"I'm sorry I didn't kiss you when you were seventeen." I muster as much sincerity as I can find in the bottom of the second empty glass of whiskey. I know that death stare she keepsthrowing my way isn't just about the kiss, but that needs to be cleared off the table before we go any further down the list of reasons why she can't stand me.
I tap my glass on the wood bar to get the bartender's attention. I want a refill but I need to slow down. At this rate, I'm going to ditch my sense of what's right and wrong and end up on stage for amateur karaoke night. A viral video of me trying to catch the high notes of, "My Heart Will Go On," wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing.
She levels me with a stare. "Why are you stuck on that non-kiss, Smith? I forgot all about it until you brought it up at the gym."
I call bullshit with a red flag. "You didn't forget about it."
She tosses me an exasperated smile with a sigh of impatience. "I forgot about it when I went home that night and kissed Leon Sibley."
"You kissed Leon Sibley?" My hands clench into fists. Motherfucking Leon Sibley was at the party at Julian's. He showed up on the coattails of his older brother. Leon was a sophomore at NYU at the time, with an end goal of one day becoming a doctor of some discipline I didn't give a shit about back then. He was background noise, bitching about the ill effects of all the alcohol I was consuming and the bag of weed that found its way into one of the guestrooms.
He was a nuisance, an annoyance I wanted gone. Apparently, Brynn viewed him differently.
"He followed me home." She meets my eyes. "He had the doorman call me after I went in. I ran right down to see him."
She better not give me a play-by-play of what happened. I don't want to hear it. Sibley saw an opening and moved in. That's all I need to know.
"It was the most romantic first kiss in the world…" she hesitates, looking over at the guy giving his all as he belts out yetanother Britney hit. "He wrote a song for me. He sang it before we kissed."
Who does shit like that? Wait. Her first kiss? She was seventeen at the time.
"I didn't know Sibley had it in him," I say, my voice not giving anything away. "He was your first kiss, Petal? What about the jerk that broke your heart and caused the death of the dozen daisies I caught you ripping to shreds?"
"I never kissed Rhett." She squints at me and then gazes at the drink the bartender just placed in front of me. "First kisses are supposed to be special. Rhett wasn't special."
I was. Goddamn my life to hell. She wanted me to kiss her. She was almost eighteen-years-old when she made her move on me and I brushed her off, sent her home and into the waiting arms of that crooning idiot Sibley.
"I should have kissed you," I murmur as I watch her reach forward to pick up the glass of whiskey before she takes a mouthful.
Her shoulders lift, her neck bows back and her eyes close as the liquid burns her tender throat. Her tongue swipes her bottom lip before she finally looks at me. "You should have but you didn't. It's all for the best. I got one of the best kisses I've ever had and you… I remember Julian saying something about you getting dumped the next day."
I did. Taya dumped my ass the next night with a weak excuse about needing space. I accepted the job in Buffalo; ran through my training for my first on-air job and screwed my way through as many of the single women in the city as I could.
"The kiss was that memorable?" I wrap my hand around the glass and swallow what's left.
She kissed another guy after I turned her down. I could have been that sweet memory that will forever own a corner of hermind. I should have been her first kiss, her first fuck, her first goddamn everything.
"His lips tasted like blueberries." She arches a perfectly shaped brow as if to challenge me.
I don't know how to respond to that.Blueberries?Who the hell wants to kiss a blueberry? If I would have kissed her that night she would have tasted raw need with a pure lust chaser. I wanted her. I convinced myself it was wrong, but I wanted her. I would have waited until she blew out the final candle on her eighteenth birthday cake to have a taste of those lips. I should have.
"It's all for the best. It's in the past, Smith. Let it go."
I can't. I know there's more simmering inside of her. She's full of rage whenever she's near me and even though it's hot-as-fuck, it's also annoying. I want it gone. I want her to see me for who I am now, not whoever the hell I was when I pissed her off.
"I'm done talking about that night," she says indignantly. "It's not like either of our lives would be any different if we would have kissed back then."
I can't stop myself. I'm not done talking about it because she just dropped a bombshell in my lap and I don't have a drop of whiskey left to chase down the bitterness of the bad choice I made eight years ago. "Your life would be different now if we would have kissed back then."
Her eyes widen. "You're wrong. Nothing would be different now."
"You don't know that." I exhale roughly, irritation gnawing at my gut. I'm not pissed at her. I'm the one who turned her down. My life is the one that would have been different if I would have pushed my reservations aside and taken a taste.
She rests her hand on my shoulder as she steps closer to where I'm still seated on the stool. I shift, parting my knees togive her access. She takes it, moving until she's standing between my legs. "A kiss is just a kiss, Smith."
"You know that's not true, Petal."
"I'll prove it," she whispers before she cups my face in her hands, tilts her head and sweeps her soft lips over mine.
