Chapter Thirteen
Toph felt warm all over.
Liquid sensation began in her lips and melted throughout her entire body, clear down to the tips of her bare toes. She was ridiculously aware of every line of Aang's slender frame, the delicate, swollen contours of his mouth, the tentative feel of his fingers skimming her cheekbones. His kisses began cautiously, little more than a soft exchange of breath that gradually grew deeper and deeper. She returned those kisses with racing enthusiasm, emotion quickly overriding reason.
The sheer magnitude of the moment made Toph a little dizzy. That she was experiencing her first real kiss was beyond exhilarating. That she was experiencing that milestone with Aang was both confusing and, strangely, exciting.
She'd rarely allowed herself to fantasize about her first experience kissing and, when she had, she had never, not until very recently, imagined Aang's face. Now that it was happening, Toph felt almost breathless at the reality. Right then, at that exact moment, kissing Aang made perfect, absolute sense. Not only did she like and trust him…she liked the way he kissed. She felt safe with him, needed and wanted. And it felt so good to be wanted… But, in spite of that rushing high, something niggled at Toph. She couldn't help but feel something vital was missing…
Aang's kiss was enjoyable and sweet and everything that a first kiss should be, but there was no explosion of feral need, no grand epiphany on her part. She didn't arrive at the sudden realization that Aang was "the one." It didn't feel as if their souls had intertwined. Absent were the crashing emotions people made in reference to falling in love. The heavens didn't part. The birds didn't sing. There were no blinding electrical currents, no limb shaking tingles, no butterflies in the pit of her stomach.
Instead, her response was purely chemical. She reacted to his touch because it felt good. She kissed him back because it felt good. Her heartbeat quickened. Her body quickened, but really that was all there was. She felt little more than the simple satisfaction, the lazy pleasure of sharing a first kiss with someone she respected and admired. It was an experiment…a game, oddly thrilling and awakening a very natural desire within her, but…it wasn't love. Was it? It couldn't be. Somehow, Toph had imagined an emotion vastly different from the one she was feeling.
She wondered vaguely, that if she found the kiss lacking in something distinctly magical, what must Aang think of it? What if he was expecting something from her that she couldn't give? What if this moment meant more to him than it did to her? Toph didn't know and, because she didn't, suddenly kissing Aang didn't seem like such a good idea after all.
Overwhelmed and confused, she abruptly shoved out of Aang's arms. She took several stumbling steps backwards, shuddering anew when she darted out her tongue to moisten her lips and tasted him there. Her heartbeat thudded rapidly, quickened by the mass of conflicting emotions colliding inside her.
"Well, that was the stupidest thing you've ever done!" she declared harshly. They weren't the first words she'd meant to speak. They weren't even the words tucked away in her heart, but they were the ones that came easiest.
Aang blinked at her, understandably confused by her erratic mood swing. One moment she was returning his kiss and seeming to enjoy it and the next she was attacking him. "Ookay," he uttered, a slow frown creasing his forehead. "What just happened? Are you mad at me right now?"
She was mad at him and, because she knew that her anger was irrational, Toph made an effort to keep calm and put matters into perspective. "Look, Aang…I know you were feeling vulnerable and you weren't thinking," she stated with forced serenity. Her battle to regain her composure was failing miserably. She was shaking so badly the ground beneath her quivered. "We weren't thinking. That's all it was. We weren't thinking," she rambled. "Let's just forget it happened."
"Forget it?" Aang echoed. "Toph, we just kissed." She visibly winced at the reminder, leaving Aang even more bewildered. "That's huge. I think we should talk about it."
"What's to say?" she muttered. "It was a mistake."
Aang was only mildly surprised by her reaction. On some level, he had expected a freak out. Truthfully, he was freaking out a little himself. "We knew this was coming, right?" he reasoned thickly. "We both wanted it to happen and now we need to deal with that."
His forthright response only provoked further lashing out. "What part of 'not a good idea' did you miss, Aang?" she cried. "What in the world made you think I wanted you to kiss me?"
