Instead of You (2 page)

   I walked outside and shut the doors behind me, hearing the music quiet, but not the thumping of the bass.  I could still feel the beat vibrating through my feet, still hear it as the windows rattled from it.  I continued for about ten steps until I was at the edge of the patio, then took in a deep breath, letting it out slowly.

   A few minutes later I was almost to the brink of panic, thinking too obsessively about all that had happened in a matter of days, when a harsh wave of music broke through the quiet.  I turned to talk to Cory, who I assumed had come to find me, but practically stumbled when I saw it was Hayes instead.

   “Kenzie,” he said, obviously surprised to see me.  “What are you doing out here all by yourself?”  He slowly made his way toward me.  He was shrouded in darkness and I couldn’t see his face until he was a step or two away.

   “I needed a breather.”  I silently hoped he wouldn’t pry.

   “I get it” was all he said in response, which made me happy.  He came to stand right next to me, but didn’t look at me, facing out toward the green just as I had been before he joined me.  So I turned and looked in the same direction.  There we stood, in relative silence, with only the faint buzzing of the music behind us.  I felt the tension start to drift away, the endless loop of stressful thoughts slow in my mind, and the silent hum of the evening cast some sort of soothing magic over me.  It was the most relaxed I’d been in days.

   Then, as if he’d been waiting for me to be tricked by his silence, he asked, “So when’s the wedding?”

   Instantly, I was on edge again.  I knew exactly what he was referring to, but didn’t want him to know that.

   “What do you mean?”

   “Your and Cory’s wedding.  When’s the date?  I need some advance notice so I can tell my professors I’ll be out of town.”

   “Ha ha.”  That was the best response I could produce considering my heart had started beating a million miles an hour.

   “No, seriously, Kenzie.  You’ve both reached that magical age everyone’s been waiting for.  It’s full steam ahead now, right?”  The venom in his voice, the disgust that dripped from every word, surprised me.  In the sixteen years I’d known Hayes I could remember him being visibly upset so few times, I could count them on one hand.  He was aloof, removed, and uninterested in anything having to do with me.  His anger toward my would-be relationship with Cory was so shocking, I nearly stumbled.

   “I don’t know what’s going to happen,” I whispered, unable to come up with any other answer besides a truthful one.

   Hayes turned toward me, coming close enough that I could hear his breath panting out and dragging back in.  “Isn’t he what you want?  What you’ve always wanted?”

   “He’s my best friend.”  Again, the truth fell from my lips.

   “Is that all?”

   I wasn’t sure.  I had no idea what I wanted us to become, I only knew what we already were.  Best friends.  Anything beyond that seemed scary and bigger than I could handle.

   Suddenly Hayes was closer, only a breath away instead of a step.  I should have taken a step back, should have moved away, but his hand came up to cradle my cheek and all I could do was move my eyes up his chest, over his neck, and meet his gaze.

   “Has he kissed you yet?”  Hayes’s voice was even lower now, somehow rougher, almost as if it hurt him to speak the words.

   “No,” I croaked out, trying to shake my head, but his big strong hand keeping my face still.  Then the other one came to join, starting at my cheek, but slowly moving back into the hair at my nape.

   “Good.”

   Everything went black as his lips pressed against mine.  My eyes closed, I could no longer hear the music from the ballroom, and all my senses dulled… except for touch.  I felt his lips slowly slide across mine, felt his thumb brush gently over my cheek, even felt the hardness of his chest as my hands mindlessly slid up his front.

   Looking back on the kiss I would not remember what prompted me to move closer to him, to angle my head to the right, wanting to give him access to all of my mouth, or even remember how it felt so right to be kissing him, but all of that happened.  It was my very first kiss and it should have been awkward and stilted and uncomfortable, but it wasn’t.

   It was, however, instantly passionate, like every cheesy romance movie where the two lovers kiss and fireworks ignite.  There should have been fireworks.  When his lips touched mine, nothing short of an explosion took place.  We were magnetized to each other, moving closer and closer until there was not one iota of space between us.

