The Kiss Test (20 page)

“Not much further.” Chris wrestled with the steering wheel and leaned as close to the windshield as he could in an attempt to see the road through the wildly flapping wipers. The rain pounded on the soft top like we were directly under a waterfall.

The motel sign came into clearer view as we approached.

“This is
not
good.” The burned-out lights of the motel sign left only “bates Motel.” “Are you sure we have to stop here?”

“Do you see a five-star hotel anywhere nearby? ’Cause if you do, point it out. Otherwise I’m stopping. I’m wet and frozen.”

I shrugged. Fine. I was a big girl. I was brave. Despite the fact I’d lain awake at night for two months after seeing
Psycho.
That was a movie. This was reality. A reality I hoped did not include anyone named Norman.

I should have known, considering the way my life was going, Norman would be a given. Thank God he didn’t look like Anthony Perkins or, cold or not, rain or not, I’d have slept in the friggin’ Jeep.

“May I help you?”

Chris noticed his name tag at the same time I did, and we exchanged looks.

“I can do it if you can do it.” The quavering in my voice was most definitely the result of the excessive shivering I’d been doing in the Jeep, although the air outside the vehicle felt more like a sauna than a freezer.

“I can do it,” he replied. “Two rooms, please.”

“Only got one,” Norman said. “It’s raining outside.”

I bit back a smart-mouthed retort, considering I really wanted to be able to take a shower without fearing for my life.

“There’s been a flash flood down the road a bit, so we’ve had the place fill up purty fast tonight.”

“We’ll take the one, then.”

I nodded my acceptance. I didn’t care if we had half a room. If I could change clothes and take a shower I’d crash anywhere.

Norman bustled around behind the counter, taking Chris’s credit card, filling out paperwork and finally handing me the key.

“This is Mother’s favorite room,” Norman commented.

The hand that reached for the key froze in midair. Chris finally took it for me, with a not completely steady hand himself.

“Oh, by the way, there’s no hot water. Or air conditioning. Repair guy can’t come ’til tomorrow.” He reached under the counter and I fought not to visibly cringe as a vision of him rising from behind the counter with a butcher knife flashed through my head. Instead he produced a candle and a book of matches. “Better take these along. Always lose power with the rain.”

“Uh, thanks.” Chris opened the door and hustled me out into the rain. I think we both felt safer dealing with the flash flood.

The room was an oven. A damp, sweaty, stinky oven. If it had been dry, it would have smelled musty. Seeing as how the humidity hovered around the two-hundred-percent mark, it smelled like wet must.

Clean, dry clothes were first on the agenda. And, not to be found anywhere. The rainstorm had been so sudden, and raising the top on the Jeep such slow going, our bags were soaked through. There wasn’t a dry piece of clothing to be had between us. Taking a shower was out, since even a cold shower—which would have been most welcome—wouldn’t do much good if all we had to put back on was more wet clothes.

My shoulders sagged. “Now what?” I tossed a drippy T-shirt over the curtain rod in the bathroom, which looked like a disorganized clothing store now. “And what about food? Clearly there’s no dinner in our future and I’m not going to last all night in this room without sustenance.”

Chris thumbed through the guest information book…all one page of it. “Closest restaurant is fifty miles away. Apparently the city planners decided motels and restaurants should never be in the same town. However, there was a vending machine in the breezeway a few doors down. We could try that.”

I shrugged. “Just keep me fed and no one gets hurt.”

We dashed outside, wading through puddles up to our ankles, and found the motel’s vending machines. Judging by the meager contents, this had been the source of dinner for most of the occupants of the motel this evening. We settled on a bag of cheese curls, three Kit Kat bars, a bag of Twizzlers and a pack of M&M’s. We each got a soda from a second vending machine. Once in the room, I divided the food onto napkins.

“Ooh, twelve cheese curls, twenty-nine M&M’s, three Twizzlers and six Kit Kat sticks each. I really hope we don’t overdo it here.”

