CHAPTER 5 |

Lost Friends & Special Couches

We had our first real kiss when we were twelve.

It was a Saturday in August. My family and the neighbors had searched all afternoon for Shadow/Murdoch/Mister before we finally found him underneath the swing set in our backyard. He had found a soft, shady spot to fall asleep one last time, and I instantly hated him for forever tainting my sacred playing ground. But God, my heart burned something horrible at the thought of not knowing I had heard his meow for the last time the day before. I would have remembered it better, committed it to my memory, taken one last picture with the digital camera I had gotten for Christmas.

My heart had been shattered for the first time, and where else could I go to heal, with those tears stinging my eyelids?

“Kinsey, m’darlin’, what’s the matter?” Mrs. Kinney asked the moment she threw the door open.

I refused to blink, but with a strangled voice, I managed, “Mister died.”

“Oh, your cat,” she stated in her voice that could have lulled me to sleep had she held me. “I’m terribly sorry, Kinsey. Do y’want me to get Paddy for ya?”

I nodded, reluctantly losing the battle against the torrential downpour of tears. She welcomed me inside with a gentle hand against my shoulder, squeezing with attempted comfort as she led me to the couch. She called toward the stairs for Patrick—her Paddy—and told him Kinsey was there, and within seconds, his feet thundered against the treads.

“What happened?” he demanded immediately after seeing the blubbery mess sitting in the living room.

“Her cat’s died,” she whispered with a hand against his shoulder, and he sucked in a breath of air through a shocked O.

Mrs. Kinney left us alone then, telling us she was taking Sean and Ryan to get new clothes for school. At one point, we would have felt so cool to be left home alone, to raid the fridge of as many snacks as we wanted. But in that moment, I just felt grateful to cry alone with my best friend.

Patrick held his arm around me, rubbing a little too vigorously in his awkward boyish attempt to comfort me as my cries turned into sobs. He kept saying things like, “Hey Kinsey, he’s in a better place,” and, “Hey, he’ll always be with you,” and fuck, I wanted him to shut up while never wanting him to stop talking.

It seemed like hours had passed before my tears finally subsided, and I was left feeling drained, slumped against Patrick’s shoulder on his living room couch. We had found ourselves leaning against the bolstered back, breathing in time with each other as we stared up at the ceiling. I remember tracing the cut edges of the crown molding with my eyes—like little steps, I thought—when I felt Patrick’s arm tighten around my shoulders. My entire body stiffened with apprehension and just a shred of excitement, as I pretended not to notice, not to care.

“Hey Kins,” he finally said, his voice scratchy after barely talking at all.

“Huh?” I replied before swallowing at my dry throat. God, I was nervous, and I didn’t quite understand why.

“Do you like me?”

My eyes rolled to glare at him sidelong. “Duh.”

His brows had begun to darken in adolescence, and they pinched together. “No, not … not like that.” He shook his head, pushing the point.

“Well, like … l-like what?” I tripped over my words, my tongue suddenly bound by a racket of butterflies.

His head flopped backward, exasperated by my need for more clarification. “Y’know!”

I did know. I swallowed again.

My heart pounded violently in my ears, with the teetering in our bond. The boy I had loved as my friend had somewhere along the line become the boy that I like-liked as something my young mind struggled to wrap itself around. What it meant for me, for us, was a mystery, and I was terrified to find out, to nudge myself through that door to a whole new world of experiences and firsts.

“Do you … Do you like me?” I had urged the brave words out of my mouth, forcing them along with held breath.

“No way. You first.”

He said the words playfully, as a hand reached around to tickle at my ribs, just as he had always done since we were toddlers. But in that moment, it was different—we were different. The teetering had rolled over into an all-encompassing change, and I think we both knew it as I flopped sideways, giggling and clutching my arms around myself defensively. Patrick leaned over me, relentless in his tickling, egging me on to be the first to admit what we both already knew.

And then, with one single look in my eyes, he stopped. His hands were frozen at my sides, resting just below the bra my mother had urged me to start wearing on the regular.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hi.”

I was almost too young to be thinking about sex, but I knew where babies came from. I was also almost too young to be caring about boys, but I had noticed the way Patrick’s eyes made my stomach feel when I gave myself permission to linger just a second too long.

Those eyes. It had always been those eyes.

I stared into them then, during that handful of small, panicked moments, as he brought his uncertain lips down to mine, leaning over me on the couch where we had watched countless cartoons and eaten a young lifetime of afternoon snacks. I remember thinking in those seconds that we had kissed before, when we had been “married” in my backyard by my older and wiser sister. I did this to calm my nerves, to tell myself it was nothing new. It was Patrick, just Patrick Kinney, but when his mouth touched mine, I knew I had been wrong, and I closed my eyes.

Our lips met for a second time, and we closed the door on our childhood of best friends. We stepped into the next room of crushes, of boyfriends and girlfriends. And on that couch, our fumbling lips and hands had brought us our first kiss—our first real kiss—and had his mother not walked in and caught us, I don’t think we would have stopped.

And I don’t think I would have minded.

❧

The night was too quiet and the quiet made it too easy for my mind to drift. My breath hitched in my lungs, as I looked over at Patrick, gently swinging back and forth. The swing set continued to scream its threats with every shift of weight, but Patrick wore this annoying little smile, like he didn’t have a care in the world, and he hummed.

“What are you smiling about?” I asked, and he turned to face me.

“Kinsey, I’m sittin’ here, with you, in one of my favorite places in the entire world. Why wouldn’t I be smilin’?”

I pushed my eyes to roll, pushed myself to keep nudging him away. “Give me a break.”

Patrick laughed as he stopped his swing from moving and reached over to grab my chains, pulling me alongside him until my side pressed against his. I know I could have gotten up and walked away, but that required wanting to. It required willpower, and he seemed to suck that desire away along with the air in my lungs.

His eyes found mine, and they held me while he brushed a strand of hair from my face and tucked it behind my ear. He inched closer, putting his lips centimeters from mine, and he hovered, watching me with those eyes.

“You want this so bad, Kinsey,” he said, his voice graveled with desire.

“No, I don’t.” I shook my head for good measure, but I did nothing to put distance between us. Because while distance was needed, and while distance was good, distance, was also torture.

“Oh, really? So, if I just …” He inched forward, brushing his lips against mine as he spoke, and my body betrayed me with a gasp. Traitor. “If I just … stayed like this, you wouldn’t beg me to kiss you? You wouldn’t beg me to ravage your mouth, and lay that blanket out in the back of the truck?”

“No,” I said with trembling breath, imagining the worn fabric of the old blanket against my back.

“Kins, you’re always forgetting that I know when you’re telling the truth, and right now, you’re lyin’.”

Yeah, I was, but to prove a point, I pulled my head back, putting distance between us. Patrick didn’t react; he was too cool for that. He just smiled, and his dimples peeked through the stubble.

“Hey, do you know what my favorite memory is?” he asked in a whisper, reaching a hand out to brush against my cheek.