   I should have felt scandalized when his tongue swept across my lips, but I didn’t.  I didn’t feel anything except ready for whatever came next.  Having Hayes’s tongue gliding through my mouth, his hand gripping my hair, his body seemingly trying to meld with mine, it was both the best and worst thing to happen to me.

   When he finally pulled away, because Lord knows it wasn’t going to be me, I stumbled a bit, trying to acclimate myself to being so solitary again.  With only minutes of being connected to Hayes, going back to standing on my own was more difficult than it should have been.

   He stood just a couple feet away from me, our breaths both panting out, creating the slightest bit of fog.

   “I’m a shitty person for taking that first from you and Cory, but I’ll be damned if I say I haven’t wanted to kiss you for the longest time.”

  
What?

   “Hayes,” I said, cringing at the wobble in my voice, too aware of the thumping in my heart and other parts of my body that were really unaccustomed to such throbbing.  “What was that?”  My fingers came to my lips, and even though I knew it made me look like an idiot, I couldn’t help but touch the part of my body that had been so intimately connected to his.

   He shook his head as a grin came over his mouth.  But then he covered it up with his hand and moved his gaze to his shoes.  When his eyes met mine again, the smile was gone.  “That was just me, taking a risk, and being an asshole.”

   Before I could even digest the words, he spun around and walked back toward the ballroom.  Left standing in the chilly evening all alone with my fingertips still running over the skin left buzzing by his kiss, I was confused as ever.

   What in the world?

  
Hayes had just given me my very first kiss.  Stolen it, really.  And seemed pleased to do so.  And he’d wanted to do it for the longest time?  How long?  I was sixteen, he was twenty.  And his chest was so firm.

   I closed my eyes and shook my head at the thoughts running loose in my mind.  He’d turned around and walked away, but I was still standing in the cold, my fingers pressed against my lips, somehow trying to hold on to the way it felt to be kissed by him.  By Hayes. 
Oh, God.

   “Kenzie?”  Cory’s voice snapped my head back up and my hand away from my lips.  “What are you doing out here?  Are you all right?”

   It scared me how easily the lie slipped from my mouth.  “The music was so loud, I was starting to get a headache.”

   “Do you want me to bring you some water?  I could ask my mom if she has any Tylenol.”

   “No, I think I’ll be okay.”  I stared at him, silently hoping he’d go back into his party where all our friends would be glad to dance with him, to hang out with him, to occupy him while I used what little brainpower I had left to dissect what had happened between Hayes and me.  Instead, he stepped closer.

   “I was hoping you would dance with me.”

   “You know I don’t dance.”

   He stopped inches from me, just as his brother had not five minutes before.  His hands were in the pockets of his suit pants, and he bent at the knee slightly to look me in the eye.  “Come on, Kenzie.  It’s my birthday,” he pleaded, batting his too-long eyelashes at me.  “Dance with me.”  His last words were spoken softly, as if he were embarrassed to be asking me at all.  But it was his birthday, and I had technically come to his party with him—I owed him at least a dance.

   “Okay,” I replied, my voice matching his in softness.

   He took another tentative step toward me, his eyes never leaving mine, then pulled his hands from his pockets.  One reached out and landed on the curve of my waist, the other he held up, waiting for me to place my palm in his.

   Touching wasn’t new for us, and dancing wasn’t either.  But dancing in the dark, alone, with only the distant sound of music in the background was uncharted territory.  This was something that, had you asked anyone, was destined to happen.  We were both finally sixteen years old: let the relationship commence.  I knew it was coming, yet the only feeling I had about it was trepidation.

   Could Cory tell I’d just kissed his brother?  Could he somehow smell Hayes on me?  Were my lips as swollen and sensitive as they felt?  Was my waist hot where his hands had been?

   I could only hope all the answers were no, pray that Cory had no idea his brother had totally and completely obliterated me with just one kiss.

   “Can you believe we finally made it?” Cory asked as we swayed in tiny circles.

   “Made it?”

   “To sixteen.  We finally made it.”

   “Oh, yeah.  Suddenly I feel like the years flew by.”

   “Really?” he asked, his smile lighting up his boyish face.  “The last two years have been torture for me, dragging on and on.”  His hands slid farther around my waist, effectively pulling me a little closer as his hand came to rest in the small of my back.  “But now we’re here, and we’re both sixteen.  All I want, Kenzie, is for us to finally be together.”

