Sweet His

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, locales, or actual events is entirely coincidental. **************** -------------------------- COLIN -------------------------- July, Summer of 2012 I just turned thirteen yesterday and David immediately told me after my birthday party last night that we have somewhere to go today. He said it was an urgent agenda and it was something I must do… It was silly, to be honest. I really thought he was just trying to sound like an adult again. But he made me promise to meet him in front of his house next to us. And now, I am here waiting for him to go out. The summer season this year really felt strange, now that I’ve noticed. It was not typically hot like it used to be. Nowadays, kids don’t even go outside anymore. I figured it must be global warming or something. Maybe, the apocalypse is real. Maybe 2012 is true. Maybe the end of the world is really coming… Well, who knows? I just turned thirteen yesterday… And I still have so many things I still wanted to do if ever it would come true like--- The sound of the door opening nearby had me out of my thoughts as I immediately saw David coming out of their house. He has a backpack with him as he walks down their front steps towards me. “Are you ready to do this?” he asks me with a playful smile on his face. “Ready to do what?” I asked in confusion. ‘Cause seriously, I still don’t have any idea what this whole “urgent agenda” is all about. “Come on,” David just says to me, motioning his hand to follow him and I only became more confused. He then silently leads the way, his feet treading down the cemented sidewalk of our street, while I ignorantly followed him like a puppet.  As we reach the next house, Jane from our English class appears from the treehouse on the lot where we were walking by, and suddenly calls out for David’s attention. “Hey, Jane,” David immediately stops on his tracks, and so did I, and looks up to the small balcony of the treehouse where Jane was sitting, looking down at us--or rather, at David. (I seem to always disappear from the background and turn invisible when these kinds of scenarios happen.) Jane quickly flashes a big smile, obviously trying to show her deep dimples. And I already knew she had the hots for him, just like every other girl does. Whenever David addresses these girls with their names, they would always turn soft and warm and have their googly eyes showing.  It’s always almost annoying to see it happen. “Where’re you going?” Jane asks. "Just somewhere," David shrugs. "Can I join?" Jane pushes on, and apparently, she isn’t planning to let David go any moment soon. I suddenly felt out of place there so I decided to leave for a while and let them have their own moment. But before I could even take a step back, David immediately brushes her off. “It’s boys’ stuff, sorry. We need to leave,” he tells her. And I almost laughed at the face Jane made after hearing him. It’s really funny when David acts like a savage and still does not even realize what he’s done. Poor Jane though. As well as with the rest of the girls who have already tried before and still failed to snatch David. I really felt bad for all of them. It's not like it's their fault for crushing so hard on my best friend. David's just a big i***t. His handsomeness is still beyond his knowledge. He doesn't even realize how famous he's become at school yet. Ever since we entered middle school, he just started to look more mature and cooler than the rest of the average boys in class. And because of that, girls started to notice him so bad that they kept giving him long stares and talked with him in a very weird way. I could still remember one of them boldly asking him out in front of me. And David being David, only rejected the girl. This big i***t.  But a lot still tried and kept trying to ask him again. At times, I would even be asked by a few to help them get his number or anything related to him. He’s just too damn good-looking that even I myself, sometimes, felt envious. It’s not like I’m saying I don’t like how I looked. I know I have good qualities. I have always been told that I looked like the male version of my mom. And that counts for something since I always find my mom pretty. And she’s really pretty… It’s not just the kind of ‘pretty enough that everyone will appreciate it, she’s the kind of pretty that ‘had gotten a lot of married men in town to beg for her attention’. That’s how dangerously pretty she is… And sometimes, to tell the truth, I almost hate her for being too pretty.  But I don’t want to blame her for anything, I don’t blame her for being the bad person every wife in town had hated and ridiculed. She had been there ever since my biological father left us for his real family… And I don’t want to leave her alone, either. She’s the only one I got. What would be left of me, without her then? Maybe, superficial beauty is really something I should never be too proud of. And maybe it’s something I should also keep David away from. I don’t want him to turn out to be like mom. I don’t want to almost hate him because he’s too handsome. “What’s with that gloomy face? You’ve been looking like that since minutes ago. What are you thinking?” David suddenly catches my attention. We’ve been walking now a couple of blocks away from our houses. When I looked around, I recognized the path we were heading. David was leading us all the way down to the empty two-story house near the big cliff by the side of the town.  “Why are we here?” I asked him, confused. “You didn’t answer my question,” he only remarked. I rolled my eyes at his back and sighed. “I was just thinking about your annoying face and those poor girls who had fallen for it,” I tell him and David snickered at my words, turning his head to look at me from behind. “So you’re finally getting jealous? I told you. Start doing push-ups so you can build some muscle. Guys always have mistaken you for a girl because you’re too soft, Colin. Maybe if you just try to be harder than you are, you can finally get some girls for yourself.” David tells me and I try not to be triggered by his opinion. I’m not too soft. “Well, I don’t like working out. I like sleeping,” I grumpily say. He laughs at me again as we took a turn on a street. After a few more steps, David suddenly walks us into a narrower path towards the back of the empty house. “Now, this feels like something out of a horror game,” I tell him, roaming my eyes around. “BOO!” David suddenly howled beside me, earning a scream from my still-maturing voice that had me almost passed out from my fright. “What the hell's wrong with you!” I angrily cursed at him after regaining my senses and punched him hard on his shoulder. Though it wasn't hard enough to have him lose his balance. David just kept laughing at me. The sound of his laughter kept on and soon had me laughing back too and I immediately recovered from my embarrassment. “You fuckin’ asshole,” I cursed at him again and he only chuckles, lightly punching me back on my shoulder with a know-it-all smile. He turns and headed towards a grassy field just behind the empty house, opening his bag and pulling out a big cloth. He then invites me with his hand to sit beside him in a space underneath a tree where he had settled the big picnic cloth on the ground.  “So what is this ‘urgent agenda’ really about?” I asked him. He turned to me, plastering an evil grin on his face. And when I frowned at him, he rubs the palm of his hands like an evil scientist in a cartoon show and says, “It’s time for you to turn into a man, Cole.” He quickly grabs his backpack and picks out the items inside: four cans of beer, one box of cigarettes, some magazines with adult women on the cover, a lighter, and a stack of playing cards. I looked at them and felt a bit silly. “And this is the way you think will turn me into a ‘real man’?” “Yeah, it’s a starter pack,” he says. “Classic.” I mocked back with a roll of my eye. I was already contemplating leaving, yet I still took the space beside him and looked down on the stuff he had laid in front. The naked woman on the front cover of one of the magazines immediately had my attention.  “Where did you even get all this stuff?”  “Had my ways,” David only shrugs and I laughed at how funny that sounded. Maybe I really don’t know my best friend that well yet. Maybe I am only starting to finally see him in a new light with all these things he’s showing me--and by that, what I mean is, I’m finally seeing where the ‘mature’ part of him has really come from. I made an attempt to take the magazine with the cover of the naked woman I kept glancing at, and before I even had it in my hand, David pushed the pack of cigarettes to me. “Try this first,” he tells me, and I scowled at him. I would have preferred taking the golden road to my manhood by seeing a heavenly sight of boobs than being changed by the smell of what he’s offering.  “The boob’s not going anywhere,” David adds as if reading my mind. “Fine. Then let me have a sip of that poison first,” I grudgingly say, referring to the beer, and David easily obliges. He opened a can and handed me one. He opens another for himself. We both took a sip, he sighs, while I only scrunch my face up. I spit out a little of it and felt disgusted. It tasted like some old rusty metal. I tried to gulp it down, had a hard time trying to make myself adapt to it. I shrugged the strong taste off and took another long sip. The second time it hit my throat, it felt more soothing now. The taste didn’t change me at all, but the feeling of lightheadedness did. “Liked it?” I hear David asks me, and I just nodded dumbly while smiling like a fool. He then reaches out a stick of cigarette to me, and before I knew it, I was taking it to my hand. David urges me to look at him as he demonstrates how to do it. “Just three things, Collie. Take the stick, light the end, and inhale a drag,” the smoke leaves a straight line from his mouth into the air between us. The embers light up as he took another drag while a pinch of ashes fell on the ground. “Now, try it,” he tells me. I hesitated. “You can do it,” he urges me. I took the lighter and clumsily tried to make it ignite. It took me a couple of tries until I did, and I immediately put the stick between my lips. I slowly lit the end, waited for it to completely create a burning color on the edge before I finally tried to inhale it. I made a noisy sound of breathing it in, my nose and throat doing the same motion and just at the second the smoke finally hit the inside of my mouth down to my esophagus, I pulled my mouth away and coughed loudly. I threw the stick to the ground, wheezing. I felt tears burning my eyes, and for a moment, I almost lost my vision and couldn’t breathe. I desperately gasped for air, leaning down on the ground beside me and clutched my chest. I hear David laughing beside me as he tries to pat me on the back. After I settled down, David spoke. “Congratulations, brother. You’ve finally faced the poison of death. Now, take another stick but this time, do the drag slowly,” he tells me. I really wanted to say I don’t want to do it again, but David already handed me a new stick and lit the lighter. I was so lost in my senses, not trying to say no, until I found myself taking another drag. But this time, instead of feeling the smoke burning my throat, it smoothly glides down my chest… And surprisingly, it felt kind of okay. The taste still is disgusting, but it does not feel that bad anymore. “What do you think?” David asks me when he sees the calmer face I had after the second drag. I nodded back at him. “Not so bad now,” I replied. “Take it with the beer,” he suggested and I did what he said. It was a blending combination. Rust and smoke… Now, I seem more like a man, for real. “Can we get to the boobs now?” I say, humoring myself. Dave laughs and pushes a magazine to me.  “Suit yourself,” he says and I gladly did so. *********** On the course of the second magazine I’ve been enjoying myself at, with now an apparent hard-on, David spoke again. “Have you ever tried to kiss someone?”  