The Last Best Kiss

  He told me about his parents, who were both scientists: his father taught; his mother worked in a lab. He had a much older brother who was already out of college. His parents were nice, just a little old and a little distracted. “We move around a lot,” he said one day, when we were at the frozen-yogurt place. “I’ve lived in five different cities. Every time one of my parents gets offered a more interesting job, we hop.”

  “Is it hard?” I asked. “Starting over again every time?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I have nothing to compare it to.” He dug his spoon into his chocolate-vanilla swirl then glanced up again. “I like it here,” he said.

  I didn’t tell Lucy and my other friends about going out with Finn; I only went on days when they wouldn’t notice. A couple of times I had to cancel with him at the last minute, because my friends asked me to do something after school, and I didn’t want to explain to them why I couldn’t. I told myself it was because my friendship with Finn was no big deal—not worth even bringing up.

  But I’d had less intense flirtations with other guys that I’d talked about endlessly to my friends in middle school. And Phoebe had pretty much driven us nuts over the last month or so, obsessing about some guy who had never even said hello to her. But still I never mentioned Finn to them.

  My friend Camille ran into us at Starbucks one day and came over to say hi. The next day she asked me at lunch why I was getting Frappuccinos with Finn Westbrook, and I just said, “Carpool,” and all my friends nodded.

  No one bugged me about it, for one simple reason:

  It never occurred to any of my friends that I could actually be romantically interested in Finn. Like I said, he wasn’t on the radar.

  I could have put him there with just a few words, but I didn’t.

  Finn kissed me one day after winter break.

  No, that’s not true.

  We kissed each other. I wanted to as much as he did.

  We had gotten frozen yogurt and were walking back to school, where I was supposed to meet up with Lizzie for a ride home, when he suddenly took my hand and tugged me down around the corner into a quiet alleyway where no one could see us.

  It was the first time we had touched, other than by accident.

  His hand was warm and dry and—a nice surprise—larger than mine.

  He looked at me, and I knew he wanted to kiss me and I smiled to let him know I knew and it was okay. My heart was beating fast. Which seemed so silly—I mean, it was only Finn, right? But apparently my circulatory system thought it was a bigger deal than my brain did.

  Our faces were about level, because I was wearing flip-flops. I briefly thought about how I was glad I wasn’t wearing heels and also that Finn was noticeably taller than he had been in the fall. He’d grown.

  It was a good kiss. I’d kissed three other guys by that point in my life, and this was the best one so far. One guy had shoved his tongue into my mouth way too fast, and another had tried to suck my lips, and the third one had pecked me quickly and uncomfortably.

  Finn did it right. His lips were warm and gentle, and I didn’t want him to stop. I think he was new to the whole thing, but his instincts—to be patient and go slowly—were good ones.

  For a while I completely forgot that Lizzie wasn’t the kind of sister who was willing to wait.

  It was the vibration that brought me back to reality—the one from my phone, I mean. “Hold on,” I said, and pulled away.

  Finn stepped back and waited, shoving his glasses up his nose.

  Lizzie’s text:

  Get here in five or you’re on the bus.

  “I have to go,” I said.

  “Because you want to?”

  I slipped my hand in his, smiled, and shook my head. We walked back to campus together, but I let go of his hand when we were within sight of it.

  After that, when I slid over in the backseat to make room for him, we let our legs and shoulders press against each other, and at school, when we passed in the hall or spotted each other across the room, we shared a secret, happy glance.

  After school we met each other and found places to be alone.

  “I don’t understand people who are all over each other in front of everyone,” I said to him once, when we were alone. “It’s better like this.”

  He didn’t say he agreed with me, but he didn’t argue either.

  I had a sleepover with Lucy and Phoebe, and of course we talked about the guys we liked, and I swear I was just on the verge of telling them all about Finn when Phoebe said something about Carlos Mercado—about how she knew the nerds would one day be all rich and famous and everything, but who cares when they looked the way they did now?

  And Lucy laughed and said, “And what if you start going out with some ninety-eight-pound nerdling now, and then he doesn’t get all rich and famous? And you could have been with, like, Sawyer Thomas all that time?”

  “Sawyer Thomas has backne,” Phoebe said.

  “Stay in front of him, and it won’t be a problem,” Lucy said. “His shoulders are like ten feet wide.”

  And so I didn’t say anything about Finn and me.

  I should have. But I didn’t.

  We were all taking Modern Civilization that year, and between Christmas break and spring break, we did a unit on Nazi Germany. I remember wondering if I would have been one of the people who stood up to the Nazis—and got myself sent to a concentration camp—or if I would have kept my head down and done whatever heinous, evil thing I was ordered to do.

  It’s the kind of thing you think about when you start doubting your own integrity.

  Spring break, Finn and I spent a lot of time together. We’d meet between our houses and walk to the nearby bluffs, where we’d watch the waves roll in below us, and our profound awareness of both the enormity of the ocean and our own deeply meaningless insignificance usually led to a lot of kissing.