“Stop complaining. We’re out of the storm.” Chris turned on the TV but the cable was out, as evidenced by the snow on the screen. He turned it back off and began opening drawers.

“Hey, look.” Chris held a deck of cards in his hand. He counted them out. “Fifty-two. We have the evening’s entertainment lined up.”

I tried to savor my snacks, but nerves, and the off chance this might be my last supper, forced me to gluttony, and I wiped them out in minutes. I couldn’t get visions of Norman out of my head.

Chris dealt out Gin Rummy.

“I wonder why this was ‘Mother’s’ favorite room.” I rearranged my hand by suit.

“Probably because of the clear view of the mansion up on the hill.”

My eyes widened. “You’re kidding, right? I didn’t see any mansion on the hill.”

Chris grinned as he arranged his own cards. “Me neither. It was too dark. But it got you going there for a second.”

“Ha, ha.”

“So, what was really behind that ‘I’m his girlfriend’ deal back at the restaurant?”

I made a big production of concentrating on my hand, choosing just the right discard.

“Nothing. I told you. Self-preservation. I didn’t want you picking up any more strays.”

“Really? There wasn’t any jealousy behind it at all?”

I blew out what I hoped sounded like an incredulous breath. “Why would I be jealous?”

“Hmm.” Chris drew the next card in the stock pile, adding it to his hand and doing some shuffling. Finally, he laid down a sequence of clubs, six through eight.

“What is it with that stupid Kiss Test anyway?” I immediately regretted bringing it up, because I did, indeed, sound like a jealous idiot. I shuddered, and not because of my sticky, damp clothes. It was the nausea-inducing memory of Chris lip locking every bimbo he crossed paths with. “I mean, it has to be the stupidest thing I ever heard of. You can’t tell anything by kissing someone, except if they have bad breath or not.”

“Ah.” Chris raised a finger in correction. “You can’t tell anything by kissing someone if you aren’t administering the test correctly.”

I snorted and backhanded a trickle of sweat sliding down between my breasts. “Correctly? A kiss is a kiss is a kiss. Ooh, I need that six.” I picked up the six of diamonds from the discard pile and laid down the rest of my cards. “I’m out. I win.” I ripped my T-shirt off over my head and tossed it aside.

Chris raised an eyebrow at my tank top as he dealt the next hand. “Are we playing Strip Rummy?”

“I don’t care what you call it,” I said, wiping my forehead off with my shirt hem. “I’m using any excuse to take off these damn wet clothes.”

There was nothing sexual about it at all. It was just plain hot. Hotter than hot. Sauna hot. Steam bath hot. Opening the fogged-over window was out of the question, as faulty gutters outside—maybe from the whitewater gushing through them—weren’t corralling the rain at all, but instead redirected it toward the motel room windows. With no air conditioning and no dry clothes to put on, it was unbearable.

I stretched my legs out in front of me and wiggled my bare toes. “Deal me another winning hand, ’cause I need out of these clothes.”

Chris laughed, and then soundly trounced me, while I still had all ten cards left. He removed his shirt to reveal a bare muscular chest. An extremely nice bare muscular chest. I’d seen it before, of course, but tonight it took an extra second or two to drag my gaze away.

“Hey, I have too many layers on,” I protested with an awkward laugh.

“I’m a minimalist.”

“Back to that stupid test.” I couldn’t help myself. I spent the last two days freaking out, watching him kiss girl after girl. He didn’t plan on sleeping with them. He wouldn’t dare have sex on my watch again. So, what was the point? It wasn’t like those Kiss Tests were going to lead to anything. “When did you give your first official Kiss Test?”

“Third grade.”

“
Third
grade?”

“Underneath those tires. Remember?”

The playground had six giant tires from the most mammoth piece of machinery you could imagine. They were painted white, buried halfway in the ground, forming a kind of half circle on which to climb. Or, for the more secretive students, a space in which to hide. My girlfriends and I had used them to hide from annoying boys. Chris obviously used them for more clandestine purposes.