My silly smile dropped in a flash as I was abruptly distracted by David’s question. I quickly looked up at him. David wasn’t looking at me, he was actually gazing at something afar, obviously not on the soil on the ground where his eyes are directed at. But for some reason, he sounded too serious for me to even joke about it. “Why? Got some potential candidates in class?” I probed back. "Spin the bottle" has been a trend recently, and we heard some of our friends doing it and had experienced their first kisses while playing it. Maybe David's beginning to get curious because it was something the boys had been talking about in gym class last week. We still haven’t tried playing it but last night at my birthday party, someone tried to suggest it, but David offered something else to play so it didn’t happen. “No, I just thought I really didn’t know how to do it.” That caught me off guard. So, he still hasn’t gotten his first kiss? And this is the David I am talking about that has been the subject of flashy smiles and flirty giggles from girls at school. And he still hasn’t scored yet? Well, damn if he is. “Do you?” he suddenly looks at me. But something in the way he met my eyes made me nervous. “Do I what?” I asked. “Do you know how to do it?” I shook my head. A moment passed on. “Then, let’s try it.” I stopped breathing. "Try what?" I nervously asked. And when I tried to look at David, he gave me a serious stare. "Let's do it. A kiss." I almost thought I imagined it. I really didn’t want to think he said it. But as the words slowly register in my brain, David was already leaning down to me. His serious good looking face got closer and closer and the proximity had me frozen from where I was sitting beside him. My mind blanked. Our lips touch. As soon as it did, I felt his hand touching the nape of my neck. I hear my heart pounding so loud. I don’t know if this is right, I don’t even feel wrong. But I suddenly forgot where I was… I forgot what we were doing… All I ever knew was the smell of nicotine from our lips and his breath hitting my face. I still have not processed it until we pulled apart and David settled back to where he was sitting just a while ago. “It didn’t feel that bad, I guess,” I hear him say. But everything had gotten me speechless. I forced myself to act casual because David is still acting cool about it. But deep inside, I was freaking out.  We just kissed, right? This isn't a dream. We really did, kissed. And later that night, I dreamt of it again… and again. And again. I could no longer stop myself from recalling it all, wondering if it ever really happened. After a week, I find myself sitting on the backseat of my mom’s old Corolla. I watch as she drives past the welcome sign of the town. But now, it's actually the opposite. It's greeting us goodbye. I didn't even get a chance to tell Dave that we were leaving. We didn't try to meet again after what happened. To be honest, I'm actually relieved. I still could not face him. I'm afraid I might do something weird if I did. My mom soon meets my gaze from the rearview mirror. Seeing my blank face, she tries to cheer me up with her smile. “Don’t worry, baby,” she says, “We’ll make this through. We’ll have a fresh start.” And I try to believe her. I really want to. I turned my gaze towards the window beside me and watched the view pass by from it. If she says it like that, then I really want to start anew again. I want to go somewhere so far away… Far away from that memory of my first kiss. ************************************* -------------------------- DAVID -------------------------- July, Summer of 2012 “Have you ever tried to kiss someone?”  As I let it hover in the atmosphere like a hypothetical proposition, my mind began reeling forward into a deep plethora of desires and adolescent curiosity. I opted to remain neutral after uttering the words from my lips, keeping an unfazed expression on my face. I patiently waited for Colin, who was sitting beside me, holding a magazine filled with nude women in front of him, to answer back. But the silence just went on... For a moment, I thought, I'd made the wrong move. And I suddenly felt resentfully embarrassed by my question. Why did I even ask that? Then Colin finally spoke up, clearing my thoughts, " Why? Got some potential candidates in class?" I bitterly smiled at his words, feeling a little bit disappointed. Typical. But I can't really blame him for thinking the way a young boy should at his age. I only sighed back, wondering how long I could keep up with this silly pretense of acting like a normal boy in front of him. "No, I just thought I really didn't know how to do it," I said back with a shrug, trying to sound like it's a natural thing to even talk about it. But as soon as I've said those words, I sensed Colin tensing up beside me. I could feel the weight of his heavy stare on the side of my face, probably shocked to find out I still haven't kissed anyone before. I could have, in fact. But I just chose not to. I had decided to patiently wait for the right moment, like this one: the right moment with him. "Do you?" I casually asked him again when he didn't say anything after, meeting those purest almond eyes that were staring right back at me. "Do I what?" "Do you know how to do it?" He seemed to deeply think about it for a second, not daring to give me a reply right away. And after a few more seconds of hesitating, he shook his head no. “Then, let’s try it.” I undoubtedly suggested. I don't know if it's caused by the taste of burnt-out nicotine in my mouth or the tangy sting of alcohol clouding my sense of reason that I was suddenly bringing this weird subject up, but I was suddenly feeling out of myself at that moment—as if I can do just about anything I've wanted. No regrets... No doubts. Colin only looked at me as if I'd grown another head and dumbly asked, "Try what?" I paused and gave him the most intense stare I could give for a fourteen-year-old kid and answered in clipped boldness, "Let's do it. A kiss." And for the reason that if I didn't do anything Colin might turn weird and run away from my bizarre suggestion, I impulsively leaned down towards him. No more speaking. Forget the whole world and that dumb contradicting voice shouting at the back of my mind... I just want to KISS him. I DON'T CARE. I've always wanted to do this. I want to KISS Colin Keaton. And so, I did.