Page 28 of The Second Kiss
Lumps
Jacob stops to get ice cream on the way home. I get plain vanilla, small, nothing that will add to the colors on my shirt. I sit back and watch him eat a double fudge sundae covered in whipped cream.
“So, a good martial arts class,” he says between bites.
“What?” I'm distracted by a smudge of whipped cream at the corner of his mouth. It makes me wonder what it would be like to kiss him, swollen lip and all.
“Martial arts,” he says, wiping the whipped cream off with his napkin. “I did Tae Kwon Do, but there are a lot of good ones.”
“When did you do Tae Kwon Do? Not when you lived here.”
“No. After I moved to North Carolina.” He scrapes the last of the fudge from his bowl. “It was Steve, my stepdad’s idea. To keep me out of trouble.”
“You, in trouble?” I don’t believe it. When Jacob lived here he was the perfect, responsible kid. He was even nice to the awkward girl next door.
He wipes his hands on the napkin. “Moving was hard on me. I got there too late to play football, I was the new kid, and my cousin convinced the other guys to hate me.”
I’m trying to imagine this gorgeous, outgoing guy on the wrong end of the social scale. “Your cousin? That’s not very nice.”
“Well,” Jacob grins. “It might have had something to do with him catching me kissing his girlfriend.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. Bad move on my part.” He tosses the napkin in the garbage can. “By the time my stepdad got back from his year-long deployment in Korea I was pretty messed up. Shoplifting, drinking–stupid kid stuff. Mom didn’t know what to do with me.”
The perfect Jacob and the perfect high school life I’d always imagined for him melts away. In his place stands a lonely kid who didn’t know how to fit in. Like me.
“When Steve got home, he did two things. He enrolled me in Tae Kwon Do and he bought me my car.”
“You were doing all of that and he bought you a car?”
“Yeah, that seems a little twisted, but my car was pretty messed up when I got it too. Steve and I spent a lot of hours putting it back together. I learned to be patient. And the Tae Kwon Do was a good way to channel some aggression. I even made up with my cousin… after he figured out that his girlfriend had kissed half the football team.”
“I have a hard time picturing you messed up,” I say.
“Thanks. But everyone has to take their lumps, right?” He looks at his watch. “It’s getting late. I’d better get you home. It’s still school night, right? I don't want to get in trouble with your parents.”
Until he said that, I almost could imagine we were on a real date.
“What happened to your lip?” Brad moves in close–too close. I'm trapped between him and my open locker door.
My hand goes to my lip. “It was an accident.” I’m not sure why I feel like I have to explain that to him.
“It looks like it hurts." He reaches to touch me and I duck away. "You should be careful. Those Army guys can be rough. I wouldn't want that pretty face to get messed up.”
If I didn't know him better I could almost mistake his veiled threat for actual concern. I sidestep to get away from him. He steps back to block my path and runs into one of the band geeks I used to sit by during football games.
“Watch where you're going!" Brad yells, shoving him. He falls forward and his books and papers scatter. Everyone gets into it, kicking his things out of his reach and stomping on his papers before he can get to them. A stab of guilt hits me as I slip away. I should stop to help, but I’m so relieved that I’m not in Brad’s line of fire anymore that I don't.
fourteen
Ambushed
“Which one is Jacob?” Taryn says. We’re all standing by my bedroom window, watching Jacob and three other guys from Fort Lewis arriving for the paintball game Jacob and my brother Matt set up.
“The hot blond getting out of the hot car,” Jasmine says, waving her fingernails to dry. It doesn't matter that she's going to be wearing thick, padded clothing and gloves; underneath it all, her nails have to be perfect.
“Nice,” Taryn says.
