Disclaimer: I own nothing IaHB related.
Note: This will be a song fic, starting in the next
chapter. For this chapter, though, this
is just a normal fic.
Told from the viewpoint of Caitie Roth.
We were kissing.
We were sitting on the couch in the living room of my house and we were
kissing. I, Caitie Roth, was kissing my
best friend, Jamie. Holy God, I was
kissing Jamie!
Isn't it funny how those
things happen? I mean, when Jamie had
gotten to my house for our monthly movie marathon, I had never dreamed we'd end
up swapping spit on the couch in the living room. In fact, if anyone had told me that that was what we would end up
doing, I would probably have laughed.
Me and Jamie? No way.
But now, as my hands slid
around to lock behind his neck, I couldn't help but think, yes way.
It was like one of those
kisses that you only see in chick movies.
You know, the kind where the guy moves closer and closer while the girl
closes her eyes and parts her lips in anticipation. And then as their lips touch, a bolt of bright light surrounds
them and they look at each other in awe.
Okay, so we didn't have the bright light thing, but my heart was beating
so fast I thought it might explode. And
why, against my own volition (I swear!) did my fingers seem to be creeping up
into Jamie's hair? Was this really what
I wanted, to be making out with Jamie Waite on the couch in my living
room? No! …………maybe……
We were still kissing.
You know, I couldn't
figure that out. I mean, most boys I
had kissed before had been different.
They had given me a little kiss on the lips and I had groaned
silently. Kissing, to me, had always
been somewhat of a nusiance. Oh sure, I
liked it, but most boys were crappy at it.
They all apparently had thought that for our first kiss, I would be
ecstatically happy if they did an in-depth analysis of my tonsils. Either that or they would kiss me on the
lips so fast, that it was like only the wind had touched me. And I Was supposed to get excited over that?!?!
And then there was
Billy. He thought he was God's gift to
girls when it came to the area of kissing.
Too bad he sucked at it. I
equate Billy's kissing skills to a dead fish.
They're both cold, clammy and downright icky.
But, Jamie was
different. He was warm and…………………. Wow, we were still kissing. It definitely had to be over two minutes
now. Anyway, like I was saying, unlike
other guys I had kissed, Jamie was more hesitant. He had leaned closer and I had closed my eyes (very movie-like)
and then he had kissed me. Just a
little kiss on the lips, except that we just kind of froze in that position for
a few seconds. And then Jamie pulled
back, like, an inch or so and kissed me again.
And then again. Soon, we had the
'little kiss on the lips' thing down pretty well. Then, Jamie moved closer to me on the couch. When he leaned in to kiss me again and his
tongue cautiously, hesitantly sneaked out to touch my bottom lip (in mid-kiss,
no less), I let him kiss me deeper. And
it was totally different from the other guys I've kissed. Jamie wasn't leading an excavation towards
my tonsils, he was simply kissing me. I
was enjoying every minute of it.
His left arm was wrapped
around me, holding me closer to him and the fingers of his right hand were
playing with the ends of my hair. It couldn't
get much better than this, I tell you.
I suppose you are
wondering how this happened. I mean,
like I said, I had not invited Jamie to my house, intent on kissing him. Nope.
I had invited him for our monthly movie marathon. The kiss was just something that
happened. And it wasn't like we had
looked at each other and realized that we were madly in love. No, it didn't happen that way at all. Actually, it all kind of started with a
dare.
"Okay," Jamie said, standing up in front if the
television and holding up a video tape.
He aimed his brown eyes at Caitie , who was sitting on the couch, and
raised an eyebrow. "Explain to me again
why we have to watch a chick flick?"
Caitie
rolled her eyes. She had already
explained all this to Jamie. It really
wasn't that hard of an explanation to understand on the first try. "Because Cindy and Stephanie were talking
about it in my gym class today and they said it was really good."
Jamie
glanced dubiously at the videotape. How
could a chick movie possibly be good?
He and Caitie never watched chick movies at the monthly movie
marathon. Usually, it was comedies of
the Adam Sandler persuasion. Or action
movies. They never watched chick
flicks. "Sliding Doors," he read off
the label on the tape. "Never heard of
it."
Caitie
sighed. "Duh, that's why we're gonna
watch it, Waite. Put it in the VCR."
