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Kissing Days
by Hannah Lackoff On the night before my wedding we played a game. “I dare you,” said Mara, “to kiss whomever you want.” She held an empty wine bottle but didn’t spin it. “Okay,” I said. I blushed. I was what my parents had called, when they thought I couldn’t hear them, a late bloomer. I had only kissed a handful of other people before I met my about-to-be husband. My kissing days were over. Tom was next to me and I turned to him, pursed my lips like a cartoon, the way they kissed on The Simpsons, the way we thought everyone kissed when we were kids. “Uh-uh,” said Mara. She twirled the bottle by its neck. “You didn’t let me finish. Kiss whomever you want except your fiance.” She said it like it was a dirty word. Tom groaned, I sighed. Mara was my bad friend, a hanger on from my college freshman dorm who liked to tell everyone what a bad influence she had been on me and anyone else who lived on our hall. She supplied everyone with alcohol and condoms whether they were going to use them or not, and proclaimed herself edgy and wild. She was invited only because I felt guilty, because I knew she was really very lonely. “Wooo!” Shouted Mara. Tom’s sister, who had only met her the day before, cringed away from the sound and rolled her eyes at me. “I pick Katie,” I said, and Tom looked visibly relieved as his sister stood up. “No,” Mara was still talking. “It has to be another boy. It can’t be Tom and it can’t be a girl. Don’t you know how this works?” I did not. As far as I could tell she was making the whole thing up as she went along. “All right,” said Tom, “That’s enough. I think it’s time we were turning in anyway. Tomorrow’s a big day.” The girl on Mara’s other side snorted into her palm. Her name was Andrea but-I-only-answer-to-Dre, and she was Mara’s uninvited plus one. She claimed to remember me from freshman year, but as far as I could tell she had not gone to our school and I had never seen her before. “Come on,” said Mara, “You didn’t invite me to your bachelorette. You owe me.” “This is exactly why she didn’t invite you,” said Becca. “Because she knew you’d pull some shit like this.” My bachelorette had consisted of Becca and I and four other women hiking through the woods to a rustic cabin with no electricity or running water and spending the night drinking beer and roasting marshmallows. There were no strippers, no penis balloons, no glitter. No Mara. “Sow your wild oats!” Cried Mara. She planted a sloppy kiss on Dre, and I wondered if they were a couple. It was hard to tell. She began to sing All The Single Ladies and she and Dre twisted their hands to show their non rings. “We’re going to sing this til you choose someone!” She called out between verses. Tom's cousin and his wife got up and left the circle, making excuses. I wanted to join them. “Okay,” said Tom and Mara and Dre cheered. “Okay?” I said. “Just make it stop,” said Tom, looking at me in that way, "Please." Mara and Dre started singing again. Tom put his head in his hands. I sipped my cheap champagne. “Tom,” I said, “Who will offend you the least?” He didn’t answer or uncover his eyes. I looked around the circle of all our nearests and dearests and Maras. There weren’t many. I decided to rule out the non single men- boys– no need to bring anyone else into Mara’s drama. I ruled out family members, and that only left Chuck, Stevie, and Raj. No one made eye contact with me. No one wanted to kiss the bride. I stood up. My new silk dress clung to the back of my thighs. Stevie was twelve. I was not choosing him. I knelt before Raj, in my green pre wedding dress. A man who I would not be kissing tomorrow at our makeshift altar in the woods of my childhood home. I held his face and closed my eyes. I could feel stubble under his chin that he had missed shaving. The water here was cold and hard, he probably had done a hurried job. I pressed my lips against his, gently, like I was kissing a butterfly. His breath sped up and he swallowed under my thumbs. Mara and Dre screamed like wild animals behind me and before we let go our tongues touched, once, then again, and his hands on my ribcage pushed me softly back. Tom pulled me to my feet. My head spun. “Okay,” he said, to me, to the circle, “Goodnight.” He led me to our cabin, kissed me at the entrance. My mouth tasted of Raj, of the beer he’d drunk, of the aftershave beside his mouth, of all the people I would never kiss, all the people who were not Tom. |
Hannah Lackoff has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize twice and the storySouth Million Writers Award and has been seen in Flapperhouse, Spark, Psychopomp, Bourbon Penn and more. Look for her short story collection "After the World Ended" and visit her here.
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