Kiss Her Once for Me (70)

“No, Jack, listen—”

But there’s nothing I can say, and Jack doesn’t stay to hear it anyway. She stomps out of the bathroom. I sit perched on the edge of the sink, listening to the sound of her footsteps receding into the distance, melding together with another Christmas song.

It feels terrible to be the one who’s left behind.





A Webcomic

By Oliverartssometimes

Episode 6: The L-Word

(Christmas Eve, 6:57 p.m.)

Uploaded: January 28, 2022

“Honesty game: I feel like I’ve known you forever.”

“Okay, that’s not how the honesty game works. You’re supposed to say honesty game, and then ask a question you want an honest answer to.”

“The game has existed for, like, ten hours. And as its creator, I think I’m allowed to bend the rules to my will.”

“Then why even have rules?”

“Fine. Then ask me if I feel like I’ve known you forever.”

I sigh. “Honesty game: Do you feel like you’ve known me forever?”

Jack cranks out a half-moon smile that makes me feel absolutely giddy. “I do. Oh—nachos!”

The owner of the bar drops a mountainous platter of nachos onto the table and gives us a grunt. “What kind of idiots stay out all day in the middle of an unprecedented snowstorm?”

“Us kind of idiots,” Jack answers pleasantly as she pulls a nacho from the middle of the stack, a jalape?o falling onto her flannel as she attempts to shove the chip into her mouth.

“Well, the nachos are on the house. I don’t want your deaths on my conscience.”

We are sitting in a dark corner of a dark bar, knees and calves and elbows all touching. The bar is mostly empty, save for a few regulars who live in the apartments across the street and a group of unhoused people the bartender invited out of the cold. Most places have closed, but we found a bar where the owner lives upstairs and has no reason not to stay open for anyone who needed the heat. Or any idiots who needed dinner.

And we are idiots.

We still haven’t crossed the bridge that will take us to Southeast Portland, the bridge that will take us home. We haven’t discussed it, but the bridge feels like this chasm between the people we are today and the people we will be tomorrow, or in a few days when the snow melts, when this weird, magical, time-defying bubble pops.

We claimed starvation was the reason we got off track this time, but I know for me, at least, it was partially fear. Fear of what comes next. Fear of how this ends.

My fear should be about getting home, but the owner is making another batch of spiced eggnog, and Jack is kissing me between bites of nachos in our corner booth, and I can’t seem to care. Knees and calves and elbows and hands. Spicy, sweet kisses.

“Honesty game: tell me about every person you’ve ever loved,” Jack whispers into my hair.

I let myself reach out and touch the white scar on her upper lip. “I love my best friend, Meredith.”

“And you act like I’m a queer cliché.”

“No, I mean, I platonically love her. I’ve never loved anyone romantically before.” Jack’s fingers are still in my hair. “I thought I loved my college girlfriend, but I think I just loved what she taught me about my sexuality and myself. Is that weird? That I’ve never been in love love?”

Jack shrugs. “All types of love are love love.”

I kiss her scar then.

“We all experience attraction differently,” she continues, pressing her mouth to the soft skin behind my ear. “Some of us fall in and out of love easily. Some of us don’t experience romantic love at all. Some of us have to fight to let ourselves be vulnerable enough to fall in love.” She kisses my throat. “Some of us have to fight to let other people love us.”

She kisses my shoulder, a small patch of my skin that had been covered by my blue scarf all day. “Some of us need emotional intimacy in order to experience sexual attraction.” She nuzzles me until I laugh from the feeling of her nose against my skin. “All love and ways of loving are love, Elle.”

It’s just one syllable. One letter. Elle.

Yet I somehow feel like tectonic plates are shifting inside me, like my internal organs are experiencing subduction, pushing dormant feelings to the surface.

Because this. Jack in a dark bar. A jalape?o on her shirt and spiced eggnog on her tongue. Seeing and being seen. This feels like love love.

This feels like something huge and confusing, something too clumsy for me to puzzle through in my brain and in my chest, and it’s only been nine hours.

There are rules. Plans to follow. Schedules and structures. You’re not supposed to fall in love with a person in a single day, but maybe you can, when it snows.

Maybe on a snow day, you can ignore the nagging voice in the back of your head that says this won’t last because nothing lasts, because the people in your life don’t stick around. Maybe you can trust. At least, maybe you can trust her.

“Honesty game,” I say, and my voice shakes a little bit. “I feel like I’ve known you forever, too.”





Chapter Twenty


Friday, December 23, 2022

“I did not realize you were in that kind of romantic comedy.” Meredith lets out a low whistle from my phone screen.