Jamie
obliged her command and then plopped himself down on the couch next to
Caitie. His hand automatically reached
over to the arm of the couch, where two remote controls sat waiting to be
used. Grasping one of them, Jamie aimed
it at the television and fast-forwarded through the previews on the beginning
of the tape. Usually, he and Caitie
skipped over the previews in order to get to the movie sooner. Unless, of course, the previews on the
beginning of the tape included something with Heath Ledger or Keanu
Reeves. In that case, Jamie was always
forced to stop fast-forwarding so Catiie could drool a little. In her opinion, anything with those two was
sacred. Thankfully though (in Jamie's
opinion), neither guy was in the previews and Jamie and Caitie got the
beginning of the movie within a matter of seconds.
They
settled down into the couch and watched the beginning of the movie.
"You
know," Jamie mumbled after a few minutes of watching the movie, "this is going
to be our last movie night for a while since you are leaving for college next
week."
A
shiver of excitement ran through Caitie's veins as she took her eyes off the
television and glanced at her friend, who sat slouched next to her. Throughout all of high school, Caitie had
never really looked forward to going to college. In her opinion, it was just something that everyone did. Just another stage of life. She had gone through the normal process of hanging
out in the guidance office looking at college catalouges and all that, but it
never really hit her that this would be such a big step. Even when she had been accepted to Syracuse
University, which had one of the best writing houses in the country, she still
had not been too excited.
It
was the day of graduation that it finally hit her that the world of lockers and
petty teenage politics was almost behind her.
She had been sitting on the stage in the auditorium, only half listening
as the Carlson droned on and on about how 'they were going out into the world
now' and how 'it was up to them to make a difference'. And she had looked out into the audience and
seen Jamie sitting with her parents. He
had caught her eye and grinned and suddenly, she had realized that in just a
few months, she would not be seeing him for a rather long time.
She
didn't remember if she smiled back at Jamie because right after that, the
graduates were told to stand up so they could be called to get their
diplomas. She had walked through the
motions as if she were a robot, he mind had been a jumble. And then after the last graduate was called,
people around her started screaming and throwing their caps into the air. Caitie had just stood there, looking up
towards the ceiling of the auditorium as dozens and dozens of square red
objects floated up and then back down to their owners.
It
was then that it hit her. Good God, she
was going to do it. She was going to go
to Syracuse University and major in writing.
And she was going to get away from all the closed minded people of
Kingsport High, who hadn't talked to her because she was just (in their
opinion) too different.
From
that point on, going to college took on a whole new meaning for Caitie. She became excited as the weeks went by and
the date to leave got closer. She
couldn't wait to see her dorm room and to meet her roommate in person. There would be freedom that she had never
had while living at home. It would
just be so cool.
There
was just one thing wrong with the whole picture. Jamie couldn't go with her.
"Well,"
she said, "I'll be home for Thanksgiving.
We can do the next one then."
She
pitied him in the fact that he had another year to go at Kingsport High. He still had to put up with the small minded
people and the petty bullshit that high school is all about at times. He still
had to deal with the fact that some bigger guys liked to pick on him because
they didn't think he was cool enough.
And who would be there to stop him from getting in fights as Caitie had
in the past? No one. He'd have to do it all on his own.
Jamie
sighed and ran his fingers through his dark hair. Thanksgiving was a long time away and he really was going to miss
Caitie. Who was he going to share
detention with? Who was he going to
have around to have fun with and to generally understand him? No one.
He'd have to do it all on his own.
"Don't
worry," Caitie said with a small laugh.
"I'll e-mail you all the time."
He
smiled, hoping that that was the truth.
"Fine. Okay. Whatever.
Let's just stop watching this chick flick, okay? Let's watch a real
movie."
Caitie
laughed. "What, James, you afraid you
might feel a little sappy after this movie is done?"
Jamie
shifted his position on the couch and grimaced. Sappy was not a word that would normally be used to describe
him. No way.
Caitie
laughed again to see her friend's discomfort.
She had to admit that she, too, was not a romance fan, but hey, the two
girls in her gym class had said it was a good movie. And besides, it wasn't all romance. There were some comedy elements that Caitie had already
spotted. The Scottish guy was
hilarious.
"Okay,"
she agreed as she tore her eyes away from the screen again, "I realize that
some of the chick flicks are cheesy, but give this one a chance, okay? I kind of want to see how it ends."
Jamie
grumbled and slouched even further down on the couch. What was it with girls and romance films? Why did they always make guys suffer through
them? And what did the girls like about
these kinds of movies anyway? They were
all the same. Girl meets boy and they
get along great until some kind of barrier creeps up and tries to push them
apart. But, in the end, they somehow
find a way to get over that barrier and be together forever. Happily ever after. Yuck, Jamie thought. That was not reality at all, in his
opinion.
"And
why do girls have to read into everything so much?" Jamie continued out loud.
