Worth The Wait

Am I the only one who finds birthdays really depressing? So yeah, you get presents, and that’s always nice. (Well, most of the time. One year Jon gave me half a sandwich, and I was not impressed.) But presents aside, birthdays are - in general - pretty damn lousy. Every year it feels like God has sent this big iron rod down from heaven and brandished a new number on my forehead, and then pointed at me and laughed, and said “That’s how old you are, Hannah Proctor! And what do you have to show for it? Nothing! Nothing!”

So, on August 29th, as I stared at the pile of cards that had been discarded on my desk, I unleashed the details of my woes upon my best friend, knowing that he alone could provide the sympathy and advice which I required in my hour of need.

“It’s just, every year I get older, and I think about all the things I should have done by now,” I wailed.

“And so I promise myself I’ll do them by my next birthday, and then that comes around, and I still haven’t!” I shook my head hopelessly.

“I don’t know, Brendon. I just don’t know. It just feels like my life is running away from me. And I don’t have that much longer left! Before I know it I’ll be dead and gone and there’ll still be a million things I’ve never done.”

I sniffed dramatically. Brendon looked at me, with a bewildered, yet vaguely amused, expression on his face. He raised one skeptical eyebrow at me, and said, “Hannah?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re twenty.”

“I know!” I howled, my hands flailing wildly in despair. “Twenty! Twenty whole years, Brendon! That’s...erm...that’s a lot of days. Think of the things I could have seen! The people I could have met! The clothes I could have bought!”

Brendon (who clearly does not appreciate a good theatrical performance when he sees it, as he appeared to be unmoved by my drama) cocked his head to one side, and asked, “This isn’t about the kissing thing, is it?”

“N-n-no!” I stammered, outraged at the mere suggestion. “What kissing thing? I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re crazy. Shut up.”

“It is!” Brendon exclaimed, laughing at me – so much for advice and sympathy. Thanks a lot, buddy. “Hannah, you’re making such a big deal of it!”

“It is a big deal!” I insisted. “It’s a huge deal! I’m twenty, and I’ve never kissed anyone!”

This was the ‘revelation’ that had emerged two weeks ago. The group of us had gone to the mall on Friday night, just to hang out like we always did at the weekends. And I was having a good time as usual, until Ryan brought up his favorite topic: girls. Hot girls, ugly girls...any sort of girls. He just loves to talk about girls. So we did, for half an hour or so, and the conversation soon turned to how many people we’d made out with.

“Three,” said Melisa – one of my good friends.

“Two,” said Spencer.

“Four,” said Jon (that was such a lie).

“Six,” said Brendon.

“Yeah, same, I’ve made out with six girls,” Ryan claimed. And then he turned to me. “What about you, Hannah?”

“Um...none, actually,” I mumbled.

Cue much mocking from my so-called friends. Ryan hadn’t stopped making fun of me since. Jon had got his fair share of jibes in, as had Melisa, and even Spencer had cracked a few jokes. Only Brendon had been nice about it. He’d just smiled and put his arm around my shoulders, and told me the guys were idiots and that it was nothing to worry about.

Their reaction really took me by surprise. We’d never really talked about it until then, but I didn’t think it was an important, or even interesting, think to discuss. I mean, it was only kissing. Surely it couldn’t be that great? It looked sort of wet and gross and unhygienic to me. And I’d never really wanted to kiss anyone. I mean, there were some guys who I thought were nice, or even attractive, but I didn’t want to kiss them. I’d never, ever thought of it as being a big deal before. But since that night, I’d really started to get a complex about it. Thoughts began to run through my head, and once they were there, it proved pretty hard to get them out again.

“I’m nineteen. That’s not that old. There must be loads of nineteen-year-olds that haven’t kissed anyone. It’s not a big deal. But what if it is?! Maybe I should have kissed someone by now...why haven’t I? What’s wrong with me?! Am I ugly? I’m not ugly, am I!? Mom says I’m ‘pretty’...and that guy from that... uh street said I was cute. No, I’m not ugly. I could get a boyfriend if I wanted. I just don’t want one, really. There aren’t any guys that I wanna go out with...but that doesn’t mean I couldn’t. I could kiss somebody, too, if I wanted to. Easily. I just don’t want to. Not yet. But I will soon. Before I’m 20. Crap, my birthday’s in less than 2 weeks! I’d better get going...”

For those next fourteen days, I’d really tried to find someone to kiss. But it was hard! It wasn’t as if any blatant opportunities came up, so what was I supposed to do? Walk up to some random stranger and say, “Hey, I’m Hannah! Will you make out with me?” I couldn’t do that! I mean, that’s the sort of thing Ryan would do! And what if they said no? What if they said yes?!

