Landon was waiting for me up front. He got this big goofy smile on his face when he saw me.
“Wow.”
I smiled and looked down to open the Velcro on my wallet.
“You like it?”
“I really do.”
Landon’s hand brushed mine, and I curled my thumb to trap it. He wove our fingers together and led me out the sliding glass doors.
It was one of Portland’s perfect fall days, where it was warm enough that you didn’t have to wear your hoodie, but cool enough that it was cozy if you did.
(I had on my hoodie.)
“Isn’t Mikaela the best?”
“Yeah.” I pressed my ear flat against the side of my head with my left hand. “I didn’t realize I had such huge Ferengi ears.”
“Your ears are cute.” He pulled me to a stop and stood on his toes to give me a kiss on the cheek. “But what’s a Ferengi?”
The first time Landon kissed me, we had eaten at Northwest Dumplings after closing up shop at Rose City, and I’d beennervous, because I’d never kissed anyone before. And at the time, we were still just hanging out. I didn’t go in expecting to kiss him, which is why I made the extremely unfortunate choice of having too many onions at dinner.
When Landon leaned in close, I thought maybe I had something in my teeth. Because I never thought someone like him would want to kiss someone like me.
But then he took my hand. And he said, “Hey. Can I kiss you?”
And I was kind of surprised and amazed, because I really liked Landon, and I really did want him to kiss me.
I wanted my first kiss to be with Landon Edwards.
His lips were warm and soft, and he let them linger against mine. But then I made the mistake of sighing, which blew a noxious cloud of onion breath into his mouth.
He broke the kiss and giggled.
I panicked at first—I thought I had messed everything up—but he smiled at me. He squeezed my hand and said, “That was good. Even with the onions. Can we do it again?”
So we did, and the kissing got even better once we started using our tongues.
But my favorite part was the way Landon looked at me after and said, “You’re beautiful, you know.”
No one had ever called me beautiful before.
“You’re beautiful too.”
I’d gotten better about food choices since then. And keeping breath mints in my messenger bag.
“Come on. The streetcar should be here.”
But then, as we turned the corner, my stomach dropped.
Chip Cusumano and Trent Bolger were walking down the street, jostling each other and laughing about something.
Cyprian Cusumano was the strangest guy I knew. He used to be kind of mean to me, but ever since the end of sophomore year, he’d turned around and been nicer.
We’d actually become friends.
I mean, it helped that we both played on the Chapel Hill High School varsity men’s soccer team (Go Chargers!). It was the first year on the team for both of us—Chip used to play football in the fall—but we’d both managed to get spots on the varsity squad.
