Middle Kiss

 Opposites attract if you're a magnet.

Sometimes you watch movies or read books where the two main characters start out hating each other, but then end up falling in love at the end. This story isn’t like that.

Katherine and Tom didn’t exactly hate each other, but they weren’t particularly fond of one another either. Despite the fact that Katherine and Tom would rather not spend time together, they did. All too much time. It was Katherine’s best friend’s husband’s fault. Sarah was best friends with Katherine, and Sarah’s husband Matthew was unfortunately good friends with Tom. Whenever Katherine attended an event that included Sarah and her husband, Tom was more than likely invited as well. The two had even spent an unfortunate three days camping together in the woods.

To make matters worse, Sarah and Matthew were just positive that Tom and Katherine should date.

“Sarah, you don’t understand. He posts excessive question marks on Facebook. It irritates me to no end. And don’t even get me started on his habitual use of lol.”

“Not everybody gets as bothered by incorrect punctuation and text lingo as you do.”

“Not everybody gets bothered by seeing people in the nude, but that doesn’t make it okay to walk down the street without clothes on either.”

Tom had his reasons to dislike Katherine as well. In his opinion, Katherine was snobby and vain. During the aforementioned camping trip, Katherine had actually bothered to spend time curling her hair in the community bathroom before a fishing trip. It caused the boat to leave 45 minutes late and thus Tom never caught his coveted Rainbow Trout.

Besides the ridiculousness with the hair, Katherine would bring up her Master’s degree whenever she got the chance. She’d start sentences with “In my professional opinion…” or “as someone with a background in blah blah blah.” It drove Tom mad. He hoped that one day she’d be at the library and an encyclopedia would fall on her head. It was a very juvenile thing to wish upon somebody, but that was fitting since Katherine found Tom to be quite juvenile.

One evening, Katherine found herself in an unfavorable predicament. She was at Sarah’s husband’s surprise birthday celebration and had too much to drink. She blamed her increased desire for insobriety on the fact that earlier that week her car had been smashed into while she was waiting to make a left hand turn. As it was, she felt that a birthday and totaled car was more than enough reason to drink excessively.

At one point, Sarah asked Katherine if she wouldn’t mind going up to the second floor guest room to get some extra fold-up chairs out of the closet. Katherine didn’t mind at all and enjoyed the opportunity to get away from Tom’s annoying stories of his college basketball days. Katherine didn’t return immediately, so Sarah sent Tom upstairs to help her.

Tom found Katherine inside the closet, which was actually more of an attic crawl space. She was lounging on a bean bag chair with her eyes shut. Tom thought it would be funny to scare her, so he stepped inside the closet and slammed the door behind him. Katherine jumped and let out a tiny scream. Tom was sad that he missed her expression through the darkness of the closet.  

“What in the hell are you doing?” she demanded.

Tom laughed and went to open the door. It was locked.

“You idiot. You got us stuck in here.”

“What kind of closet has an automatic lock on it?”

“The kind that are in old houses with haunted spirits,” Katherine replied.

The two fumbled around feeling for a light switch, but found none.

“Just what I wanted. To be stuck in a confined space with Tom Graphton. Without my margarita.”

“You’ve had enough drinks. Sarah sent me up here to help you.”

“Of course she did. She’s always scheming to get us together.”

“What do you mean?”

“You haven’t noticed? Of course you haven’t. You’re a moron. Let me explain it to you.” Katherine spoke slowly. “Sarah and Matthew think we should date each other.”

 It was really an absurd thought. The only thing she found attractive about Tom was his perfect nose. It really was an irritating thing about him. Many times she had wanted to run her fist into it and make it a bit crooked, but not now. She was too intoxicated for that sort of hand-eye coordination.

“What do you think?” Tom replied.

“I think you are too cocky and self-centered to make for a pleasant personality.”

“This from the girl who is drunk and got us locked in a closet.”

“I never invited you into this closet. And you’re the one who shut the door.”

