Page 66 of Error Handling
“I don’t know.”
“Should we try again?”
“No.”
“What do we do now, then?”
“Wait until they call us out.”
Patrick braved the couch, but I leaned against the desk, silently anticipating the moment I could rinse my mouth out with tropical punch. Patrick and I never met eyes during the rest of the school year, and to my relief, he moved away before high school.
Still, the negative experience affected me well into my senior year when I finally had my second kiss. If it counted as that.
I went to prom with my “dream date,” Yann. Yann was a foreign exchange student from France. So mysterious, he hung in the shadows, barely talked, maybe because he didn’t understand English that well. I didn’t know. But he had no backstory, no memories associated with him like pulling out a bloody loose tooth and showing it to me on the bus, or smelling bad in sixth-grade gym class, or being a “popular” kid and longstanding heartthrob. He was the most handsome guy in school, but his shyness made him uninteresting to the girls in my class, who only had to blink to summon a crowd of yapping and doting boys.
This worked in my favor. I spent the entire year admiring Yann’s looks from afar, thinking maybe my interest amounted to a real crush. When I made the bold move to ask him to prom, he agreed. I drove because Yann didn’t have a license.
As soon as he stepped into the car, his musky cologne overtook me, and I coughed. It smelled like he’d poured the bottle over his head. His spikey hair looked like a medieval torture device. I preferred a softer style, something I could run my hands through without drawing blood.
That wasn’t the worst of it though. The worst was that he had perfect English. He didn’t even have a French accent. He just didn’t speak. We sat in silence most of the evening, while I became increasingly uncomfortable. I tried for about twenty minutes to engage him in conversation, but he answered in one- or two-word quips.
Before long, I was exhausted even trying. Yann fidgeted next to me the entire time, seemingly becoming more agitated. Definitely becoming sweatier.
When the night ended, my feeling of relief was so powerful it felt like a drug. I parked in his driveway, prepared to say the usual niceties about having a good time. Before I had a chance, he grabbed the back of my neck, pulled me close, and planted a juicy one on my lips, which were slightly parted due to shock.
When he pulled away, he was visibly relieved and had a wide smile on his face.
“I had fun,” he said, and then scrambled out the door.
I tried to make sense of the encounter the entire drive home. I finally decided Yann was socially awkward and had worried about that kiss the entire night. Satisfied that he hadn’t intended to cross any boundaries, I tromped up the steps to the upstairs bathroom and brushed my teeth for fifteen minutes, finishing off with a two-minute gargle of Listerine.
That night in bed, I decided never to walk within thirty feet of Yann. I also decided not to ride in cars with strange men, or familiar men who made me feel uncomfortable, unless the man had a criminal background check completed on him by a ride-sharing company.
Finally, at the age of twenty-eight, and maybe despite my best interests, I’m willing to consider mouth-to-mouth tongue wrestling again. Although I hope it will be more pleasant than watching two sweaty men spar on a dirty wrestling mat.
How is your Friday looking?Christopher texts.
I’m perched on the couch in my apartment waiting for Chris—ChrisButcher—to return. We’d spent the day working, Chris finding more and more rotten subfloor, including a couple of floor joists, while I slowly but surely scraped the vinyl from the hardwood with the help of the heat gun.
Chris left at seven o’clock because At Your Service pinged him with an opportunity to fix someone’s clogged sink. He said it would be a nice paycheck for an easy job.
“Hopefully,” he said as he left.
He promised to be back in time for the ghost tour. It’s currently twenty till eleven, so he isn’t late. Since traffic is light, we should be able to drive downtown in fifteen minutes.
I have to work, I reply.
Could you take the afternoon off? Weather’s looking good now, but it could change.
Maybe.
Where do you want to do the photo shoot?Christopher asks.
I think for a moment. There are so many great places in Charleston to use as backdrops for my headshots.
I think I’ll let you decide, I type.
McDonald’s on Spring Street?