The Kiss Off (10 page)

“Thank you!” I called after him, the heavy outer door slamming behind him. I took some more deep breaths, ignoring the faint whiff of trash from the dumpster further up the alley. It was pretty clean, as far as alleys go. A couple of cars parked back here, and a van which I assumed belonged to the Academy of Lies. I couldn’t believe what they had done to my song, how they had transformed it from something average into something epic. I also couldn’t believe how the world was spinning.

“Hey, what are you doing out here?” I twisted to look behind me and my stomach fluttered when I saw it was Ty, smiling down at me, looking amused. “You hiding from me? Was it really that bad?” he asked, taking a swig from a can of Mountain Dew.

“Hey – no!” I said. “Of course not, I just, you know, it’s hot in there,” I said, fanning myself.

“Okay, good,” he said.

“What are you doing out here? Why aren’t you on stage? Isn’t the band missing their front man? You didn’t tell me you were the front man.”

“Didn’t I?” he said. “Well I am. We’re between sets.”

“Oh.”

“That song,” I said, shaking my head.

He stiffened. “Yeah?”

“Words cannot describe how much I loved it. You made it awesome.”

He grinned, clearly relieved, and sat beside me on the dock. “No,
you
made it awesome.” He nudged me with his shoulder. “We just did our thing.”

I smiled at him.

“It’s going pretty well, don’t you think?” he said. “Good crowd.”

“It’s going great,” I agreed. “I’m having the best time.”

“So, how many guys have tried to pick you up yet?”

I grimaced.

“Clearly no one’s succeeded, since you’re sitting out here by yourself.”

“Or maybe you scared him off,” I shot back.

“Maybe,” Ty smirked. He did have a subtle glance around though. I caught him. He totally liked me!

“If you must know,” I said, “I’m a little bit drunk.”

“Oh,” he laughed.

I held my thumb and pointer finger together and squinted at him. “Only a little bit.”

“Are you going to hurl everywhere? Is there going to be projectile vomit? Do you think you could hit the Mazda over there? No, how about that crate, can you see it?”

“I’m not going to projectile vomit, jackass,” I told him with a grin. “At least I don’t think so.”

He held up his can of Dew. “Cheers.”

“What are you cheersing to?”

“To there being no projectile vomit in our immediate futures.” Ty sculled his Mountain Dew, snorted and started coughing. And kept coughing. I slapped him on the back a couple of times.

“Urgh,” he said between wheezes and gasping breaths. His eyes were streaming and he rubbed at them and his nose with the back of his hand. I giggled. I couldn’t help it.

“It went up my nose.”

I totally laughed then. Anyone would have. Even he did.

“Stop laughing,” he told me. “The bubbles, it burns.”

“You are such a dork.”

“I am not!”

“Oh, shut up you big baby.” I ruffled his hair. And then he started ruffling mine and I started squealing and slapping his hands away, horrified because it was just going to go frizzy, but at the same time he was trying to be playful and then I was tickling him and he was tickling me and then he tackled me and I fell onto my back. He’d fallen with me and there we were, on the cement of the loading dock in the darkness of the alley behind The Hill, Ty lying on top of me. We’d both stopped laughing. He brushed a lock of hair from my face and looked at me again. I found my eyes drawn to his lips, the hint of a smile curling them up at the corners. Then slowly he leaned forward and kissed me.

We lay there for what felt like hours, hundreds of thousands of glorious hours just wrapped around each other, his warm body pressed to mine, one of my legs that somehow automatically snaked around his, his fingers curling and stroking my hair (which I so didn’t care about ruining anymore) until he snaked his fingers under my neck and cradled my head, lifting it up from the solid, icy concrete. What a gentleman.

The heavy door banged open somewhere up there behind us.

“Hey – get off her!” someone yelled and the next thing I knew, Ty was hauled off me and he slid backward off the loading dock down a couple of feet into the alley. He looked up at us, surprised. I sat up and peered around, Ravi stood back, holding a couple of bottles of water, and beside me was Cam.
Cam.

“Take it easy, punk,” Ty said.

“
What are you doing
?” I demanded of Cam, standing up. Then the loading dock tilted sideways and I collapsed into Ravi’s outstretched arms. How had he gotten over here so fast? I stood up again, steadied myself and then with one hand to my head, I shoved Cam in the chest. “What the hell are you doing?”

“You’re wasted and Ravi said you were out here all alone and I come out to make sure you were okay and found this guy pawing all over you.” He turned to Ty with a furious glare. “Get out of here, rapist!”

“I’m not-”

“Dude,” Ravi said.

“He was taking advantage!”

“He was
not
taking advantage of me, God!” I said. “You don’t own me, Cam.
You
get out of here.”

“Dude,” Ravi said again, nudging Cam. “Dude, it’s the guy from the band.”

Cam looked from Ravi to Ty in the shadows down in the loading dock. He squinted at him and then his eyes widened, before looking at me.

“He wasn’t hurting you?” he said. “You’re okay?”

“Yes, I was okay!” I was more than okay. I had been so completely
more
than okay.

“Oh.”

“So um,” I said, as Ravi and Cam continued to stand there. “Do you mind?”

“Right,” Cam blinked rapidly, spurred to action. He hurried back over to the door, looking at his feet, the ground, the wall. “Ravi, you coming?”

Ravi handed me a bottle of water and gave Ty an awkward wave. “Sorry, man,” he said. Ty shrugged, but stayed where he was.

“You’re feeling okay, you going to be sick? Should we get you home?” Ravi asked.

“No, I’m fine. Promise,” I said. “Thanks for the water.”

Ravi nodded, glanced back at Ty and they disappeared inside, the door banging shut behind them.

I looked at Ty. He gave me a weak smile. “Who was that douche?”