"I mean, how come in a movie, when the girl gets kissed, she has to read
into what the guy 'must have meant' when he kissed her. Can't a guy just kiss her?"
Caitie
simply stared at him amused. "Go on,"
she said, wondering where in the world he was going with these thoughts.
"Well,
it's like……… it's like if I kissed you
right now and it was all great and everything, but then afterwards you were
wondering what the heck I was thinking of while I kissed you."
Caitie
froze. Okay, she thought, where did
that come from? She looked at Jamie
closely and her brow furrowed a bit as she tried to think of some sarcastic
thing to say to diffuse the situation.
How in the world had the room seemed to get so airless all of the
sudden?
"I
don't read into kisses that guys give me because usually the guy doesn't put
much thought into it at all. So, I know
there is nothing there to think about," she replied after a minute and then she
cocked her head to the side and smiled slightly. "Why, do you think of something amazing when you kiss a girl you
like?" She asked. The question had been partly in interest and
partly in humor. The answer, though,
was not exactly what she expected.
Jamie
looked away from Caitie's eyes and back at the television screen where the new
couple were kissing for the first time.
"Yeah, well, I mean, I don't know.
Maybe. I haven't really thought
of it before now."
Caitie
rolled her eyes. He was such a
guy. Leave it to them to bring up a
rather interesting concept to mull over and then give a somewhat vague answer
when questioned about it. "Okay, well
let's do a test, then," she said and grinned like the devil.
"What?"
"Let's
test your theory about girls reading into the kiss. You kiss me and I'll tell you what you were thinking," she
replied and then raised her eyebrows at Jamie to see if he would take the dare.
Jamie
shook his head and sat up a bit straighter on the couch. His insides were churning for some reason
that he didn't even want to think about.
Kiss Caitie? Like, kiss her like
she meant something to him as more than a friend? Jeez, he thought. He
couldn't do that. It would just be too
weird, wouldn't it? "I don't think
that's such a good idea, Caitie," he said finally and then turned his attention
back to the screen before him.
Caitie
narrowed her eyes. "C'mon Waite. You chicken?"
Jamie
turned his head slowly until his gaze touched her own. Chicken?
Nah, he wasn't chicken. He just
didn't want to kiss her. But, a voice
asked in his head, why not? She was
only his friend. It wouldn't mean
anything at all. Would it?
"Fine,"
he said, turning his body so he could face her better. "I'll do it."
And that's how it
happened. We kissed. And it seemed as if after we started
kissing, we couldn't really stop. I was
running a bit short on breath because of all this kissing business, but did you
hear me complain? Noooo….
I don't really know what
made me challenging Jamie to kiss me. I
mean, yeah, it was what he had said about girls reading into it and all
that. I didn't really agree with what
he said, so I wanted to prove him wrong.
And I thought that it would be harmless enough. I mean, Jamie was my friend. We'd never even come close to passing over
that invisible, extremely-clichéd line between friendship and relationship. We'd always stayed firm on the friendship
side.
God, he was a good
kisser. Damn, I thought, as his hand
came up to cup my cheek. Forget
everything I said before about girls not reading into kisses because I surely
was. My original plan had been to kiss Jamie
quickly and then tell him something like, "I think that that kiss meant we
should watch the Keanu Reeves movie now."
Something like that. Something
very Caitie-like to say. He would
expect something like that.
But….er……that wasn't exactly what I was reading from it. Heck, it was nowhere near it.
And what was I reading
from it? Well, here we have my friend
Jamie kissing the very life out of me and I am enjoying it.
I opened my eyes for a
second to check and then closed them again and went back to enjoying our
kiss. Yup, his eyes were closed
too. He was enjoying it as much as I
was.
So, two people, who had
never done anything other than the usual friendship-like things, are now
sitting on the couch kissing like their whole world depends on it. Okay, it doesn't take a genius to figure out
that maybe just maybe, deep down in my subconscious, I kind of maybe sort of
wanted Jamie to kiss me. But, what
about him? He was apparently enjoying
it to.
Jamie's hand, which had
been playing with my hair, now left my dark locks and moved own to touch the
bottom of my shirt. It rested there for
just a second, his fingers closed over the material. Holy Nelly, my heart started pounding even more and I wondered if
it was possible that I was in the middle of having a heart attack. Ah well, I thought, not wanting to disturb
the moment. At least Jamie is an EMT
and he can save me.
My hands were in his
hair, twisting the rather short strands around my fingertips. And at this point, my lips (I was pretty
much sure of this) were super glued to his forever. What's a girl to do in a situation like this? Sit back, relax and enjoy.