"Maybe because you kissed me back!" he threw back in accusation.
"Yeah…well, that was just a… a reflex…" Toph hedged dishonestly. "It's not like I liked it or anything!"
"Could have fooled me," he muttered.
"Stop it!" she retorted sharply. "This is wrong on so many levels! I'm not Katara, Aang!"
Aang scowled at her, the sudden mention of Katara filling him with anger and yet another emotion he couldn't quite identify right then. Guilt? Shame? Whatever it was, Aang immediately went on the defensive with Toph. "What does Katara have to do with this?" he demanded. "You're the one bringing her up, not me!"
"You don't have to say a word, Aang!" Toph spat. "Don't kiss me just because you can't have her!" She made the wild accusation, half wanting to believe that really was his motivation for kissing her and half wanting to provoke a fight for the sheer hope of undoing what that kiss had done. The usually confident earthbender was a hotbed of internal turmoil, angry with him for kissing her at all, longing to kiss him again in spite of that and furious with herself because she couldn't make up her mind about it.
"I kissed you because I wanted to, Toph," he emphasized flatly. "It had nothing to do with Katara at all. It was about you and me."
"There is no you and me."
"There's something," he insisted obstinately. "We have to talk about it!"
"You're just…you're lonely, Aang," she tossed out, her words edged with desperation. "You don't know what you want and it's not fair to use me to figure it out!"
Aang snapped to attention with a confused wince, lacerated by her words. "Is that what you think I was doing?" he demanded in a broken whisper. The reactive tightening of her jaw was all the confirmation he needed. "You know what?" he cried suddenly, his usually amiable features twisted in a snarl, "forget about it! Forget about you, Toph! I'm tired of you pulling me close with one hand and slapping me with the other!" He yanked hold of his staff, pausing to rake her with an angry glare before snapping it open. "You want me to leave you alone? Fine! I will!" Seconds later, Toph heart the stiff whoosh of his glider as flew away.
Only when she no longer sensed him, did Toph sink to her knees with a remorseful groan. She fingered her lips, replaying their misbegotten kiss over in her mind before dropping her face into her hands completely. Her muddled thoughts were interrupted; however, by a sudden chitter sounding in the twisting weeds a few feet away. Toph turned towards Momo as he quickly approached. Apparently, the little lemur had grown tired of waiting for her and Aang's return and had taken it upon himself to come find them.
He chattered at Toph wildly in an attempt, she suspected, to scold her for being so harsh with Aang. "Don't take that tone with me," she sniffed defensively. "He didn't know what he was doing! Neither of us did!" Momo squawked in protest. "Well, what else was I supposed to do? It didn't feel right…not the way it should have anyway!" The flying lemur released yet another stream of screeches. "I did the right thing, Momo," she hissed fervently, unsure whether she meant to convince herself or the monkey, "I know I did."
****
Aang didn't return until well after the sun had sunk behind the horizon.
Though he'd had plenty of time to meditate while he was gone, Aang was still in no mood to talk to Toph when he returned. He crept into the camp when he thought Toph was asleep, pausing just beyond her tent to give both Appa and Momo affectionate pats. However, as he stretched himself out on the ground to settle down for the night himself, the entrance to Toph's rock tent abruptly slid open. Aang shifted onto his side and feigned sleep.
"Give it up, Twinkle Toes. I know you're not," Toph declared.
"I don't want to talk to you," he volleyed back.
"I know." Her easy acknowledgement of the situation did much to lessen Aang's resentment towards her, but surprisingly, he didn't turn to her immediately. Instead, he did what she might have done and decided to make her sweat. "I was a jerk to you and I'm sorry," she blurted. He still didn't turn to face her. "Aang, I said I'm sorry!"
"Good to know," he mumbled, "I'm going to sleep."
"Aang, please talk to me," she coaxed, "When you kissed me this afternoon, it freaked me out, okay! I didn't know how to react. You're the first boy to ever kiss me and you're…well, you're Aang! It was a little overwhelming."
