It was a rare occasion that we were alone. A stray piece of hair had fallen out of her ponytail. Without thinking, I brushed it behind her ear. I didn’t move my hand away from her face, though. I didn’t know what I was doing but I knew without a doubt that I needed to do it.
My lips were on hers before I could second-guess myself. After a moment’s hesitation, Kitty kissed me back, stepping more into my body as I held her tight. Her lips were soft, her scent a welcome change from the humid, dank air of the storage closet. Her lips were sweet, like she’d just put on her favorite strawberry lip balm, a smell I didn’t realize I had memorized until that moment. We were both young and clumsy, but insatiable nonetheless.
I was just starting to think about how soft her skin under her clothes might feel when the door flew open. Shane and a girl from school stood with a hockey goal balanced between them. I shoved Kitty off me out of instinct, afraid it was Frank. I was kissing my best friend’s sister. Who was also my best friend.
Kitty looked at the floor, face red. Shane and the girl stood dumbfounded.
“Not a word.” I was panicking. Spiraling out. “You will say nothing. Do you understand?”
Kitty rushed out of the closet. I was too embarrassed to call after her. Frank would kill me if he found out I’d kissed his sister. But then, I’d just hurt my other best friend, too.
I was an idiot.
* * *
I hated that we had to move. I got why Maman wanted to start over. I got that she didn’t want to live with Papa’s ghost anymore. In Montreal, we were Gabriel Stelle’s family, the ones he left behind. People either pitied us or wanted something from us.
But Maman and I knew the truth. Papa was no saint. And she couldn’t live with the memories being around us all the time. So that summer, we left.
I was fifteen, almost sixteen. I had my friends. I had my team. I was even kind of partial to my school. And Maman was taking it all away.
I didn’t get to say goodbye to my friends. She didn’t want people asking questions. Maman told me my friends could visit when we got where we were going. When I asked where that was, she just responded with, “Sud.” South.
It wasn’t hard for us to get visas into the U.S., thanks to my dad’s former occupation. Hockey players have to be able to go freely between the U.S. and Canada, and we tagged on to those privileges. Thankfully, it hadn’t been that long since he did some color commentary for the league, so we still had access to easy immigration.
I knew she didn’t know where we were going. I was trying hard not to be a brat. It was hard for me, but it was harder for her. And I loved her. I wanted her to be happy. Some things were bigger than me.
One day in the middle of nowhere Pennsylvania, Maman sent me to the motel pool while she argued with Grandmere on the phone. When I came back, her eyes were red. She put on a big smile, gave me a silent hug, and we went to the nearby roadside diner. That night as we were falling asleep in the seedy motel room, I told her, “We’re going to be okay.”
“Yes. We are,” she agreed, but I heard her quiet sobs after she thought I was asleep.
I’m not sure why she insisted on staying in crummy places while we went south. She got decent child support from Papa.Maybe she was determined not to spend his money.
I was furious when she stopped in that first mountain town. Didn’t people make fun of West Virginia? Why did she want this to be home? I googled the nearest ice rink and convinced her to go a little farther south to Charleston. I wasn’t about to lose hockey on top of everything else.
But once we met the Gattos, everything started to get better.
Mrs. Gatto, or Heather as she’s always insisted I call her, was a lighthouse for Maman. They became best friends faster than Frank and I did. I remember the night Frankie and I were playing XBox. I kept hearing Maman and Heather laughing over wine in the backyard. We heard them singing Jewel and Prince. I acted horrified to Frank, but I hadn’t heard Maman sing in years. She loved Prince and that one Jewel song was an old favorite of hers.
Later, when I went to see if Maman wanted to go home, our moms had their arms around each other’s necks, tears streaming down both of their faces.
Mark Gatto steered clear when those two hung out, knowing he had no place but to keep their wine glasses topped up and the fire pit loaded with logs. That man is the real saint in the family. He knew Maman and Heather had something special and played his supporting role like a champ. I wished my dad could have been as sweet as Mark Gatto. But that wasn’t my life. Kitty and Frank were the lucky ones to have Mark and Heather as parents.
And then there was Kitty. She acted shy at first, hiding her braces-filled smiles behind her hand. But she had a real cutting sense of humor. Once Maman started working at the restaurant and I had dinner at the Gattos more often, she’d make these really clever sidebars that only Frank and I could hear. Frank would roll his eyes, but I laughed. She wasn’t my sister. I wasn’t obligated to pretend like she wasn’t cool or funny.
Sometimes Frank was cool with all three of us hanging out, which was fine for me. I loved them both as best friends. But because Kitty was a little younger and a girl, we couldn’t ever beclose in the same way Frank and I were close. Those unwritten rules of growing up, I guess.
The three of us would watch stand-up comedians on YouTube or old funny movies. Laughing was important for me at that point in my life. Things had been rough, both before and after Papa left. The stable Gattos were a safe haven for me.
Other times, Frankie wanted his pesky little sister gone. He got a pair of rollerblades so we could play street hockey together. He was terrible at first, but I coached him into a pretty strong player. He convinced me to join the soccer team, so when August rolled around, that’s how I made friends. Kitty tagged along to our practices for the ride home when she didn’t have play practice.
I was nervous about being the new kid in school. I had a funny accent, but for better or worse, no one knew who my dad was. It only took a few weeks for the word to get around about me from the ladies, and then my social status took off. I didn’t do anything to charm them other than be fresh meat with a French (to them) accent. That’s all it takes when you’re a junior in high school.
Once school started and I spent hours after school either at practice, at the rink, or at the Gattos, I got to see some of the unrest in the Gatto house. Even in a family as picture-perfect as theirs, things were still off sometimes.
Kitty was awful at math. Like, really bad. And her parents, especially sweet old Mark, didn’t get why. They thought she didn’t pay attention. I knew she was smart otherwise, but things were going so poorly with her and pre-algebra.
Heather had to take Frank to a doctor’s appointment one day that first fall. Kitty and I were the only ones home at the Gattos. I could hear her crying in her room. I paced in the hallway, not sure what to do. Finally, I knocked on her door.
