GUY-GUY FRENCHIE
I’m sorry Kitty
So so sorry
Can we talk later?
I didn’t respond to anything he sent me, tears blurring my view of the winter-brown mountains surrounding the rink. I was humiliated.Guyhad humiliated me. One of my best friends. My buddy. Not only was it my first kiss from him, it was my first kiss fromanyone. I could have forgiven it being in a stinky storage closet if it hadn’t ended in him shoving me away, in front of other people.
I didn’t respond to his texts. I didn’t want to hear his excuses. No matter what he did next, I’d still be the pathetic slut that cornered him, and he’d still be Guy Stelle.
The rest of my freshman year was hellish. The names that went around were ever-so-clever, either Slutty Kitty, Hockey Ho, or Pussy-Kitty.
Guy and I never spoke about it directly again. I’m not sure how much he knew about my reputation after the closet kiss. Part of me wanted to ask him to date me, so I could at least have something to show for the accusations. But I was too afraid to ask. And I knew, in no uncertain terms, that he feared what Frank would do if we did. We couldn’t break up our little friendship trio. The real miracle is that Frank never heard about the kiss from anyone else, or if he did, he never said anything.
To Guy’s credit, he worked overtime to regain our friendship. The day we were due to work on my math homework next, heshowed up right on time with a bag of M&Ms.
“Hey, Kitty Cat.” He stood in my bedroom doorway, extending the twelve-ounce bag of candy my way. “Ready to math it up?”
I studied him for a long while before patting the floor next to me, where he always sat when we worked on my homework. Our meeting was stilted at first, like we didn’t quite know how to be around each other. But before long, we were cracking jokes again, and he asked me to come over that weekend and watch one of our favorite shows together. It was an olive branch. Even though he’d hurt me, perhaps in ways he couldn’t even know, he wanted to make it up to me. I missed being his friend, and it was harder to be mad at him than I thought it might be. So I took the proverbial olive branch.
Guy stayed for dinner that night, as he always did after tutoring me. When we got up to go help Mom set the table, he stopped me. He held my shoulders and watched me for a moment, but not like he did before he kissed me. His eyes held a more tragic kind of longing. Then he pecked a kiss on my cheek and pulled me into his arms. He held me tight, and I hugged him back.
“You’re my best friend, Kitty Cat,” he whispered.
“I thought Frankie was,” I snorted.
“He is. But you are, too. And I can’t lose you.” His voice was serious, a rarity for him. I noted the muscle-over-bone feeling of his ribcage under my hands as he squeezed me one more time before letting me go.
The matter seemed effectively resolved.
Chapter 3
Kitty
My outer left thigh was plastered to Guy’s in the backseat. And I do mean plastered. Shellacked. Completely stuck. We’d been on the road without stopping for four hours, with about as many ahead of us. It was unbelievably sweaty in the back of the rented van. No matter how hard my parents blasted the A/C in the front, it wasn’t making it to the way-back where Guy and I were. I wondered how much of the sweat was his and how much was mine. As some sort of coping mechanism, Guy had been asleep for about an hour, his head leaned out and his mouth hanging open.
My friend Annie sat in the row in front of me, insisting on sitting next to Frank. It was no secret that she had a crush on him and that he couldn’t care less. When she begged to sit next to him instead of me, I knew it would irritate him, so I let her.
Annie and I were going into sophomore year, while Guy and Frank were rising seniors. Like me, Guy had a summer birthday. That summer, he was turning seventeen and I fifteen. Eva had no problem letting Guy join us for our annual Outer Banks trip. It gave her some rare single mom solo time.
I was still pretending I didn’t like Guy as anything more than a friend. Sometimes I was even mean to him. In reality, I was still obsessed with him. He was the last thing I thought about before I went to sleep and the first thing when I woke up. I thought about the way he talked. How his “th” sounds always came out like a “d” or a “t”: dat, dere, tink. How he had trouble making nouns plural: “I have M&M for you, Kit-ty.” I thought about him playing street hockey with Frank with sunlight in his dark waves. I thought about that one time I saw him mowing our neighbor’s lawn without a shirt.
I thought about how he came to all of my school plays and gave a standing ovation at the end every single time. How he’d run lines with me to help me memorize. How he helped me with math, and listened to my writing ideas. How his goofy, honking laugh rang out when I really got him going: “A-ha! A-ha! A-ha!”I thought about watching him play hockey at the rink, though those thoughts sometimes came with a more painful reminder of what else had gone down under that roof. Still, he skated circles around everyone else. He was so natural in his body, it was almost poetic.
At school, sometimes he’d ruffle my hair in the hallway, or stop by my locker to tell me about a funny video he saw before sending me the link. I always thought that was cute, like hehadto tell me about it so he’d make sure I opened it when he sent it. Guy’s personal teaser. We always rode to and from school together. I felt like hot stuff every time we walked out of school side by side.
As time went on, I painted our closet kiss with rose-colored glasses. I replayed in excruciating detail everything that happened before we were interrupted. He basically admitted he had feelings for me. And he kissed me, dammit, not the other way around.
I fantasized that he’d make it all up to me with some You Belong With Me Taylor Swift moment. Writing each other messages between our windows when in reality our windows didn’t line up like that. Then maybe one day, he’d take me to a school dance.
But he took some other girl to homecoming, and I faked sick when promposals were going around in the spring. I didn’t want to deal with catching Guy asking someone else to prom. In general, freshmen couldn’t go to prom anyway, but they made an exception if you were in a relationship.
Guy and I weren’t in a relationship, though. I sometimes got viciously reminded of it. He’d get Snaps when we were in the same room. If he knew I could see his screen, he clicked it off immediately, but I’d catch him taking a peek later with a little smirk on his face. I had to assume he was talking to girls. My stomach dropped every time I saw him laugh at a message. I wanted the exclusive rights to make him laugh.
But on this beach vacation with my family, Mom mandated that we all only got one hour with our phones each day. Otherwise, they had to be in a basket in the kitchen.
While we were on the beach, Annie read her YA novels and I made notes for my screenwriting projects (all self-assigned). I was convinced I’d have a full screenplay by the end of the summer. Guy and Frank played frisbee and beach volleyball, and occasionally, us girls joined in. Annie was on the volleyball team, so she was quite good.