   I saw him duck, watched as his face drew nearer to mine, and tried to hide the horror from my face when I realized Cory was going to kiss me. 

   His mouth met mine with a little too much force, causing my teeth to painfully press into my lips, but once his mouth was there, it stalled for a moment, leaving me blinking, afraid to move, kissing my best friend.  When Cory finally moved, it was to spread his lips, his tongue darting out and forcing my lips apart in the process.  Our teeth knocked together as his tongue continued to explore.  I pulled away, horrified at how terrible we were at kissing each other, but his mouth followed mine and his hands pulled me closer.

   When the kiss was finally over, no less than one million thoughts filtered through my mind.  How in the world had I gone sixteen years without one kiss, but managed to get two in less than ten minutes?  I tried to focus on the thoughts that told me the quality of the kisses were both based on experience, which would explain why Cory’s was the less successful of the two; Hayes obviously had more experience.  And while I was busy convincing myself the kiss with Cory was just a matter of practice, I also tried to tamp down the voice in my head that was telling me it was more than that.  The small, yet loud, voice that screamed at me that the kiss was about chemistry, and that I had none with Cory.  I tried very hard not to listen to my body which, after both kisses, could declare a clear winner. 

   My poor heart.  No one had informed it there’d be a competition.  No one had warned me about Hayes.

   “Wow,” Cory breathed as he pulled away from me, his eyes still sparkling, mouth tipped up into a smile.  I tried to match his smile, tried to, in some way, force myself to be just as enamored with that kiss as Cory was.  “I know you’re nervous, Kenz I do,” he said as his forehead came to rest against mine, both his hands now wrapped firmly around my waist.  I let myself lean into him, hoping he could calm the panic rising within me.  “But I know we are meant to be together, and I’ll spend as long as it takes convincing you of that.”

   His mouth moved slowly toward mine again, and thankfully, the second kiss was much better than the first.  It was soft and sweet, less insistent and less involved.  It was the first kiss I imagined us sharing, except it wasn’t my first.

   “Let me prove it to you.”  He whispered this against my lips, and I knew I had no other choice except to answer with my own whispered response.

   “Okay.”

Chapter Two

1:00 a.m., Cory’s Seventeenth Birthday

McKenzie

   I was startled awake by the unmistakable sound of my window being opened.  The sound of wood sliding against wood pulled me from a deep sleep and it took me a moment to realize where I was and what was happening.  Once it fully occurred to me that someone was climbing in my window, I shot out of my bed like lightning.  I had made it to my feet just in time to see a dark, shadow of a person moving toward me.  Before I could scream to save my life, warm and familiar hands rested on my shoulders, and a soothing voice spoke to me.

   “Kenz, it’s me, don’t freak out.”  Cory’s voice was instantly recognizable, and it took me from terrified to irritated in a flash.

   “What are you doing?” I whisper-yelled, my eyes starting to make out the features of his face in the darkness.  He stepped closer to me, his hands moving down my arms, then landing on my waist and moving upward.  It had been exactly one year, to the day, even, since Cory had started touching me less like a best friend and more like a boyfriend.  I’d be lying if I said that it didn’t take a while to get used to.  But I’d also be lying if I said I didn’t like it.

   I pushed his hands away halfheartedly, grinning when they only started at my waist again and moved up.  He was hard to dissuade, I’d found.

   “It’s our one-year anniversary, Kenzie.  I was lying in bed thinking about how much I love you, and I couldn’t sleep, so I decided to come over here and tell you to your face.”  His lips found mine and I could feel his smile against my mouth.  His hands traveled north again, stopping very high along my ribcage. “Sweet Jesus, you’re not wearing a bra.”  As if to prove his point, his hands moved all the way to my back, feeling for my bra strap.  “Tiny sweet baby Jesus,” he whispered as his hands moved toward my front.  I rolled my eyes, knowing he couldn’t see me.  I swatted his hands away just before they covered my breasts.  Not because I was particularly against him touching me there, but more so because I knew it would frustrate him and he’d just woken me from a very deep sleep.  Karma was a bitch.