Michelle

He’d kissed me! How dare he!

Honestly I had kissed him too, but that wasn’t the point!

Or maybe it was.

I let out a frustrated yell and spun, slamming my foot against the heavy bag, and cursed when it swung back and crashed into my hip. I growled and punched again and again until my arms felt like they were going to fall off. Then, for good measure, I smashed my fist into it as hard as I could. I felt the skin of my knuckle split. I pulled my hand back and looked at the blood seeping out before wincing. My stomach churned as it always did at the sight of blood, and I headed back up to my bedroom to find a bandage. After fixing my hand, I flopped back on my bed and stared at the ceiling.

Why was I so pissed off? Lucas had kissed me. It wasn’t a big deal, so why was I making it into one?

Because he stole your first kiss, a voice that sounded suspiciously like Jessica’s said in the back of my mind, and because you didn’t mind.

I scowled at my ceiling. I was a senior in high school and I had just received my first kiss.

Yeah, wasn’t that pathetic? Most of my friends had gotten their first kisses in elementary school, and I hadn’t been kissed until my senior year in freaking high school.

But was it really about that, or was it about Lucas himself?

I frowned and looked over at my door as it swung open. My brother stood in the doorway.

“I heard you two outside,” he said. I glared at him.

“So?”

“So, you’re my little sister, and I want to know if I have to go kick that kid’s ass for you.”

“Who was your first kiss?” he arched an eyebrow at me and leaned against the doorway.

“Janet Howard,” he replied quickly. “At the eighth grade moving up ceremony.”

“What happened between you two?” I asked. His other eyebrow rose to match the first one.

“We ended up dating for two months, until she figured out that I was a complete jerk. Then she dumped me and went after our school’s quarterback,” he shrugged and tilted his head. “Why?”

I didn’t answer him.

“Look. I know I’m not the best brother in the world sometimes, and I really am a complete jerk, and I can only blame so much of that on Mom,” he visibly flinched, but went on, “but that doesn’t mean I don’t care.” He smirked suddenly. “Lucas is a good kid. Don’t leave without giving him a chance,” with that, my brother left, shutting my door behind him again.

I gaped at the door, still reeling for the longest conversation we’d had in a long time.

I got to school early on Monday, and made a beeline for Lucas’s locker. Ben and Jason were waiting there, and only one of them looked surprised to see me.

“What are you doing here?” Ben asked.

“I--”

“He already left,” Jason said, shaking his head. “He told us not to tell you his homeroom is in art room six.” I grinned.

“Thanks,” I turned to leave, but Ben caught my arm.

“Angel, hold it,” I looked up at him and swallowed. “I’ve got something to say first,” I chewed on my lip nervously. Ben looked pretty scary.

“Okay . . .” I shifted nervously. Did I mention Ben looked scary?

“I’m not going to kill you, so stop looking like a kicked puppy,” he said darkly. “Angel, Lucas may not look it, but he’s fragile. He’s our best friend,” he nodded to Jason, “and we’re not going to sit around while something that makes him smile slips away,” I swallowed again, my eyes burning.

“We don’t know why you took off on him, but we know you hurt him,” Jason picked up without skipping a beat, “and if you do it again, we already have a spot for your body.” I blinked, and he grinned. “Kidding.”

“Keep in mind though, we can always find one,” Ben added, and glanced at his watch. “You’ve got ten minutes to catch him.” I impulsively flung an arm around each of their necks, then took off.

I stood in the doorway and watched Lucas sketching furiously. The sketchbook rested in his lap, and his long, jean-clad legs were crossed at the ankles on top of the desk. His face clouded, he titled his head, appraising his drawing. He put down the pastel he was using, and picked up a pink piece, swiped it across the page, and used his pinky finger to blend it into the drawing.

Suddenly he scowled, ripped the page off, crumpled it up and tossed it at the garbage can a foot and a half to my left. It bounced off the edge, and I picked it up, slowly opening it.

He didn’t even notice as he started on his next sketch. I just stared at the drawing. A lump welled up in my throat, and I blinked eyes that were suddenly too dry.

