chick in another Jeep.

“Margo?”

“Yes, Mom, I’m here.”

“Where? You aren’t riding those awful subways again, are you?”

“Cell phones don’t work in the subway. I’m in the car with Chris.” My extended vacation was a secret. One hint I was free of any sort of schedule, and she’d try to talk me into showing up in California earlier than the three days before the wedding I’d already reluctantly added to my schedule.

“So, dear, what do you think of pink?”

“Basically, I try
not
to think of pink.”

“I mean for the bridesmaids’ dresses, Margo, not as a topic for general contemplation.”

Again, I was struck by the fact that my mother asked me to be an attendant in her wedding. Ten previous marriages—nine that I had been able to attend, having actually been alive for them—and she’d never asked me to be in the wedding party. It was enough to make a girl suspicious. It was also probably a question I’d never get answered. My mother did things for reasons like “being in love” (in the case of the marriages), because she thought something was pretty (like the time she purchased a catamaran, which she didn’t know how to sail and ended up docking somewhere so she could look at it), or because it made her happy (the reason she called me every day, even though I clearly didn’t share the sentiment).

Oh, well. There were more important things right now than delving into the whys and wherefores of my mother’s psyche. Namely, convincing her I wasn’t wearing pink in public.

I checked to be sure Chris was still occupied with driving and not listening to my conversation. “Well, Mom,” I said as carefully and as quietly as I could, considering the soft top of the Jeep in the wind sounded like a drum beating overhead. “I think you might pick a different color. Pink is really better suited to babies, isn’t it?”

“Oh no, dear. Pink is all the rage this year.”

Maybe in the clubs where Adair hung out.

“Well,” I began again, wracking my brain for an excuse. “Pink really isn’t very flattering to my coloring.”

“Oh.” She sounded vaguely disappointed—and like she believed I might actually
know
what colors were flattering on me, which I didn’t. I chose my clothing by what I liked, not what accented my eye color or brought out the golden highlights in my hair, which I wasn’t even sure existed. Curious, I flipped down the sun visor to find out, but apparently Jeeps didn’t come with vanity mirrors. Chris shot me a curious glance before turning back to the twisty-turny road.

“That’s too bad,” my mother continued, “because Sam and I found the perfect pink dresses today. You could—”

“Wait. Sam? I thought his name was Quinn.” Good God, she’d changed husbands before the wedding even happened. Did my mother know no shame? Did she think men were disposable, never-ending commodities to be bought and sold on her whim? Did she—

“Oh, Margo!” Mom laughed. “Sam is Quinn’s daughter. What do you take me for?”

Uh, the woman of ever-revolving men?

“Sorry. Quinn has a daughter?”

“Yes. She’s delightful, Margo. You’ll love her. You always wanted a sister.”

“I did?”

“When you were little, you asked me once if I could exchange Rob for a sister, like we’d exchanged a Barbie you didn’t like for a skateboard.”

I chuckled and rubbed my back against the car seat like a bear scratching on a tree. Right. That was the year sports equipment became infinitely more exciting than out-of-proportion fashion dolls. The same year Rob started to become a really irritating older brother. I didn’t remember the part about trading him in though. That must have been before I proved my skills with the skateboard and Rob and Chris started inviting me to play with them.

“So, how old is Quinn’s daughter?” I asked, not so much because I cared, but because I wondered how much more “mothering” my mother was going to attempt in her life. I mean, she hadn’t exactly been stellar at it when I was a kid, at least not after the age of ten.

“She’s your age. Maybe twenty-five.”

Only four years younger than me? I guess that exploded the theory
Quinn
was in his twenties. Strike cradle-robbing off the list of my mother’s misdemeanors.

“You’ll love her. And his three other children.”

I’d never
know
them. Just like I wouldn’t know my new stepfather. Like I didn’t really even know my mother—and she didn’t know me, if she thought I’d be caught dead in a pink bridesmaid dress.

“Great! But how about blue or black for the dresses? Those colors are flattering on just about everyone,” I suggested, digging at a particularly itchy patch of bites through the jeans I’d changed into before leaving the camp. That triggered itching on my left arm and I transferred my phone to that side, so my right hand was free for scratching.

“Black for a wedding? Margo, really. That would be just wrong.”

Would it? I thought. Wasn’t this particular wedding the death of the whole institution of marriage itself? That big “’til death do us part” thing mocked and scorned? I wasn’t going to argue with her, though. “Look, Mom, I need to get going. The doorbell is ringing.”

Chris shot me a look.

“I thought you said you were in the car.”

I bit my lip and crossed my fingers at my side. “I, uh, was. But, I’m home now. Gotta run. Oh, and no pink, okay?”

I quickly disconnected the phone.

“Your mom?”

“How’d you guess? She wanted me to wear a pink bridesmaid dress.”

His grin took up nearly his whole face. “It would match your spots.”