She darted into the kitchen to check on the cream puffs and saw her mom and Cisco laughing over something as they filled the baked shells with whipped cream out of pastry bags.
"Almost done, honey," her mom said. "Do you want to help Cisco finish these up so I can take a plate out there?"
"Sure," she said, stepping forward, only to have Cisco push a platter stacked high with filled cream puffs across the island toward her.
"Actually," he said to her mom, "I think we got a good rhythm going here, and we're almost done. Caitlin, you can take these out instead, right?"
"Of course," she said, deflating like a poked balloon. "Of course I can."
Cisco's high school graduation party - 20 and 18
When she walked into the kitchen, he looked up from a card he was reading. "Hey. If you're looking for the bathroom, it's that way."
"I know, I came from there." She leaned against the counter next to him, moving a spare plate of cut veggies and dip. "To quote something a very wise young man said to me once, what are you doing hiding in here on your big day?"
He avoided her eyes, concentrating on coating a celery stick with dressing.
She registered the sound of piano music from the front room and sighed. "Oh. Dante."
"Just one song."
She'd heard too many stories from her brother about the Ramon family dynamics. "You believe that?"
He grimaced. "There's still people in the backyard. I'll go hang out there in a minute."
But right now he needed to feel a little sorry for himself. She nodded. "I'll go that way too. You care if I wait for you?"
"No problem."
Not for the first time, she realized that they actually stood eye-to-eye. She'd spent so long thinking of him as Barry's shrimpy little buddy that it shocked her every time. He looked so grown-up. She'd known him for seven years, but in the time since she'd left for college and right now, he'd suddenly shot up six inches and gotten a pair of - no bones about it - really good shoulders, ones that filled out his Dr. Who t-shirt admirably. And in this position, leaning on the counter, she could still tell that his rear end was - well.
To distract herself from noticing her little brother's best friend's various body parts, she made conversation. "So, how's it feel? Being a high school graduate."
He considered the question, tapping the card against the counter. Their card, she noted, the one that she and both her parents had signed. Barry had written his own. "You know that scene at the end of the Shawshank Redemption? Where Tim Robbins, like, climbs through a tunnel and escapes out a sewer and into a ditch, and he tears his prison clothes off and just stands in the rain all - " He stretched his arms out over his head with an expression of bliss.
"Yes?"
He dropped his arms. "Kinda like that."
She smiled at him, remembering how that had felt. "Tell me that at midterms next year."
"Hey, they'll be midterms in Central City, not West Starling High. Already they're gonna be better. Plus I'll have you to show me around campus and and invite me to all the parties and everything."
"I'm not exactly the best guide. Not really a partier, either."
"But I bet you can fill me in all the best places in the food court."
"Wellllll, I can tell you that you really want to avoid the sandwich bar after about three o'clock."
"Does the meat get grungy?"
"Afternoon shift doesn't always replace the ice and the mayonnaise gets warm."
"Oooooo, food-poisoning-alicious."
"Yep."
"All right, noted. See? Valuable, already."
She laughed. "So, Barry told me something."
"What's that?"
"He, um, he said you've actually been dating some girls this year?"
"Yep."
"What does that mean? Exactly?"
He leaned toward her and whispered, "That I dated some girls."
She flushed. "Okay, I deserved that. You're right, it's none of my business." She picked up the platter of veggies and started toward the door.
He reached out and touched her wrist. She went still.
"You want the truth?" he said.
She nodded.
"I've always liked both."
She set the platter down again. "Really."
"Yep. From the get-go."
"You told Barry you were totally, completely, 100% gay when you were thirteen. You stood on a lunch table and announced it to your whole middle school when you were fourteen."
"Yup. Got detention for that, too. Disrupting the learning environment." He shook his head, tucking his hair behind his ears. "I knew I liked boys from way back, and I thought you had to pick one or the other. And for a long time, I was mostly into guys. If I ever had a thing for a girl, I'd tell myself it was our heteronormative cultural constructs fucking with my super-gay brain."
"Big words. What changed?"
"I dunno. I just started noticing girls more than once in awhile. But after I made all that fuss about it, I didn't think I could go, 'Ha, ha, just kidding, I like girls now too!' And plus, there's people who'd get all mad and accuse you of being a traitor or a man-slut." He shrugged. "This year, I went, 'why the hell should I let anyone slap a confining label on me? Even me? Screw it, I'm almost done here anyway.' And then I tried my luck with the other side."
"How did that work out?"
"Bad choice on the first girl, I'll tell you what. She thought she was converting me."
"Ohhhh, gross."
"Pretty much. But I shot that down hard and moved on."
"Lisa, right?"
He snorted. "Yeah, she wasn't so good for me either, but at least it wasn't because she wanted to de-gayify me."
"So what would you identify as now? If you had to call it something."
"Mmmm." He chomped on the celery stick. "Bi? Maybe pan. I'm not really sure. Definitely somewhere more around the middle of the Kinsey scale than I used to be."
"So I shouldn't feel quite so guilty about what happened at my graduation party."
She could swear he went a little pink, but he said breezily, "Nothing to feel guilty about. Trust me. Anyway, even if I was still gold star gay, it was a mistake and you apologized. Kind of insultingly fast, actually."
"Because I thought it was unwelcome."
"It was unexpected," he said, giving her a look through his lashes. "Not unwelcome."
She blinked a few times. Somewhere in the back of her brain, her good sense said, Don't follow up on that. "Really," she said.
"I'll never turn down a kiss. Kissing's fun."
She felt . . . fizzy. Loose. A little reckless. "Never?"
Hold up, said her good sense. He's your little brother's best friend, plus he's a high-schooler, well, practically a high-schooler -
But she wasn't quite listening, because he smelled so nice, and those shoulders, and the fullness of his lower lip, and really his upper one too, and the way that (maybe? possibly?) he'd kissed her back for a split second, two years before.
"Well, not never," he said. "I'm not a total kiss slut. I mean, if you have bad breath, I won't kiss you. Or if you're a jerk. Or if you've ever punched me in the stomach or shoved me in a locker."
"That's been a consideration?" she asked, shifting toward him. (Noooooooooooo, said her good sense.)
The flicker of his eyes told her he'd noticed the move. "More than you'd expect."
She put her hand on his chest (her good sense left the building in disgust). "What if someone wants to figure out if the last time was a fluke?"
His eyes dropped to her mouth, and he swallowed hard. "N-nope, that's not a disqualifier."
"Good," she said, and tugged him close.
This time, he definitely kissed her back, and wow, was he good at it. No wet floppy tongue, no painful pressure, just light and sweet and exploratory. She held his shoulders for the pure pleasure of getting her hands on them (yes, confirmed, very nice, very solid and strong), and he put his hands on her hips and leaned into her and oh boy.
They pulled apart after a minute. She dropped her hands. He put his in his pockets.
She swallowed. "Nope. Not a fluke."
He took a shaky breath. "Told you I'd kiss anyone."
She stepped back. "Heteronormative cultural constructs and making out with random people at parties," she said, hoping he couldn't spot the flush rising in her cheeks. "You're so ready for college."