Note: Day 2-Goodnight Kisses. Or goodbye kisses, as I read the prompt wrong and already wrote this before I realized it. Oops.
August 2, Entry #28 of Gabriel Agreste's Secret Journal
I am never trusting my son again.
After lunch with the board members, I walked down to the employee cafeteria to see Adrien. I wanted to make sure he was following the diet his nutritionist gave him, as all good fathers do.
Anyway, I walked over to the seating area and saw Adrien talking with the urchin, the intern, and her friend who runs that blog. As I got closer, I saw Adrien lean toward the intern. He pressed a quick kiss against her lips, then slung his book bag over his shoulders and prepared to leave.
"Adrien," I called out.
He turned around, his eyes wide. "Father! What are you doing here?"
"I came to make sure you had a good lunch. The food was satisfactory?"
"Oh yes, it was very good Father. And healthy, very healthy." Adrien's hand tightened on the strap of his bag.
"Good," I nodded, while my mind was still trying to fathom the kiss between my son and the intern. Surely they weren't romantically involved? Shouldn't I have seen it if they were? I decided it was best to ask outright.
"Adrien, why did you kiss the intern?"
The urchin snorted while the blogger pulled out her camera. I shifted my head to the right, making sure she caught my good side. One must always look their best on camera. Meanwhile, my son and the intern were turning the same shade of embarrassed red.
"Well, uh…" Adrien stammered, but then he explained, putting my worries to rest. Well, the ones about him and the intern. I'm still concerned about his strange behavior. "It's the newest teen trend! Yeah, yeah, that's it. It's how teens say goodbye nowadays. See!"
Adrien moved over, and quickly put a kiss on the urchin's lips. The urchin didn't react, he simply raised his eyebrows and said, unimpressed, "Dude."
My son then moved over and did the same thing to the blogger. She looked about ready to throw a right hook into his stomach. The intern watched it all, her eyes wide and mouth smiling.
"See Father," Adrien turned back to me. "It's just something friends do when they want to say goodbye. Nothing out-of-the normal or romantic about it, right guys?"
"Right!" The intern agreed readily.
"Dude," was all the urchin said, slowly shaking his head.
The blogger just scowled.
I was glad my son was finally picking up on teenage social customs, rather than this just being one of his strange actions, so I said, "Thank you for that…enlightening information. I am glad to know you are fitting into the teenage social scene." Behind me, the blogger snorted.
"You're welcome Father," Adrien nodded. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a shoot to model for."
"Be careful with the suit being used for the shoot. The beads on it are very fragile." My son nodded, then ran for the exit. After acknowledging his friends' presence with a barely noticeable tilt of my head, I strode out of the cafeteria and back to my office, digesting the new information.
Later in the day, as I was getting ready to leave the office, Nathalie came in to tell me she was leaving for the day. To avoid the risk of being called old and uncool, I walked up to Nathalie, placed a hand on her cheek, and kissed her like Adrien kissed his friends goodbye.
After barely a moment, Nathalie pushed me off of her. "What are you doing?!" she hissed, frowning.
"Saying goodbye like the teens do it nowadays." Nathalie's eyebrows raised an astonishing amount. I continued on, "Adrien told me today that it was the newest trend. I thought it would be nice to try out some of the teen culture in order to relate more with my son and one of the populations I design for."
Nathalie was still scowling. "Gabriel, never do that again. That is not an actual thing teenagers do."
"Are you sure? Because Adrien's friends didn't seem all that fazed when he did it, and the Gorilla didn't react when I kissed him goodbye." Nathalie blinked. "Unlike another person I know," I muttered, glancing at Nathalie, only to watch her put her head in her hands.
"I'm pretending the last few minutes never happened," Nathalie stated, then promptly left.
So apparently kissing friends goodbye on the lips is not a thing teenagers do. Even my extensive google search came up with no results. I'm afraid asking Adrien about it would be too awkward. I will just continue to worry about his sanity from a distance and run all of my ideas by Nathalie before ever acting on them.