“I’m sorry about him,” I said, sitting back down. “He’s a bit of an ass. You know that song I wrote, ‘The Kiss Off’?”

Ty smirked, climbing back up onto the platform. “Sounds familiar.”

I pointed toward the door back to the club. Then I kissed my hand and blew the kiss at the door.

“Whooooaaaaa, no way,” Ty said.

“Way.”

“He even has your back after you wrote that? After I sang that? Hmm…” he said, thoughtfully. Suspiciously.

“What ‘hmm’?” I said. “There’s no ‘hmm’ here.”

He smiled at me which made my tummy squirm – in a good way – and moved toward me, like he was going to kiss me again. I had
no
objections to that. But then he stopped, his eyes widened and he fished his cell phone out of his pocket.

“Shit!” Ty dashed past me for the door back inside. Halfway in, he turned back. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m due back on stage, so…”

I waved him away. “Of course,” I said. “Go go go.”

“You’ll be okay? You coming back in?”

“Yeah, in a minute,” I said.

He smiled at me. “I’ll call you, yeah?”

My insides started to swell inside me, swelling with excitement, the excitement wanted to be free. I controlled my face though. I mean I tried really hard to.

“Yeah,” I said, suddenly shy. I bit my bottom lip and nodded. “Okay.”

He smiled again and disappeared inside. As soon as the door closed behind him my face broke out in a cheek-hurting grin, the sort of grin that you can’t stop, you have no control over, the grin that is in control of your face, not the other way around. I giggled to myself and lay back down on the loading dock. Okay, so Mads called it. Maybe I
did
like him.

As I lay down, my body remembered that only moments ago I had been making out with him, in that very spot. My knee arched to entwine around his, but he wasn’t there. I sat up with a sigh and took a sip of my water. Stupid Cam. He ruined everything. As I sat there scowling, my mind swirled and wandered with images. Images of me and Cam in happier days. The time we went to the beach, just the two of us, it had been the best day. I mean, sure it had taken four buses (one of which took us a half hour in the wrong direction) and two hours to get there, and by the time we did, it was packed with families and screaming kids, toddlers running around with no pants on, and the sand had been so hot that we both ran across it, screeching like monkeys because our feet were on fire. And he got so sunburnt that day. But it had been great. We had wandered under the boardwalk, picked up pretty seashells and thrown gluggy sand at each other, running straight into the water to wash it all off. We had our first kiss on that beach, in the ocean.

And three weeks later he had visited me at the Steak House and I had introduced him to Nikki. I took another sip of my water. I wondered how long it had been going on, Cam and Nikki. How long I simply hadn’t seen it. Had it been the whole four months we were together? Well, minus three weeks. I thought about Cam and me making out at parties, ignoring the world even existed. It couldn’t have been then, because Nikki would tell me about her hook ups with other boys the next day as she had rubbed concealer on the bags under her eyes.

Images of Cam and Nikki making out at Ravi’s party flashed before my eyes and I grimaced and took another sip of water. Nikki was very handsy, the way they were always touching Cam, roaming all over him. I wondered if they’d done it yet. Wait, stop – ugh! I didn’t want to know if they’d done it yet! But my brain took me there, anyway. To Nikki’s bedroom – her parents were hardly ever home – and Cam would be sitting on the end of the bed, watching as Nikki pulled her tank top over her head and tossed it at him with a laugh. She would step forward and kneel in front of him, and slowly unbutton his shirt. They’d pull it off together, staring into each other’s eyes. They’d start kissing, and, with eyes closed, she would expertly undo his belt and-

Stop
. No. None of that sounded like Nikki. What sounded more like Nikki was that as soon as they entered the house she would jump him. She’d slam the door and start pulling his shirt off as they walked, she’d rip hers off and throw it at the floor. She’d be laughing and kissing him and they’d probably both be naked by the time they got to the stairs. He wouldn’t know what had hit him. Except he would, because he knew Nikki, he would have known what he was getting himself into. And probably by now, he was an expert, with Nikki. He was probably the one tearing off all of
her
clothes before they reached the stairs.

I threw the bottle of water into the alley just as the door slammed open again.

“Poppy,” I turned around and it was Nikki, of all people. I couldn’t believe it, like somehow my thoughts had summoned her. I made a mental note to never, ever think of her again.

I glared at her and she looked a bit startled at my blatant animosity. “What do
you
want?” I said.

“It’s Mads, she’s wasted. You might want to get her home.”

“Oh.” I hauled myself slowly to my feet. As I wobbled a little, Nikki rushed to steady me. “Back off!” I said, and she did. She backed right off.

“Fine, jeez,” she muttered. She backed right off through the door.
Whatever
, I thought, following her slowly back inside to the club. Screw her. Who needed her or Cam, anyway? I sure didn’t. Because Ty was going to call me.

***

Chapter Ten

But he didn’t call me. It had been nearly two weeks and he hadn’t called me, and he wasn’t on the bus in the mornings. Not even the afternoons. I didn’t know what had happened.

I stood in the gloomy deliveries room out the back of the thrift store Preloved which Mads worked at, helping her sort through the piles and piles of orange plastic bags of new clothing donations. Had I really just been a hook up to Ty? Had he used me for my song, then used me for my lips and that was it? If that was it, he was off my Christmas card list, and there was no freaking way he was getting my song. Uh-uh. If he didn’t call me, I’d have to call him. No, I’d text him, that would be easier. Tell him to go fuck himself and that playing The Kiss Off was a one-time deal. Call it my charity work for the week. He could
not
keep it and Academy of Lies should pretend they’d never even heard it. No matter how awesome their version sounded.

This sucked.

I picked up a home-made tie-dyed wool sweater with big brown beads sewn into the neckline, and stared at it, unsure of exactly who in their right mind would buy it.