Page 82 of Eye of the Beholder
Then he kisses me.
It’s a soft kiss; gentle. It’s nice, I guess. His lips aren’t chapped or gross or anything. But for those few seconds, as I’m kissing Jack by the glow of the Christmas lights wrapped around the fence lining my front porch, all I’m thinking about is Cohen.
Which is a problem. The whole kiss is a problem. In several ways.
For one thing, I should not be kissing Jack if I’m thinking about Cohen. And to be fair, I didn’t kiss Jack; he kissed me. But I let it happen. Another problem: Jack doesn’t know me well enough to be kissing me. For some reason I have trouble being myself around him. I mean, I don’t act like Virginia or Marie or any of the other girls he probably hangs around. I’m more real than that, and probably nicer, too. But it’s not easy, spending time with him. It’s stressful. I feel like I’m laughing when I don’t really think things are funny. And I’m constantly worrying about how I look, because he keeps telling me how beautiful he thinks I am.
And that seems to beallhe sees. Nice? Not annoying? Those aren’t the descriptions I’d have picked. As much as I hate to admit it, it hurts that he had to think before he answered my question about what he likes about me.
And there’s another problem with the kiss—the most pressing problem: I don’t know how to kiss. When Jack kisses me I just let him do all the work. I thought it would be more intuitive than it actually is. I thought I’d know what to do when I finally kissed someone. And I thought I’d be more excited about. Instead I just feel a mixture of confusion and weirdness as his lips move over mine.
When we say goodnight—with a kiss that I manage to turn into a quick peck on the lips—I go to my room, exhausted. I want to call Cohen and tell him, but something warns me not to do that. I could call one of my sisters, but they might tell my parents, and I don’t want to have that conversation yet. So I call Lydia instead, because I have to tellsomeone. Someone needs to witness this moment in my life. Isn’t this supposed to be a big deal? Your first kiss?
“You’re not squealing,” Lydia says immediately, and I can almost picture her frown.
I sit on the edge of my bed, and it’s so comfortable and I’m so tired that I end up lying down completely. Staring at my ceiling, I say, “I didn’t realize I was supposed to squeal.”
“You don’t have to squeal. But…did you like it? Was it a good kiss?”
“I don’t know,” I say, and I can hear how miserable I sound. “I don’t know. I don’t know how to kiss.”
“Practice on the back of your hand,” Lydia says. “Now, was it a good kiss?”
“It was nice.”
“No,” Lydia says. “No. I’m sorry, Mina. But it shouldn’t just be nice. Tell me the truth: Do you really like Jack? Forget for a second that you’ve liked him forever. Forget that you’re going to the winter dance with him. What about right now?”
I watch the blades of my ceiling fan as they blur in their rotation. “I don’t know,” I say. It’s barely a whisper.
“The second he kissed you, what went through your mind?”
Well, I obviously can’t answer that.
But apparently I don’t need to, because Lydia says, “Was it Cohen?” Her voice is gentle and sympathetic.
I swallow past the lump in my throat. “I have to go,” I say instead of answering her question. “My parents are calling for me.”
They’re not.
“Okay,” Lydia says. Her voice is soft. She hesitates, and then she says, “Life is too short to be kissing boys you don’t really want to kiss, Mina. And you never know when someone youdowant to kiss will show up. Just remember that.”
“Thanks, Lydia,” I say.
“Of course,” she says. And like the angel she is, I can tell she actually means it. “One last thing,” she adds. “Are you guys exclusive, do you think?”
Oh, gosh; would I even know if we were? Is that a conversation you have?
“I mean, have you talked about it?” Lydia goes on, possibly sensing my confusion.
“No,” I say. “We haven’t talked about it. So…I guess not?”
“All right,” Lydia says, and I picture her nodding to herself. “I was just wondering.”
“I have to go,” I say again.
“You’ll figure things out,” Lydia says softly. I thank her, and we hang up.
She’s so sweet. And somehow that makes me feel even worse. I just feel empty. And it’s Christmas Eve, for goodness’ sake. But there’s a Cohen-shaped hole inside my chest, a hole that’s never been more obvious to me than it is right now, and I don’t know what to do about it.
