Chapter 10: The Awkward First Kiss
(Jack's POV)

I had spent my first week or so at the Inn that my father and I had stayed in when we first arrived in Mineral Town. Over that span of time, I had met quite a few people while out shopping for food and exploring the surroundings. I hadn't bothered Jenny since I had made my decision to stay in town for a while, and I had figured that she knew where I was and she would talk to me when she felt the need to. That was my approach to most things in life; passive.

It had become routine for me to talk with Ann and Karen over a few beers in the evenings. They seemed genuinely interested in my life back in the city and enjoyed talking to me. I felt comfortable talking to them, so I never hesitated to answer any question that they asked me. In retrospect, this would come back to bite me, but at the time I had just been enjoying the new-found friendship since I had never been the kind of person to easily open up to others- especially women. I really had begun to feel accepted by the people of Mineral Town, which is more than I could say about my town back home.

Though I enjoyed Ann's, and to a lesser extent, Karen's, company, I was excited when they told me that Jenny would be joining us that evening.

"That's good! I'm glad she's feeling better, I was a little worried about her," I confessed unknowingly to Karen. Ann hadn't come down yet for the evening.

"Why were you worried about her?" she asked in a cold tone. I stumbled over my words a bit, because I hadn't really thought about why, but she interrupted me, "Jenny just does that for attention, she just disappears for a while without telling anyone anything. It's really fucking annoying." I wasn't sure what to say, so I didn't say anything. She eventually continued.

"She always used to do that. When we were kids and we'd fight she'd just run off for hours and everyone would look for her, and we couldn't do anything else until we found her. She'd say she didn't want anyone to look for her, but I know she did. Why else would she do it? Then she just went to college one day and she didn't even tell me, her best friend, that she had planned to go! She said she just decided last minute but no one just decides to go off to college last minute! Ugh, it makes me so fucking mad because it's always about her." I hadn't realized until that moment that Karen harbored a lot of contempt for Jenny though she claimed to be her closest friend.

"I'm not in a position to speculate about Jenny's intentions, but I'm sure she didn't mean to hurt your feelings." That was the wrong thing to say. I had started to learn though that almost everything was the wrong thing to say to Karen.

"Ugh! You sound like everyone else, always making excuses for her! Well, I don't make excuses and I don't let anyone else get away with that kind of behavior. I'm not afraid to call people out- you've got to say what you mean and mean what you say!" Though I didn't disagree with her attitude, I felt that it had little to do with Jenny and her current behavior. Before I could say anything, she continued, "okay, we always talk about her, so let's talking about something more fun." I became a little nervous as she began to ask me very personal questions about my past relationships. I answered vaguely, hoping that she would stop, but the more ambiguous my answers were the more insistent she became. I had never been more thankful for another guy to take a girl's attention away from me.

"Hey guys, hope I'm not interrupting," stated Rick as he sat at our table, obviously not concerned at all about interrupting us. Karen seemed annoyed and quickly excused herself, leaving Rick and I to talk. We ordered beer and talked about the local liquor, but beyond an appreciation for craft beers and alcohol in general, Rick and I had little in common.

Eventually, Karen made her way back to the table with Ann and Jenny following behind her. She walked with a strong posture; slightly taller than the others, she stayed ahead of them as if she were the leader of the pack. Her light brown hair reached far down her back, the strands in front a slightly lighter shade than the rest, almost blonde. Her clothing left little to the imagination and, though I confess that I had appreciated looking at her feminine qualities, I was a little put off by her lack of modesty in general. Ann on the other hand was almost too reserved with the way she dressed, very obviously hiding an athletic, yet still girlish, figure under her ill-fitted boyish jeans and t-shirt. Jenny was the shortest of the three with a substantially smaller frame, yet it made her stand out from the other two rather than cause her to be lost in their shadows. From the beginning I had found her to be very attractive and unlike any girl I had seen before. Her golden-blonde hair was tied back that night and her shirt was just tight enough to grab my attention but not revealing enough to lose my interest.

I found it interesting that the three of them were so close because they seemed nothing alike. In the city, it was common for girls to travel in groups, but usually you could tell who a girl's friends were because they all dressed alike or had some common thread. These three though looked nothing alike and seemed to make it a point to not look like the others, which was a refreshing quality to me. I was also a little drunk and just excited that there were girls around me.