The anxious confusion in her confession struck a particular chord with him. He remembered Katara voicing something similar to him that night on Ember Island. After months of turning over, what had seemed to be a lame excuse, in his mind, Aang finally understood what Katara had meant by being confused. If it had been anything close to what he and Toph were experiencing now, he understood all too well.
Softened by dawning realization, Aang felt the remainder of his anger drain out of him. He relented finally and rolled over to face Toph. "It freaked me out too," he confessed in a whisper. "I…I never imagined ever wanting to kiss you, Toph, let alone doing it."
"I'm sorry it was such a horrifying prospect for you," she asserted dryly.
Aang blushed deeply, and he offered her a sheepish smile. "You know what I mean."
"Yeah, I know," she sighed.
"So what are we going to do about it?"
Toph left the sanctuary of her tent and scooted closer to him, her features were bathed in firelight as she did. For the first time, Aang noticed how puffy and red-rimmed her eyes were. He immediately felt guilty. If Toph was crying over this situation, then things were truly a mess.
"I don't know what to do about it," she said. "I'm really confused at the moment."
"Me too," Aang replied. "It's weird. I thought if I kissed you everything would make sense, but it still doesn't."
"What did you expect to make sense?"
"When I kissed you," Aang clarified, "I thought I'd finally have all the answers to how I felt about you, but… It wasn't quite what I expected it to be."
"It wasn't?"
"I mean, I liked it…a lot. I just didn't feel the way I thought I would."
"I didn't either," Toph confessed, "You want to know the truth?" Aang nodded for her to go on. "This whole time, I was kind of wondering if maybe I was falling in love with you or something—,"
"—You're in love with me?" Aang balked dubiously.
"Thought…I said thought," Toph clarified. "Now will you zip it so I can get this out?" Aang "zipped it" obligingly. "Now then," Toph resumed, "I thought it might be love and then you kissed me and… It didn't feel like love. I mean, it was a good kiss and I was into it, but it just didn't feel like love." She shrugged, emitting a humorless grunt under her breath. "Then again, I've never been in love before, so what do I know about it? Maybe that's the way it's supposed to feel."
"It's not," Aang disputed softly.
"Oh…" Toph chirped, a little speechless to have confirmation to her suspicions. "So you felt it too, huh?"
Aang propped himself onto his elbow. "It's not like I kissed you expecting to feel all the things I did with Katara, because I didn't," he explained quickly, "Not exactly anyway. When I told you I wasn't thinking about her, I wasn't lying to you. But I did think that wanting to kiss you meant that I was over her, but…"
"But you're not?" Toph finished quietly.
He shook his head in miserable confession. "No, Toph. I'm not."
Toph slumped with relief, tension leaking from her body with an inaudible hiss. "Thank goodness."
That was far from the reaction Aang had expected. He scowled at her. "Excuse me?"
"I was so afraid you might have genuine feelings for me or something," she rushed out in a thankful stream, "it was making me sick to my stomach."
"Well…uh…thanks?"
"You didn't make me sick to my stomach," she laughed, "I meant the situation made me sick! I felt horrible because I thought that you thought that you were in love with me, but I knew that you didn't know that I wasn't in love with you and after what happened with Katara, I didn't want to break what was left of your poor, fragile heart. But I didn't know that you already knew that you didn't love me and so I acted like a jerk because I thought that you thought that you did. It was a big mess."
Aang blinked at her. "I feel like you're telling me something important, Toph, but I'm missing it."
"It doesn't matter. This whole thing was just a weird misunderstanding." She smiled, flicking away imaginary beads of sweat from her brow. "Whew! I'm glad we cleared that up. Now we can put this whole awkward episode behind us! Night, Aang."
Her intention to crawl back to her tent and get some much needed rest was halted when Aang said to her back, "It's not quite over, Toph."
"What now, Twinkle Toes?" she groaned, reluctantly twisting towards him once more.
"We still kissed," Aang whispered. "We wanted to. We liked it. Doesn't that mean anything?"
"That you're a good kisser?" she ventured cheekily.
"Well, thank you," Aang replied with a gracious smile, "but that's not the point. What does it mean?"