I leaned back into the
couch a little bit and thought about how this would most likely change our
friendship. Good stuff, I thought,
knowing that it might actually turn out to be a good thing. After all, it would be cool to tell my new
roommate about my 'boyfriend' at home…….
Oh my gosh, I
though. I am going to college next
week. I'm leaving and I won't see Jamie
for a really long time. I can't do
this.
Jamie kissed me even
deeper and panic welled up in my throat.
What was I thinking? Did I think
that if Jamie and I started a relationship, it would be 'happily ever after'
like the chick flicks always were? That
wasn't reality. Reality was long
distance relationships not working out all the time. Reality was knowing that Jamie was still going to be in Kingsport
and I was going to be in Syracuse. It
would never work.
And why risk our
friendship for that? We'd known each
other for years, ever since Jamie moved to the Kingsport school district when
we were thirteen. We were so
close. Ahem, yes, right now we were in
the literal sense, but I also meant in the friendship sense. Why would I want to screw that up?
Jamie's hand slid under
my shirt and touched the bare skin of my stomach. Holy Lord, I thought, noticing how every one of my senses seemed
to have gathered right where his hand lay on my skin. A part of me wanted to know what he was thinking. Did he have doubts as well about this whole
thing? Even if he didn't, I did. I couldn't risk our friendship for some
little make-out session that would inevitably end. And I would go off to college and everything would fall
apart. Might as well end it now before
it got too serious.
"Um, Jamie," I said,
pulling back from him a little bit. He
ignored me and tried to kiss me again, but I reached up and shoved him a bit on
the chest, hoping that he'd get the message.
Back away now, my mind telepathically sent to his mind. Back away before anyone gets hurt. Yeah, like he could hear me anyway.
Jamie froze when I pushed
on his chest and slowly, he opened his eyes and looked at me to see what was
wrong. Apparently, the look on my face
said it all because slowly he moved away from me. My stomach all the sudden seemed cold where his hand had been,
but I ignored that and concentrated on what the heck I was going to say to this
guy. He was my friend, but he had also
just kissed the air out of me. No one
had ever done that before. It was more
than a little scary.
"Look," said,
shrugging. Maybe if I kept the mood
light, it would all be okay. "I don't
know what you thought I would think when you kissed me, but nothing came to my
mind."
Okay, so I lied. But, it was to save our friendship. Heck, a little white lie had never hurt
anyone, had it?
The look of hurt in
Jamie's eyes was overwhelming and just for a second, I almost caved and told
him the truth of what I had been thinking.
But, no, I couldn't do that. No
way. This was for the best. It would
never work out between us. And in the
end, I still wanted us to be friends.
Jamie looked away quickly
and stared at the floor in front of the couch.
I glanced at the t.v. and saw that the couple in the movie were kissing
again. God, didn't they ever get tired
of doing that? I wanted so badly to
turn the television off so that I didn't have to see the people on the screen
being so happy and in love. Here in my
living room, the mood was dark, saddened by what I had said to Jamie.
He was staring at the
floor and I could see his jaw was clenched as if something really was bothering
him. He always clenched his jaw when he
was thinking really hard about something.
And then he looked back up at me and I saw again the hurt in his eyes. Did I see a little anger too? Had he somehow seen through my little white
lie?
"Caitie--," he started,
but I cut him off. This was such new
territory for me. Like I said before, I
never expected any of this to happen in the first place. And now, as I sat on the couch, I realized
that I didn't want to hear what he had to say.
I just didn't, because I knew his words would be the truth of how he
felt about what had just happened. And
I couldn't, didn't want to know what he thought of it all. If he started talking about it, I'd be
lost. And then our friendship would go
right down the tubes. So, I did the
only thing I could think of.
"Maybe you should just
go," I said quietly and tried to ignore the pure pain that shot into his
eyes. He stared at me for just a moment
as if trying to assess whether or not I was kidding. I wasn't. So, he looked
back towards the television, nodded once as if accepting the wall I had
unconsciously put between us and then he stood abruptly and without any word,
he left.
I sat on the couch
stunned, not believing that any of it had really happened. I looked back at the television screen and
saw the two principle actors laughing at some party they were at. The tears rolled down my cheeks but I
pretended not to notice them until they made my vision so blurry that I could
no longer see the movie. And then I
leaned back on the couch and cried, thankful that the rest of my family was not
at home to see me.
Whew! Okay, J/C fans, don't fret! This is (believe
it or not) a happy fic. This first
chapter just had to be this way to set up the next chapter. Please review. Thanks.