Our conversations and drinking came to an abrupt end when the band went live and washed out all frequencies within the range of human hearing in a fifty-foot radius. Regardless, Karen still attempted to carry on a conversation which I mostly nodded through and pretended to comprehend. I was a little disappointed when Jenny got up to follow Rick over to the bar, and began to wonder if they had a thing with each other. It seemed likely and my mood was a little dampened by the thought but I tried to remind myself that I didn't stick around to find a girlfriend, and that Jenny probably had plans that didn't involve a boyfriend. Despite my thoughts, I couldn't help but look over at them periodically until I eventually excused myself to go to the bathroom.

"Hey man," said a guy with a pony tail as I made my way out of the bathroom, "do you, like, know if this back door leads to an exit?"

"Nah, sorry. I'm not from around here." The guy nodded and shook my hand.

"Yeah, me either, this is the first time my band has played here. My name's Cliff."

"Jack. Good to meet ya, you guys were pretty good." The other members of the band started to come through and the hallway became crowded with people, one of them being Jenny.

"Oh, hey there, Jack!" she said excitedly, though I couldn't tell if she was being flirty or just friendly with me. She greeted Cliff with the same warmth, leading me to believe that she was just being friendly, and also that she had met Cliff before that night. She hugged him, which made his face turn red with embarrassment as his hands hovered over her back, and they talked briefly but Cliff's band members seemed to be in a hurry.

"Do you know Cliff too?" she asked as Cliff and his friends walked towards the presumed exit. While looking up at me, our height difference was very noticeable and I had a great perspective down her shirt which I tried so hard not to partake in. The small hallway reached maximum capacity and I was pushed by a guy holding a guitar case. I fell slightly forward towards Jenny, bracing my forearm on the wall beside her as not to fall onto her. Her back was against the wall and we were so close I could smell her perfume, which seemed to be a scent similar to vanilla. She laughed at the awkwardness of the situation.

"Good thing we aren't claustrophobic," she said looking up at me. I wasn't even tempted to look at her chest because her eyes were so beautiful.

"I never said I wasn't," I replied, half-jokingly. Despite our favorable positioning, I was not a fan of cramped spaces. The distance between us started to disappear and then-

"HEY MOVE LONG PEOPLE!" shouted a very stern Ann-voice. People started to shuffle back out into the dinning area; guess that door wasn't an exit door.

"Sorry, man, I thought that door was an exit so I was gonna take my guys out that way." She didn't even look at the guy before replying. She gave him a completely unwarranted, long-winded rant about how she "wasn't a man" and how she "freakin' hated when people said that" that didn't end until she looked at him. Embarrassment flooded her face and she quickly apologized and began to walk away.

"Oh, hey, Cliff! This is my best friend, Ann!" Jenny grabbed Ann by the forearm, "Ann, this is Cliff, he used to play at the Blue Moose, a bar I used to go to back in my 'college days' haha, really it was just a few months ago when I saw them! They're really great, and that means something coming from me because I'm not usually into jam bands!" Jenny had a knack for extinguishing uncomfortable social situations. She talked a bit more, then eventually Cliff parted and the three of us walked back to our table. Ann looked upset the entire time and, despite Jenny's attempts to talk to her, refused to give her much more than one-word answers.

"Well, I have to work in the morning so I'm headed home... Jack, will you walk me?" Karen grabbed a really shiny, gaudy purse and we left the Inn together, leaving behind an angry-looking Rick and an unaware Jenny. I had thought about saying goodbye to her, but she seemed focused on Ann so I didn't want to intrude. Karen stumbled a bit as we walked through the dark, unlit path through town. Save for a few randomly placed street lamps, the only light was a waning crescent moon and a few dimly lit buildings ahead. Karen talked on and on, often slurring her words and cussing as she told me about "bitches" and how "boring as fuck" Mineral Town was and how "fucking awesome" the city must be. I was feeling the exact opposite, actually, but didn't attempt to tell her that.

"Thanks for a great night, Jack. Hope we can do it again soon."

She threw her arms around my neck and kissed me- hard. I placed my hands on her upper arms and pushed her back gently.

"Hey, you're a little drunk, I think you should get some rest, alright?" She opened her eyes and gave me an expression of 50% confusion and 50% disappointment. Once she realized what I had said, the two constituents mixed and I then got an expression of 100% pissed-off. She went inside her house and slammed the door. A few lights came on in her house and the neighbors' houses, so I took that as my queue to go.