Chapter 10 just the four of us
just the four of us
Dolly Beckett
My first kiss happened one December night, on the rare occasion of an Arkansas snow, when we snuck out of our houses at midnight to walk in the wintery whiteness and marvel at the sparkling flakes swirling through the air.
It felt like magic back then, something beautiful and dangerous that only happened every few years.
There was a charge in the air, excitement and giddiness as well as wonder as we rushed to meet up so we could go to the park.
It was supposed to be the three Darling cousins, Destiny Delacroix, Preston’s sister Lindsey, and me, the way it always was back then, our little middle school gang of six.
Devlin and I were the oldest at thirteen, having moved on to junior high, but he’d never leave Colt or Lindsey behind, even though they were the babies at only eleven.
That night, Preston said Lindsey didn’t want to go out in the cold, and Devlin didn’t show up, either.
I was disappointed, since I was already in love with the golden boy.
I never fell in love. I just was, from the time I was little and my parents told me I’d marry him one day.
Without him, the four of us walked miles through the whirling snowflakes, stopping to watch them under the streetlights, how they rushed toward the ground, the way they glittered in the inch thick layer that blanketed everything.
A car drove by, and Destiny nervously mentioned that the cops wouldn’t know if we were good kids, since the park was in the middle of town, not a really good area.
They might think we were out causing trouble.
Just then, we saw headlights coming, and the timing made us all nervous.
Preston grabbed my hand and started running, dragging me behind some bushes.
Colt and Destiny jumped in next to us. We crouched there, hearts hammering, barely breathing, until the car was gone.
Then we started laughing. We ran the rest of the way to the park, our hands linked.
Once we were there, Colt started making snowballs and pelting us.
Preston jumped in front of them when they came toward me, and I crouched and scraped up a handful of snow and put it down his back.
He spun around and grabbed me, wrapping me up in his arms in a bear hug, tensed to throw me to the ground.
But then he just stood there, his arms wrapped tight around me.
We were so close I could see a snowflake in his eyelashes, and the giggle that had risen when I dumped snow in his shirt melted.
For a moment, we just stared at each other, our breath fogging the space between us.
I couldn’t remember when we’d stopped touching, stopped playing.
Probably when we were caught and shamed for our treehouse explorations.
In the three years since then, our friendship had changed from the kind where we wrestled around to something more carefully delicate.
It had been a long time since our bodies had been pressed together that way, and even though he was only twelve, I could feel how strong he was, how much bigger he’d gotten since we played as kids.
He let me go suddenly, stepping back and turning to block a snowball rocketing through the air in our direction. We went back to the game, but I kept glancing at him.
After a while, Colt and Destiny decided to clean out the slide, and Preston and I went to the swings. “I’ll push you,” he said.
“In a minute,” I said. “I just want to watch the snow fall.”
He sat in the next swing, and for a while, we watched the big white flakes drifting down. After a bit, I turned to say something, and I caught him just looking at me.
“What?” I asked.
“You’re so—pretty,” he said, and he ducked his head.
My heart started beating funny, and even though he wasn’t looking anymore, I felt self-conscious in a way I usually didn’t around our little group who knew me well enough to stop paying attention to how I looked.
But it wasn’t the way I felt self-conscious around the jerks who stared and elbowed each other and laughed at school, or the way I felt when grown men whistled at me.
It was just an awareness, and for the first time, I felt what it was like to be admired rather than desired.
It was the first time I felt pretty, like he’d pointed out something that had always been there but that I hadn’t grasped until then.
Of course my mama said I was pretty, and my dad would make comments about keeping the boys away with shotguns.
In elementary, I’d been chubby, and other kids made fun of me until they learned that the punishment for that was a fist fight with Preston.
And then I got boobs before everyone else, and I got attention for it, but it didn’t make me feel good about myself.
By thirteen I’d already settled into an hourglass figure—wide hips, big bust—but I felt my largeness more than any sexiness.
I was taller than every boy in my grade that year, and the self-consciousness was real.
I was awkward as all get-out around everyone except my little group of friends, where I could be myself and no one cared how I looked.
Or so I thought. And now that Preston said otherwise…
I didn’t mind. It wasn’t some random guy, it was my friend, someone who knew me through and through, who had seen me naked when we were younger and gotten whipped in front of me.
Now he was an angry preteen, prone to being rude, though he’d still fight anyone else who dared be rude to me.
Things were changing for all of us, but mostly for me and Devlin, who had started junior high that fall.
Preston was still in middle, and I didn’t see him as much.
When I did, he was moody and sullen, a kid who got in trouble at school, not the kind who called girls pretty.
We’d taken off our hoods when we got hot from running around, and I knew I had snowflakes in my blonde waves, and that my face was flushed from the exertion.
For the first time, I found myself wishing someone would look at me, that I hadn’t scared him off.
I liked feeling pretty, liked seeing myself that way through the eyes of a friend who already liked other things about me before that one.
“Push me,” I said, hoping to end the awkwardness.
Preston got up, but instead of stepping behind me, he stepped in front of me.
He gripped the chains on the swing and just stood there looking at me.
I could see his blond hair glistening in the lights, damp from melted snowflakes, with a few clinging to the strands like stars.
They drifted down around him, behind him, making the whole world look like something out of a fairytale.
He didn’t say anything. The blanket of snow silenced the world, and all I could hear was my heartbeat as he pulled the swing forward, leaned in, and kissed me. His lips were soft and warm, and this melting feeling washed over me, like he’d just dumped a pan of warm water over the snow.
Both of us held onto the chains on the swing, not touching as we kissed.
We didn’t use tongue, didn’t hold each other, didn’t say anything.
We just kissed, soft and sweet and innocent, the very last thing I’d have imagined from an angry boy who got in fights at school and called other boys mean names if they wouldn’t hit back.
Then Destiny whooped when she went down the slide, and Preston drew away. We stared at each other for a second, like we had when he grabbed me in that bear hug. But everything felt different now, charged with something heavy and scary and uncertain.
My heart was hammering, and I wasn’t sure how to feel.
I’d always imagined my first kiss would be with Devlin.
Preston was a year younger than me, still a skinny middle schooler, even if he was filling out.
I was half a foot taller than him and looked like a porn star according to some crude ninth-grade boys.
Without a word, he stepped behind me and gave me a push.
We never mentioned the kiss, but I thought about it for the rest of that night, for the whole walk home and the next day when we all went out sledding on one of the only hills in Faulkner.
I thought about it when he slipped his cold fingers into mine to help me out of the van when we all got back to Grampa Darling’s for snacks and parent pickup.
I remembered again when he brought me hot cocoa with marshmallows, and I caught Devlin watching us from across the room, and this twist of guilt knotted in my belly, like I’d done something wrong.
I quickly took the mug and walked away, but I kept glancing sideways at Preston, wondering if he was still thinking about it, too.
Sometime the next summer, I had my first kiss with Devlin, and I finally told Destiny about the kiss on the swing. She assured me it didn’t count if there was no tongue, that it wasn’t a real kiss.
But it counted to me. It was real to me.