  The more time I spent with Finn, the more I liked him. He was nice—not just to me but to stray cats and jumping spiders and little kids. He listened intently and responded thoughtfully to anything I said. His kissing only got better, and it had started out pretty good. His face had grown handsome to me now. I could see beyond those stupid ugly glasses to the beautiful brown eyes behind them. Maybe it was just because my feelings about him had changed, but it seemed to me he was growing stronger and more manly as the year went by.

  Break ended. The first lunch back at school, he came over to my table with his tray and sat down next to me. He’d never done that before. I turned to my friends and said, too brightly, “You know Finn, right? He’s in my carpool.”

  He didn’t add anything to that, just kind of nodded politely to my friends’ brief hellos and then listened quietly to our conversation without joining in, but later, when we were alone, instead of kissing me as soon as he had the chance, he stepped back—away from me—and said, “‘He’s in my carpool’?”

  I laughed an artificial laugh. “What? You are.”

  Sometimes things don’t feel like a big deal when they happen, and it’s only later that you look back and think, Maybe that was it, the moment when things could have gone in one direction, but they didn’t, they went in a different one.

  Maybe that was one of those moments, and maybe it wasn’t. Finn got quiet for a little while, but before the afternoon was over, we were kissing again. It wasn’t hard for me to cajole him into being okay with whatever I did. I knew I had a lot of power over him, and I may even have thought it was infinite.

  A few days later, a school email went out about semiformal, and Finn asked me to go with him.

  I said, “I’d better check with my friends. If they don’t have dates, it would be weird for me to go with you.”

  “Would it?” was all he said.

  I did ask Lucy and the other girls what our semiformal plans were—without mentioning that I’d been asked to it already—and Lucy said she was thinking we should all go as one big group with some guys we were friendly with, not pair
ing up or anything, just sharing a limo and hanging together at the dance. “I think Justin’s planning to ask me to go with him,” Phoebe said, and Lucy made a face and shook her head. “That would be weird,” she said. “The only people who go in couples to this are, like, real boyfriends and girlfriends. If you go to semiformal with a guy, you’re basically publicly committing to him for life.”

  I slept over her house that night, and in the dim, sleepy moments right before we both drifted off—the best time for confiding in someone—I told her that Finn had asked me to go with him to the dance.

  “Oh, god,” Lucy said. “I hate when stuff like that happens and you have to hurt someone’s feelings. Especially since you have to sit next to him every day for the rest of the year. It’s like he wanted to put you in an awkward position.” A yawn thickened her last couple of words. We were lying side by side on the queen bed in her room, which I knew almost as well as my own, since I’d been sleeping over there pretty much every weekend since seventh grade. Her mother made pancakes in the morning, and her dad cuffed us both affectionately on the shoulders as he passed by. I liked staying at her house. “He knows you’re never actually going to go with him,” she added. “So it’s just mean.”

  “Finn isn’t mean,” I said. “He’s not like that.”

  “But he knows there’s just no way. . . . I mean, come on. You’re like totally gorgeous, and half the guys in our class are in love with you.” Part of the reason Lucy was my best friend was because she said these kinds of things and even seemed to believe them. Maybe she did—I certainly thought she was gorgeous, even though Lizzie and my dad were always tut-tutting about how Lucy needed to lose a few pounds. But they were crazy. She was adorable with her big eyes and round face. “And he’s . . . you know. Not in your league.”

  “He’s really smart,” I said. “And nice.”

  “If he were really nice, he wouldn’t have put you in this position.”

  “Yeah.” I stared up at the ceiling, which I couldn’t actually see in the dark but was reasonably certain was still there. “I guess you’re right.”

  Maybe that was the moment when I went so far down one path, I couldn’t find my way back.

  Because I could have said, Finn and I have secretly been going out for the last three months.

  I could have said, I actually want to go to semiformal with him.

  I could have said, You don’t understand. He’s wonderful, and I’m kind of in love with him.

  But it was only later that it felt like I could have said any of those things. At that time, in that moment, it felt like I couldn’t say anything but “I guess you’re right.”

  The Saturday morning of the dance, Finn and I met at one of our favorite semideserted bluffs, and as we stood there looking at the ocean, he took my hand and said, “So are we going together to the dance tonight?”

  A simple question. Too bad my answer was a babbled mess.

  I told him that of course I wanted to go with him—it would be a lot of fun—but all of my friends had agreed to stick together and go in one big group, and it would be mean to the girls who couldn’t get dates for the girls who could to just abandon them, and I had to go along with what everyone else wanted, since these were my closest friends, and, anyway, semiformal was pretty lame, everyone knew that, and no one went in couples, no one except people who were, like, really going out seriously and . . .

  That’s when I stopped, suddenly deeply uncomfortable. All the talking I’d done made my abrupt silence all the more obvious. It also made me aware that Finn had let go of my hand at some point during my speech.

  “So,” he said lightly, “it’s a no.” He turned toward the ocean. “Waves are big today.”

  I glanced at the side of his face, saw how suddenly rigid all the muscles in it were, and part of me wanted to say, Screw my friends—let’s go together, but the other part of me was relieved to have ended the conversation. So I joked about how I should learn to surf, because with my gracefulness and agility, I’d just totally rule at it, and then I laughed too loudly while he didn’t laugh at all, and eventually he walked me back to my house.