"That I'm a good kisser."
"Toph! Be serious! We're attracted to each other. We have to deal with that."
"Attracted to each other?" Toph echoed in a dramatic sigh. "Aang, come on! Don't make this so complicated!"
"Well, what do you call two friends kissing, and liking it, who aren't in love with each other?"
"Adolescence?"
"Always with the jokes," Aang grumbled.
"Twinkle Toes, don't get your underwear in a bunch. Maybe it isn't the serious matter you think it is. Maybe we're not attracted to each other at all," she reasoned, "Not really really anyway."
"What? You're not making any sense."
"Hear me out," she soothed him quickly, "Listen, while you were gone, I had a lot of time to meditate on the situation."
Aang's mouth fell open. "You meditated?"
"Yeah," she replied with a saucy smile, "this bald kid I know told me that it's the path to enlightenment." While Aang was still grinning over that, Toph said, "So you need to be quiet for a minute because I'm about to drop some serious wisdom on you."
"Drop away."
"Okay, these are the facts. You're the first boy that I've ever liked that actually liked me back," she confided. "No lie. I've had crushes before, but I've never had a guy be interested in me or think I was pretty, much less tell me I was pretty. Boys go for girls like Katara and Suki. I'm only the sarcastic sidekick. They only like me as a friend. You're the first one that didn't."
"But I do like you as a friend, Toph."
"And you're also in to me," she added with a wolfish grin, "I have to admit, that's an ego boost."
"So you kissed me because it boosted your ego?"
"I'm not saying that was a conscious motivation," she considered, "but I think that was part of it. I liked being wanted. I liked feeling pretty and you made me feel those things. I liked the attention. But, after you kissed me, I realized that's all I felt. It didn't feel like falling in love to me. Now, I'll admit that maybe I'm a little infatuated with you, but that's definitely nothing to risk our friendship over."
Strangely enough, her reasoning made sense to Aang, complete, absolute sense. He stared up at her in amazement. "How'd you figure all this out?"
She smirked at him. "That bald kid again," she replied, "And…I have a good head on my shoulders." Toph smiled to herself, thinking of that last humiliating conversation she'd had with her parents and realizing, belatedly, that they had actually paid her a great compliment.
"Okay, so that's why you kissed me," Aang theorized aloud, "why did I kiss you?"
"Oh, that's an easy one. Because I was safe."
Aang fell back into the ground, holding his belly and snorting with laughter. "You? Safe? Since when?"
She punched him firmly in the shoulder. "I'm dropping wisdom, remember? Pay attention!"
"Please," he encouraged, choking back his giggles, "continue."
"As I was saying," she emphasized in a highly affronted tone over his hiccups of hilarity, "I am safe and what I mean by that is, you could like me and even kiss me without the fear of having your heart broken. You took my advice, Twinkle Toes. You kept your guard up." Abruptly, his mirth died off at her assessment. He regarded her in a speechless moment as his smile gradually disappeared from his face. Toph quickly took advantage of his captive audience. "I couldn't break your heart, Aang, because you never gave it to me in the first place. It was easy to be with me because you didn't have to worry about being hurt…not emotionally anyway," she added with a wry grin.
"That is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard," he stated frankly. Yet, when he really thought about it, the theory didn't sound so ridiculous at all.
He had never thought about it before, but now that he did, Toph's theory had merit. His attraction to her had not come instantly nor had it been mired down with pervasive feelings of insecurity. The experience was vastly different from the one he'd had with Katara, when he was uncertain all the time, anxious and unsteady, ready to soar to the highest heights or plunge to the darkest depth depending on a smile or a frown. He didn't ride a wave of emotion with Toph, despite her constant moodiness. In contrast, being with her was a simple, straightforward endeavor and wholly uncomplicated. Honestly, he had needed that after months of emotional uncertainty, not just where Katara was concerned, but the war and his inevitable confrontation with Ozai as well. After all that, Toph had been a welcome change.