A spotlight came off the left corner of the page, illuminating a single figure center stage. Four figures stood shadowed in the back ground, making the center figure stand out even more. I stared at myself in shock. He’d captured every detail of my face right down to the freckle next to my right eye. My eyes were halfway closed, my knuckles white as they gripped the microphone. A smile was pulling at the corner of my mouth as I sang my heart out.

Another page ripped and I looked up as Lucas lifted his head to aim and froze, his arm over his head. An unreadable expression flickered over his face, to be replaced by a blank look.

My mind raced, trying to think of something to say. “What was wrong with this one?” I asked. He looked away from me, back down at his sketch pad, staying silent. “Lucas?”

His hand snapped across the page in long, brisk strokes. “I don’t have to ask how you found me.”

“They’re good friends Lucas,” I said, stepping forward. I lay the crinkled drawing on his desk. He didn’t look up at me. “Look, I’m sorry all right?”

His head snapped up and he threw the pad down on the desk. I glanced down and saw he’d closed it. “If this is the part where you tell me it didn’t mean anything to you and you regret it, please, save me the agony of watching you walk away again,” he shoved past me and headed out the door.

I felt something snap inside me. “Hold it!” He stopped dead in his tracks. “What the hell made you think I went through all this trouble just to say all that?” His entire body tensed like a tiger about to pounce as he slowly turned around. His gray eyes latched onto mine and stayed there, a purposely blank expression in them.

Suddenly, I found that I had to look away, so I looked down at his sketchbook. “You mind?” I asked, glancing up at him. He didn’t reply or make any move to stop me, so I flipped it open.

Then I froze. The first was a picture of me with a sleeping Lindy in my arms, a look of content on my face. Judging by the length of my hair, it had to have been drawn shortly after he had moved in with Sarah. I flipped to the next page and found a sketch of a guitar, and the next couple of pages were landscapes. The next was of a woman I had only seen in pictures. It was his mother. I quickly flipped past that one, and my eyes widened. This was picture of me cooking Mac-and-cheese for Lindy. The next four were of me on the couch, one of which I was asleep in, and the very last completed one was of Lucas and I on the couch in a lip lock.

“What did you come here to say?” he asked. I looked up at him as the five minute warning bell rang.

“I wanted to explain,” I replied. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“Whether you meant to or not--”

I cut him off, not caring to listen to what he had to say right then. “I know! All right? I know! But did you consider how I felt? That was my first fucking kiss!” His eyes widened, shock registering. “My first fucking kiss and it was with someone I don’t know what to think of! You sprung this on me!”

“Shell--”

“Don’t all right?” He looked taken aback, and I didn’t blame him at all. My outburst was surprising even myself. “I am not okay with this, because I don’t know how I feel about you! I--” I dragged a hand through my hair. “I don’t know, okay? I don’t fucking know!”

Before he could say anything else, I took off again, out of the classroom and down the hall. I made it to my locker before I slowed down. Jason and Jessica were waiting there, and Jason’s face darkened as I ran by. He pushed off the wall and headed in one direction, and Jess ran after me.

“Shelly! Where are you going?” she asked.

“I don’t care!” I called over my shoulder. “Away from here!”

Jess caught up to me halfway out the front doors of the school. She grabbed me by the back of my collar and dragged me into the nearest bathroom.

“Out!” She said sternly to a couple of freshman girls who had been giggling. They looked at her like she were a bug who had just spoken to them. Jess let go of me and drew herself up straight, sucked in a deep breath and pointed at the door. “I said out you slutty fucking freshmen!!” The girls threw her a venomous glare, but they left all the same. “What happened?” She demanded. “Lucas looked ready to kill Jason this morning.”

“Lucas kissed me,” I murmured, but she didn’t seem to hear me right away.

“And that’s unusual. You know the two of them are best friends right? I mean yeah, Ben and he seem closer, but Jason’s got that strong-silent type thing down pa--” She froze, turning to look at me with eyes so wide I thought they might just pop right out of her head. “He WHAT?!”

“He kissed me,” I said again.

“Seriously?”

“Yeah.”

“Holy crap! What are you waiting around here for? Go jump him!”

“Jess!”

“What? I mean, what is so wrong with that fact that he kissed you?”