“And dare I ask who your first victim was?” I tossed an ace of hearts onto the discard pile.

“Can’t remember. Little freckle-faced girl. Lorna or Londa or something.”

“And did she pass?”

“Don’t know. I hadn’t actually set up criteria yet.”

“Criteria? What, you carry a score sheet in your wallet and check off whether they apply the right amount of pressure, or rate the wetness level on a scale of one to five?” I laid down the remaining cards in my hand and stripped off my tank top. I had on my running bra underneath, even though I hadn’t run in weeks.

Chris watched me through narrowed eyes.

“What? It’s not like you haven’t seen me running in this a thousand times.” I dealt the next hand, hoping for a chance to slip out of the jean cut-offs I was wearing, too. Their dampness felt like a diaper, and I knew as soon as I had them off, my underwear (fairly modest bikinis) would dry pretty quickly. “So, third grade, Lorna somebody, can’t remember if she passed or failed. And the whole Kiss Test just snowballed from there?”

“Pretty much.” Chris trounced me again and took off his shorts. Underneath were black silk boxers with Aladdin’s Lamp, Rub Vigorously emblazoned on the front.

“Ack!” I squeaked. “You
have
to be kidding.”

He wiggled his eyebrows. “Wanna make a wish?”

“God. No.” I shielded my eyes and tried to ignore the split-second picture in my mind of me doing exactly that. Making a wish. Rubbing the lamp. Shit. Finding a boyfriend when returning to New York was now at the top of my list, despite my resolve to stay away from men. A woman had needs.

Chris dropped back down to the floor and dealt another hand. “Go Fish this time.”

A second later, the lights flickered and went out.

“Great,” I muttered. “Can’t play cards in the dark.”

“We have a candle, remember?”

I heard Chris stand and move around the room. He stepped on my fingers. “Ow!”

“Shit. Sorry. Hang on.”

A bit more scrambling and the candle flared to life. He set it on the dresser behind me. “We’ll have to lean against the dresser to both get light.” He sat down next to me and leaned against the dresser. Turning his cards away, he issued a warning. “No peeking.”

“At your cards or your lamp?”

“Neither. And no score card. For the Kiss Test. I just kind of go by feeling.”

“Feeling? Like a fluttery stomach or pitter-pattering heart kind of feeling?”

He shrugged, his bare shoulder rubbing against mine. “Well, I haven’t felt all that. Yet. I suppose it’s possible. With the right person. Do you have a four?”

I absently handed him the four of spades in my hand. “So, of all the women you’ve ever kissed—I mean, what’s the point? Why don’t you just take them to bed if you’re attracted to them? It seems like an awful lot of kissing female frogs.”

“Do you have a queen? Haven’t you ever kissed someone without sleeping with them?” Chris drew from the pile when I didn’t have a queen to hand over.

“I don’t waste my time kissing guys I have no intention of sleeping with.” I won the hand. “Thank God.” I stripped down to my white cotton bikini panties and settled back down next to Chris, feeling better already.

Chris laid his cards on the floor next to him and looked at me. “What if you tried the Kiss Test? Maybe you wouldn’t end up with such geeks. Maybe you’d discover some good-looking guy, who you didn’t think was your type, actually is your type.”

I shook my head. “I don’t think so. I know what I like.”

“Geeks.”

“No. Just—”

“Geeks.”

I laughed. “You make fun of geeks, yet you put faith in a Kiss Test.”

“I can prove it works.”

“How?”

“I’ll show you.”

I made an exaggerated sweep of the darkened room with my eyes. “I see no one here, unless the ghost of Norman’s mother is hiding out in the bathroom.”

“I’ll kiss you.”

“Me?” I stared at him. He had completely lost his mind. “Is the humidity getting to you? The heat maybe?”

“Scared?” He flashed me the manipulative smile that made me trek all the way to SoHo on my day off, just to bring him corned beef.

“No, I’m not scared! I just…why would you kiss me? I’m not one of your test subjects.”

“Then, it’ll prove the Kiss Test works, won’t it?”