The Stolen Kiss

Aimee spun the batteries in the Walkman, trying to get her Prince cassette to play. The dying batteries made the singer’s usual falsetto sounded deep, brooding, and strange. Slowly the song dissipated to nothing and Aimee realized Tara was talking to her.

“He’s so cute,” Tara said with a giggle, indicating the man walking out of the house towards his work van.

The man, Aimee’s mom’s boyfriend, had moved into their house a month earlier, not even a quarter of a year after her father had been forced out.

“Hank? Eh…” Aimee shrugged her shoulders.

“He is,” Tara said. “Kind of looks like Luke Duke, don’t ya think?”

Aimee shrugged again, eager to get the conversation moved to another topic. None of her friends had divorced parents, let alone a live-in boyfriend.

“Well, I don’t know about that,” Aimee said, trying to smile. “But you know I’ve always been more into Bo Duke. It’s the California blond hair, I think.”

Seeing the faded yellow school bus rattling down the dirt road, Tara sighed.

“These batteries are just about dead,” said Aimee.

“Maybe you’ll get new batteries for your birthday,” Tara suggested.

“Oh my dream come true.” Aimee fake-swooned.

The girls climbed onto the bus giggling, and ducked into the seat together.

“So… what do you have planned for your birthday?” Tara continued.

Not able to stop the mischievous smile spreading across her face, Aimee buried her face in the arm of her Members Only jacket, the luxury item her dad had bought her during his required child-support back-to-school shopping spree.

“Aimee… what are you hiding?” Tara playfully poked her finger into Aimee’s side until she dropped her arm and revealed her blushing face. “Come on…”

“I’ll have to promise you to secrecy.”

“Uh, as your best friend of ten years, really? You really need to mention that?”

Widening her blue eyes and twisting her lips into a comical face, Aimee told her about her plan to meet David.

“Oooh,” Tara said loud enough to attract the bus driver’s gaze in the mirror.

“Shhh… stop,” she said before both girls erupted into a fit of giggles.

“Your first… kiss,” Tara said, lowering her voice to a whisper with the last word. “It’s about time. You’re fourteen now, after all. How are you gonna get your mom to let you go?”

“My mom is working late. And I’m just going to tell him… ya know? Luke Duke?” She rolled her eyes. “...that I’m in my room… then sneak out to meet David.”

“Where are you going to meet him?”

“Where do you think? At the pear tree.”

The pear tree was where everyone had their first kiss. At least that’s what Tara had explained to Aimee the previous summer. If everyone was doing it, Aimee didn’t want to be the only one left out.

“I’m so happy for you,” Tara said in a dramatically dreamy way. “I hope that yours will be just as good as my first with Josh.”

The bus veered to the side, causing Aimee to lean further into her best friend.

“Sorry… squirrel…” the bus driver called out.

“Oh, and you know how, right?” Tara asked, suddenly concerned. “Did you practice, ya know?” She interlocked her thumbs and mimicked a passionate kiss with her hand before Aimee slapped her hands down, causing another eruption of giggles.

The girls sat in silence for the rest of the ride.

“Good luck tonight,” Tara finally said when the bus pulled up to the freshman entrance of the high school. “Don’t forget the breath mints.”

The school day flew by. Aimee’s stomach seemed to squirm within her every time she thought about going to the pear tree that night. When she passed David on his way to ceramics while she was on her way to earth science, she nearly froze. He smiled at her like he knew something she didn’t, and it made her face hot. She knew she was ready for this, but she was nervous. You only get one first kiss, after all.

Tara wasn't on the bus home. She usually had detention, so she typically took the late bus. She got detention so often, that she started calling it her afterschool program. Aimee sat alone, her Walkman out of batteries, and she stared out the window, looking for clouds that might indicate the rain but finding none.

Her mom was already gone when she got home. She’d left a 20 dollar bill on the table to pay for pizza, and there was a package from her grandmother on the table. Aimee knew what was in it before she even opened it. And even though she was alone when she took the box out of the package, she announced, as if she were in a room full of people, that it was a music box.

Hank came home from work a few minutes later and snatched the twenty from the table.

“Me and you for dinner tonight, kid,” he said. “Hope you like pepperoni.”

They silently watched Little House on the Prairie all through dinner and during the third commercial break, Aimee got up from the table.

“I’m going to turn in early,” Aimee said. She put her paper plate and napkin into the trash can beneath the sink. “I’m going to write a thank you card to grandma for the music box, then work on a book report. Thanks for ordering the pizza.”

She opened up the refrigerator to grab an iced tea to bring to her room. She heard Hank get up from the table behind her. He stood across the kitchen with a drink of his own. A bottle of Bud Light. He never drank from a can. Said it tasted like pencil shavings. Her dad always drank whiskey that he kept in a cabinet, and it made him warm and cuddly in the evenings when they used to watch Silver Spoons.