Tom smirked in the shadows. “You probably locked the door ahead of time hoping I’d come up here and find you. It was all a plan. You did it because you wanted to make out with me.”

“What is this? Seven Minutes in Hell? Like I said, you are cocky and self-centered. I have no desire to kiss you whatsoever.”

“Right,” Tom said, disbelievingly.

“Do you want me to kiss you or something?” Katherine jokingly leaned forward.

“Are you kidding me? I find you completely unattractive.”

“Even in the dark?” Katherine snorted.

“Do you want me to kiss you or something?” Tom moved closer to her.

“No. Absolutely not.”

“Good. Then we have established that I don’t want to kiss you and you don’t want to kiss me,” said Tom. His face was positioned six inches from hers.

“Don’t forget, we have also established that you are arrogant and narcissistic. And you blame others for your stupid actions.”

“Sure, that too. But you are vain and snobby.”

Katherine put her head two inches closer. She could feel his breath. “How many mint leaves did you eat before coming up here?” she accused. “You were looking for Audrey, weren’t you? You were hoping she’d be so low on self-confidence from her recent break-up that she’d make out with you, weren’t you?”

“No,” Tom said.

Katherine continued. “If I kissed you, you’d be the worst Middle Kiss of my life. And I don’t need that haunting me. Joey Ringle in 7^th grade was enough.”

“Middle Kiss?” Tom said.

“Yeah. You know how people have a First Kiss, and then later in life, a Last First Kiss? Well, in between are Middle Kisses. People like to brush over the value of them, like they don’t even matter.”

“Who’s Joey Ringle?” Tom asked.

“My first kiss. It happened in the back of a bus on the way to the Lewis and Clark Museum field trip.”

“Oh. Really terrible, huh?”

“Yeah. Joey had Dorito breath and he was as slobbery as a dog. And then on the way back from the field trip, Joey switched bus seats and kissed Claudia Harper. Which just goes to show you that our kiss meant absolutely nothing to him…Why am I telling you this again?”

“You were talking about regret and Middle Kisses.”

“Oh yeah. I could never kiss you. You’d be the worst middle kiss of my life.”

“You said that already. But I have to agree with you. You’d be the worst middle kiss of my life. I don’t usually regret kissing girls, but you would be a definite indiscretion.”

Katherine wanted to slap him.

Tom brought his face closer. He could smell Katherine’s strawberry lip gloss. He bit his bottom lip and blinked.

Even though it was dark inside the closet, Katherine could feel Tom staring at her. They both breathed in and out, in and out, inches from each other. It was a game to see who was lying. Who would go in for the kiss first? But I told you at the beginning that this story doesn’t end like that.

They weren’t lying. Tom found Katherine unattractive, and Katherine found him to be a terrible asshole. She wouldn’t put her lips on that. The two sat in the dark across from each other for thirty-five minutes.

What finally broke the stalemate was Katherine’s need to use the bathroom. She found her bladder at maximum capacity and could hold it no longer.

“I really need to get out of this closet.” Katherine moved toward the door and started banging on it. “Help! Let me out of here!” she yelled.

Tom wanted to get out equally as badly, so he started to scream as well.

“Help! I’m locked in a closet with a psycho and I don’t want to be murdered!”

Katherine punched him in the side for that one.

After about five minutes, they finally heard steps padding up to the second floor. There was some fumbling at the door and then it opened. Sarah, Matthew, and two other party guests peered in at the captives.

Katherine scrambled out and ran to the bathroom. Tom stepped out and asked for another beer.

Sarah smiled to herself, thinking her secret plan had worked. They were going to like each other after all. Her hopes were dashed two minutes later when Katherine returned from the bathroom and announced to the entire living room, “I just want everyone to know that getting locked inside a closet with Tom was a complete accident, not enjoyable, and we did not kiss whatsoever.”

“Yeah, I totally did not kiss her,” Tom said.

Nobody believed them.