  We said good-bye at the front door, and he hesitated, then abruptly leaned toward me. He had been so quiet since our conversation that, when I tilted my face up to his, I expected a quick, dismissive peck. Instead his arms went around me and tightened hard as his lips crushed mine in a way that was hungrier and more demanding—and more wonderful—than any kiss we’d had before. I was glad his arms were pinning me against him, because it felt like my legs were dissolving underneath me.

  Then, just as suddenly, he released me and stepped back. I wasn’t ready for that: I swayed and caught at the door handle to steady myself.

  “I’ll see you,” he said, and walked away.

  Maybe I should have realized there was a hint of something desperate in that good-bye kiss, but I didn’t. I felt slightly dizzy as I watched him go, and I pressed my fingers against my mouth to try to hold the exciting warmth in for a while longer.

  I was convinced all that passion was proof that Finn wasn’t angry at me. I walked into the house smiling and humming.

  Was he deliberately testing me that night at the dance? I don’t know.

  I was definitely tested, and I definitely failed, but whether it was deliberate on Finn’s part—that’s the part I can’t decide.

  Not that it matters.

  We went to the dance separately, me with my group, Finn by himself.

  He showed up late and alone, in a suit that was too big for him. It looked like his father’s. It probably was his father’s, and probably was from the nineties.

  The guys in my group were all in slim black tuxes, rented for the occasion, which made Finn’s boxy orange-brown suit look even weirder.

  When Finn spotted me and headed toward us, Camille started giggling and couldn’t stop. I wasn’t all that close to Camille, but Phoebe had invited her to join our limo since she lived in our neighborhood, and she’d stuck with us once we arrived at the dance. Camille had smuggled a water bottle filled with vodka into the limo we’d all shared and drunk a lot of it on the way. “My god,” she said as Finn came near us, “he looks like an Oompa Loompa.” And Jordan, who was her best friend and had just wandered over to our group, called out to Finn, “Where’s Willy Wonka?”

  Finn said, “What?” and the two of them snorted with laughter.

  He flushed. He may not have heard what they said, but he knew he was being made fun of. He turned away from them, toward me. “Hey.”

  “Hey,” I said. I was wearing five-inch platform heels and a super-tight bandage dress. We were all wearing bandage dresses that year, not because we had made a pact or anything, but because they were in. Mine wove together diagonal stripes of purple and pink spandex. Lucy and I had gotten our hair done together at a blow-dry bar, and mine was pinned up with a couple of tiny braids woven in. I felt very sophisticated.

  Finn said, “Do you want to dance?”

  In those heels I towered over him, and I knew we’d look ridiculous dancing together. People would laugh at the sight of us. I didn’t want to hurt him by saying no without a reason, but I couldn’t think of one that would sound genuine. I opened and closed my mouth without saying a word and glanced desperately at Lucy, who instantly knew I needed help. She took me by the elbow and said, “Hey, Anna, remember that thing we were going to do over on the other side of the room?”

  “What?” I said stupidly.

  “That thing,” she said, and dragged me away.

  And I let her.

  I even thanked her for it.

  The rest doesn’t really matter, does it? That Finn left the dance, or that I felt sick to my stomach for the rest of it, or that he dropped out of the carpool and stopped going out for frozen yogurt and coffee with me—stopped kissing me—stopped talking to me other than a grave nod and an occasional distracted “hi” in the hallway . . .

  You rip a seam, the thread pulls out.


  If I had apologized, would it have changed anything?

  That’s the kind of question that can keep you up at night.

  Anyway, I didn’t. I’m not even sure I could have. What are the right words to say after you’ve made someone feel like his attention is an embarrassment to you?

  I hung out with my friends at school and at parties, and I worked hard at home on my schoolwork and my art, and I sat alone in the backseat during carpool while Lizzie and Cameron gossiped and complained to each other up front, and I felt lonelier that spring than I ever had before.

  And then it was summer vacation. I’d gone to the same sleepaway art camp in northern California for eight weeks every year since I was eleven. Lucy always said, “How can you stand to be away from home for so long?” but her parents totally adored her, so of course she didn’t get it.

  Anyway, off I went, and by the time I came back, there were only two weeks left until school started again. Lizzie was packing for her freshman year at UC Santa Cruz, which meant she wouldn’t be driving me that fall, and I didn’t have my license yet, but Phoebe knew a senior named Natalie who was putting together a carpool in our neighborhood. “We just need one more person to get in the good lot,” Phoebe told me on the phone.

  “Finn Westbrook lives nearby,” I said, and wondered if he’d agree to share a backseat with me again. I hoped so. I’d been thinking about him a lot that summer and was pretty sure that if I just had some time with him, I could convince him to forgive me.

  “Who?”

  “The guy who was in my old carpool.”

  “Oh, him,” Phoebe said. “I’ll tell Natalie.”

  Later she called me back and said, “That kid Finn is gone. His family moved. To Portland. Or was it Seattle? Whatever. Somewhere in Oregon.”

  “Seattle’s not in Oregon,” I said. “Are you sure?”

  “About Oregon? Clearly not.”