“I wanted to make sure… to wish you a happy birthday,” Hank breathed. He twisted the cap off the beer and settled himself against the door to the kitchen.

“Thanks,” Aimee said, not daring to look at him in the face. She felt trapped with him filling the whole doorway, leaving her with no way out of the kitchen. She’d never felt that way with him before, but it suddenly felt like she was a small animal and he was a bird of prey.

“Wish we had some cake. Your mom don’t keep nothing sweet in this house. Except you,” he winked.

“That’s okay. I don’t even eat cake.”

“Too grown for cake now? How old are you anyway? 21?”

“No,” Aimee said, rolling her eyes.

“You look 21.”

“No I don’t.”

“14 going on 21,” he smirked. He pushed past her to look into the refrigerator. “All your mom has got in here is this fruit cocktail. You want that?”

He pulled the bowl from the refrigerator and pulled the plastic wrap from the top. Aimee took his spot in the doorway of the kitchen, not feeling so trapped now that she was by the door and he was by the refrigerator. She felt silly for being nervous. He sniffed the container and made a face like he was dying. Aimee tried not to laugh, but she couldn’t help it.

“We have real fruit, you know?” she said, trying to be helpful, motioning toward the fruit bowl on the counter.

“That stuff is even worse,” he complained, inspecting the old fruit, sagging and tan. “How long have those been there? I can’t even tell if that’s a pear or a banana.”

“Stop it,” Aimee said. “They aren’t that old.”

“You got a boyfriend?” he asked. The question surprised Aimee, and she paused. Hank, now by the refrigerator, pulled out another beer even though he already had one. He twisted off the top and handed it to Aimee.

“Oh,” she said, the bottle wet and slick. “No, thank you.”

“Come on. You said you were 21, didn’t you?” She shook her head, but he pressed the beer into her hands. “I won’t tell your mom. Don’t worry.”

She took a swig from the bottle. She and Tara had mixed her dad’s whiskey with mountain dew the previous summer. It had tasted cloying and rotten. They hadn’t even finished the drink, but they pretended they were drunk and had fun reminiscing about how “wasted” they’d gotten. They told everyone at school that they were booze hounds, but they knew it wasn’t true. Aimee sipped the beer. It tasted sour and cold and reminded her of the taste of her saliva when it was about to rain.

“I bet you do have a boyfriend,” Hank said. “You’re too pretty not to have one.”

“I don’t.”

“Well, then they’re all blind,” he said, suddenly sounding angry. “You’re a real cutie. You look just like your mother in high school. Did you know I knew your mom in high school?”

“No,” she said, but she did know. It was knowledge Aimee felt she wasn’t supposed to have for some reason.

“Well, you do,” he said. “And you know I think she’s hot.”

He was very close to her, she realized. She wasn’t sure when he’d closed the refrigerator door, crossed the kitchen again, and made his way to her.

He gently placed his calloused hands on either side of her face, slightly tilting it up and to the side. He still had the beer in his hand and the glass of the bottle was warm and hard against her skin. Then he placed his lips, coated in a sheen of pizza oil, bitter with the taste of alcohol, on hers, holding them there for several seconds. Before he pushed his lips away with a small smack, pepperoni perfume invaded her nostrils.

Like a potato sack dummy at archery practice, sharp pangs pierced through her body. Shame charged through her veins like ice water as she pushed him away and speed-walked to her room. Throwing herself on the baby-blue islet comforter of her canopy bed, she was still.

He stood by her door but didn’t say anything. Later she realized he was listening to see if she was crying, if she was making a phone call, or if she was going to go to sleep. She worried he’d stand there all night, but eventually she heard his feet shift. She could tell he was getting bored just standing there. She thought he might come in, but he didn’t. He just cleared his throat and said one thing before he disappeared.

“Don’t tell your mom I gave you that beer, now,” he said, like he was reminding her to put on sunscreen or wear her seatbelt. Like he was being helpful. “She wouldn’t like it, and I wouldn’t want her to get mad at you.”

He finally walked away, leaving her to press her face into her pillow. She almost didn’t leave. She felt like the weight of him was still pressing her into the bed. Like she was underwater, her breath stolen away, the water crushing her. But eventually she heard his drunk snore in the next room, and she managed to get herself to stand.

The pear tree stood like a sentinel at the edge of the park. When she got there she thought about what Tara had said about “everyone getting kissed there.” Just by looking at it, Aimee knew it wasn’t true. Later that autumn night, beneath the pear tree, she gazed at David, focusing on a small pimple on his chin before moving up to his lips. She closed her eyes and waited. A pear, sooty-black, fell from its branch.