Kiss Her Once for Me (55)

And I want to. I hate that I want to kiss her again, but I do. I want to make all the same mistakes I made a year ago right here, right now, with this beautiful woman who liked me very much.

I think about our first kiss in the snow, our first almost kiss beneath a heater like this one.

I could kiss her. It would cost me two hundred thousand dollars, but I could kiss her.

Paul Hollywood startles in my lap, and the moment breaks. Jack quickly releases my hand, leaving me to warm myself by the only working heater vent.

“I’m sorry,” Jack says, but she doesn’t admit what she’s apologizing for. “I just… I really hope that despite everything, we can find a way to be friends, Elle.”

I squeeze my eyes closed. “Yes,” I whisper back. “Friends.”





A Webcomic

By Oliverartssometimes

Episode 4: The Bathroom

(Christmas Eve, 4:13 p.m.)

Uploaded: January 14, 2022

“Sledding was not part of the plan.”

I glare at Jack from across the single-stall Burgerville bathroom, but all she does is flash me that ridiculous grin. “Okay but admit it: you had fun.”

We had a plan. We were going to walk straight across the Burnside Bridge so we could get home before the snow got any worse. But then we heard the sound of laughing children, and Jack just had to follow it, just had to trace the source of that unrestrained glee.

I think about the teenagers who happily let us borrow their lime-green toboggans; about sitting on the top of the hill in that elementary school playground with my stomach in my throat; about flying down the hill with Jack screaming her head off beside me until we both tipped sideways and fell into the snow in a tangle of semi-injured limbs. About the way she held my hand as we walked the toboggans back up the hill to go again.

I roll my eyes. “It was mildly entertaining, I suppose.”

“I think what you mean to say is, thank you, Jack, for showing me that deviating from my rigid plans can lead to unexpected joy.”

“Let’s not get carried away.” I bend down and try to fit my soaking wet hair under the electric hand dryer. Sledding was fun, with a side effect of being rather wet. Although I’m pretty sure the thing about getting sick from the cold is a lie, I forced Jack into the nearest fast-food bathroom so we could dry off anyway.

“Honesty game,” Jack says as she shoves wadded paper towels inside her wet boots. “Why are you so fixated on always having a plan for everything?”

I squeeze out my thick braid and a little puddle of water forms on the bathroom floor. “If I have a plan,” I explain simply, “then I can’t fail.”

Jack tuts. “Sounds like a logical fallacy to me. I’ve never planned out anything in my life, and I fail all the time.”

“I don’t know very many slackers who say things like logical fallacy.”

“I didn’t say I wasn’t smart. I said the education system is poorly designed. It’s an important distinction.” She begins to unfasten the buttons on her flannel one at a time, moving from the top to bottom. The heat from the air dryer licks the back of my neck. I drop my gaze.

“My parents have been human disasters my entire life,” I tell her while staring at the puddle of water on the floor. “So I worked hard in school. I found something I’m really good at. I took all the AP classes and I got perfect grades. I took out loans for undergrad and got the fellowship I needed for grad school, and I’ve chosen a sensible, stable career that incorporates my love of art, because I don’t want to be like them when I grow up.”

I lift my gaze from the floor, and all at once there’s so much of her. My eyes don’t know what to do with it all. Collarbones visible beneath the slide of her white V-neck undershirt. The outline of a sports bra, the modest swell of her breasts, nipples hard from the cold through two layers of fabric. My lower stomach clenches unexpectedly but not unpleasantly.

“I—I um, you’re, like, naked,” I sputter awkwardly. Because of nipples.

“I’m really not,” Jack says, glancing down at her T-shirt. “You know, I don’t know many twenty-four-year-olds who are literally paralyzed by a fear of failure.”

“I’m not paralyzed by anything,” I say. Except nipples, apparently. Jack peels off her white T-shirt. From delicate wristbone to wide shoulder blade, she’s covered in tattoos, maybe hundreds of them, grayscale ink against light brown skin. I register Mount Hood, a stingray, a line of evergreens, a compass, a desert scene with cacti in bloom.

Jack is living art. The story of an entire life stamped across her skin.

I have a sudden, irrational impulse to have my art on Jack’s body; I want to claim a small patch of her skin for a drawing.

You’ve known this woman for six hours, I remind myself. Get a fucking grip.

“I could never do that,” I mumble, dropping my head again. “Get a tattoo, I mean.”

“You could,” she says, taking a step closer to me, one hand holding her T-shirt out closer to the air dryer. “We could if you wanted. I mean, I’m sure most places have closed from the snow, but I know a few people, and—”

“Jack.” She turns her head to look at me. “I’m not getting a tattoo today.”

She’s close enough that I can smell the damp on her, the sweat and the cold, but beneath all that, even now, is the scent of freshly baked bread. Jack smells like something I want to eat. “Not even right here?” She presses two cold fingertips to the exposed skin south of my collarbone. “Not even where no one would see it? Your little cardigan would hide it.”