But she was right. It wasn't love. In a way, he was still running. He'd just found a new way to do it. Toph had been right to accuse him of using her. Guilt poured through him like corroding acid. Even when he had the best intentions, he still managed to muck things up. Aang regarded Toph with sad eyes.
"I'm sorry," he whispered. "It was never my intention to drag you into the middle of my mess. I didn't mean to use you, Toph."
"I don't feel used," she insisted and swiftly added when he would have argued, "Forget what I said earlier. I know you didn't use me, Aang. It just is what it is. You're still in love with Katara. Maybe you always will be."
"I wish I wasn't in love with her," he mumbled, more to himself than to Toph.
Still, she responded as if he'd addressed her directly. "I don't believe that," Toph refuted. "Sure the situation is tough and complicated and it may suck a little, but I think loving Katara is tattooed on your soul. It's a part of who you are, Aang. If you denied your feelings, you'd be denying yourself."
"You're really not making me feel better about this whole thing, Toph."
"Oh, snap out of it!" she ordered good-naturedly, "You're just feeling sorry for yourself."
"Why shouldn't I?" he cried. "I'm in love with one friend and I just kissed another!" He flopped back into the dirt with a long, serrated groan. "What is wrong with me?"
"Well, as far as the friend you kissed is concerned…" Toph murmured, nudging him, "…she's not complaining. I could have done much worse for a first kiss. Besides, even though it's been pretty crazy between us this last month, I'm not sorry about anything. None of it. I wouldn't change a single thing that happened."
"Neither would I," Aang decided after a thoughtful moment. "I'm glad I had this time with you, Toph. I think we were meant to take this journey together, not just literally, but emotionally too. We've never had the chance to spend time together this way before and I feel like I'm only just now coming to know the amazing person you are." She laughed at the assessment, surprised and humbled. "You are amazing, Toph," Aang insisted, "and loyal and wise and fun and sweet when you want to be. You've understood things about me that I don't even understand myself. I don't have to tell you what I feel. You just know." He swallowed deeply, regarding her with a somber smile. "It's been a privilege getting to know you, Toph Bei Fong."
"Oh, stop it! You're giving me a toothache," she groaned, but her words were tempered with gentleness. Toph nibbled endearingly at her lower lip. "For the record, it's been a privilege getting to know you too, Avatar Aang." She reached out to deal him a playful punch to the shoulder. "You know, if you can drag such a corny declaration out of me, imagine what you could do with Katara by just telling her how you feel."
Aang's smile faltered a little bit, but didn't fade completely. "I've already told her, Toph."
"Have you?" she prodded sagely. "Have you really told her? Have you said things to her like you just said to me?"
The direct question had Aang rearing back suddenly. "Well…um…no. I guess I haven't."
"Maybe you should," Toph suggested.
"And what will that do?" Aang wondered glumly.
"Might win you the girl."
"I'm not holding my breath."
"Then it will give you closure," Toph declared. "If things don't work out the way you want then at least you'll know it's not because you left anything unspoken. You'll know that you did everything you could and held nothing back."
"But I thought you said I needed to hold things back," Aang reminded her wryly.
"Depends on the situation," she replied, her mood and motives as changeable as ever. "Tell Katara how much she means to you, Aang. I guarantee if you do that, she's not going to turn away from you."
"Wow, you go from kissing me to pushing me onto another girl in the space of a few hours," he laughed. "I'd probably be offended if I didn't know you better."
Toph grinned at him. "What can I say? I get bored easily." With the laughter that swelled between them, the last lingering vestiges of tension died off.
"Thank you, Toph," Aang said sincerely. "I don't know what I'd do without you."
"You're not going to ever find out." However, when he sat up with the full intention of embracing her, Toph planted a hand squarely in the center of his chest, thwarting his intentions. "Maybe we should just stick to handshakes for now," she suggested wryly, "at least until the whole 'we just made out' weirdness passes."
"Deal!" Aang agreed, taking hold of her hand and pumping it exuberantly. "I love you, Toph."
"I love you too, Twinkle Toes," she replied, thoroughly surprised by how easy it was to voice the words aloud.