“He didn’t -- I -- he took my first kiss, and I don’t even know if I like him!”

She watched me carefully for a long time, and I frowned, growing more nervous the longer she stared at me. “What?”

“The boy sang you a song about how he thinks you’re an angel and you don’t like him?”

“I don’t know!” I exclaimed, whipping around to face her. “I don’t know!”

She held up her hands in defense. “Okay. Point taken girl. Chill.” I sighed, leaning against a sink.

“I really don’t know.”

“I get that, and I’m going to help you figure it out.”

I frowned at my lunch, then up at the boy who slid into the seat across from me. “Go away Jason.”

“No can do,” he said, shaking his head. “You’ve got my best friend’s head twisted around, and you don’t know how to fix it.”

“Go away,” I repeated. I didn’t want to talk to him about this.

“No,” he said again. I glared at him.

“And how are you going to help me fix it, huh?” I asked. He frowned at me.

“You’ve got to have some inkling as to how you feel,” he said. I raised an eyebrow at him.

“He blind-sighted me! How was I supposed to know that he--” Jason pulled something out of his backpack and dropped it on the table. Curious, I picked it up. It was a plain spiral notebook, a little worn and obviously fully used.

“This is his lyrics book,” Jason said, tapping the top edge. “I need it back when you’re done.” Without another word, he got up and left me holding the book.

Still scowling, I shoved the book into my backpack.

Read it? Right.

I stared at my backpack, willing it to vanish, taking Lucas’s lyric book with it. I wanted to read it, but I didn’t want to invade his privacy like that.

I scowled at the back of Jason’s head as he scribbled something down on the test we were supposed to be taking.

“Miss Cavanaugh, you only have five minutes left on your test,” my teacher said. “You may want to finish.” I nodded absently and bent over my paper again, scribbling out the answers furiously. This was ridiculous. If I failed this test because of Lucas’s notebook, I was going to throttle Jason.

I caught Jason as he was unlocking his car after school.

“I’m not reading this,” I said, shoving the book against his chest. He looked up at me and smiled.

Goddamn him. “Why are you smiling?” I demanded. His grin just widened as he tossed the book on the passenger’s seat.

“I wanted to see if you would,” he replied, smile diminishing a bit. “It was a test. You passed.”

“A test? Why are you giving me a bloody test?”

“If you didn’t like Lucas, then you wouldn’t have cared about invading his privacy like that,” Jason replied, tossing his bag in by Lucas’s book.

“But--” I didn’t have an end to that sentence, so I just glared at him. “That doesn’t really make sense.”

“Oh, hell!” He muttered, almost under his breath. “Okay. If you didn’t like Lucas, it wouldn’t have mattered to you if he got mad at you for reading that.”

“Yeah, because he’s my friend,” I stressed. “That doesn’t mean that I like him.”

“So, if someone handed you my notebook, you’d throw it back at them?”

“No, I’d re--” I stopped and glared at him. “That still doesn’t prove anything.”

“You’re irritating,” he said, and leaned against the car behind him, eyeing me carefully. He stroked his chin as though he were a mad scientist watching an experiment. “What will it take to convince you?”

“Who the hell knows,” I murmured, looking away from him. I caught movement out of the corner of my eye and I suddenly found myself in a rather compromising position between Jason and his car. I gasped, or at least, I tried to.

Did you know it’s hard do to that when someone’s kissing you? After a long moment he pulled back and pushed himself to arms length against the car.

He opened his mouth to say something, but a strangled sound reached us. We turned to find Lucas frozen on the opposite row, his hand halfway out of his pocket. His keys made an interesting sound as they crashed to the pavement.

Had I thought about what reaction I would have expected in this situation from Lucas before, I would have said that he would have leapt on Jason and tackled him to the ground.

Instead, he took a step backward, bent down and scooped up his keys and then took off at a dead run.

“Fuck,” Jason muttered, and shoved himself off his car and took off after his best friend. “Lucas! Wait!”

“Fuck off!” Lucas screamed over his shoulder. They had rounded the corner before I got my senses back and took off after them.

I ran around the parking lot for ten minutes, trying to find them.

I never did.