So August 29th came, and I still hadn’t kissed anybody. And now I wasn’t just “nineteen-and-never-been-kissed”, I was “twenty-and-never-been-kissed”. And that was, like, a million times worse.

“Hannah, it really doesn’t matter,” Brendon told me again, as we sat in my room on the evening of my birthday. He lowered his voice, as if worried that anyone else might hear him, and added, “I’ve only kissed two girls and both times were pretty crappy.”

“Two!?” I yelped. “You said you’d kissed six!”

“It’s called lying, Hannah,” Brendon grinned. “You should try it some time.”

I scowled at him, though really I was just as angry with myself. I could have saved myself a whole lot of bother if I’d just been more dishonest.

“Well, I’m still the only one of us who’s never kissed somebody, and that sucks,” I muttered. “And you know what? I bet it won’t happen this year either, and then I’ll be twenty and I still won’t have kissed anybody! And then Ryan’ll have a field day. He’ll probably declare it National Ryan-Gets-to-Make-Fun-of-Hannah Day or something.”

Brendon just laughed again, but before I could snap at him for not taking me seriously, he silenced me by putting his hands on my shoulders and looking me straight in the eyes. His expression changed – it suddenly became more sincere.

“Tell you what,” he said. “If you still haven’t kissed anyone by your 20th birthday, I’ll kiss you myself.”

My eyes widened. “You’re kidding, right?”

He shook his head. “Nope. I mean it, Hannah.” Then he let go of my shoulders, and grinned. “And that’s a threat – so you’d better hurry up and find somebody. You wouldn’t want to kiss me, would you?”

I giggled, somewhat nervously. “Oh no...no way...”

Maybe Brendon told him how much it had bothered me, because Ryan cut down on the jokes after that. (Either that or he’d chosen to save all his remarks for a special occasion. I could just imagine him, writing up a list of “Mean Things to Say to Hannah”.) And so, for a little while, I was more than happy to have forgotten about it. It was actually Brendon who brought up the subject again several months later.

“So still no luck in your quest to kiss somebody, Hannah?” he asked, as we walked between lessons together one morning.

I shook my head. “I’d hadn’t thought about it, actually,” I admitted.

“Well, you know Pete, from Fall Out Boy? He’s having a party next weekend, and he told me to bring some friends...I’m sure you could find somebody there,” he told me.

I was struck by a sudden, sickening feeling of dread, but I managed to cover it up pretty well.

“Cool,” I forced myself to say, through clenched teeth. “Great.”

At first, I didn’t know why I was so nervous. If anything I should have been glad – I mean, there’d be alcohol and stuff at this party, and guys do stupid things when they’re drunk...it’d be easy to find someone to kiss. And yet I really, really didn’t want to go, and for a while I just couldn’t figure out why...

Then it hit me.

I didn’t want to go because I didn’t want to kiss someone.

Because if I kissed someone, then I didn’t get to kiss Brendon.

And I really, really wanted to kiss Brendon.

It scared the pants off me at first. I mean, Brendon was my best friend, and I shouldn’t want to kiss my friend. But the more I thought about, the more I did. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that he was the only person I’d ever wanted to kiss...and if I had to wait another seven months to do so, then so be it. All I had to do was avoid kissing anyone else, and I’d managed that for twenty years. It’d be easy - as long as I didn’t go to that party. Or any party, for that matter. So that was the plan: to become a social hermit for seven months. It’d be worth it if I got to kiss Brendon, I decided. It wouldn’t have meant anything to him, but it’d be the only chance I’d ever get to kiss him, so I might as well take advantage of it.

So I tried every excuse I could think of to get out of going to Pete’s gathering: I had to go to the dentist for a full-scale four-hour operation...my cousin was getting married...I’d converted to Orthodox Judaism and I wasn’t allowed out on Friday nights any more... Brendon saw through every single one of them. Maybe the Jewish one would have worked if I hadn’t been eating a ham sandwich at the time.

“Why don’t you wanna go? I thought you’d be dying to kiss someone by now,” he grinned. “I mean, you’ve only got seven months left and if you don’t do it by then, you’ll be stuck with me...”

Well, I couldn’t tell him that that was exactly what I was hoping for, so I reluctantly gave in and agreed to go. And so the six of us turned up to Pete's party. It was a pretty big party, and there were loads of people –Ryan was in his element. But, as parties go, it was pretty boring. The good thing was, for a while I wasn’t faced with any situations involving guys that I would have found difficult to worm my way out of – until some moron (and by that I mean Jon) suggested a game of Spin the Bottle.

“You playing, Hannah?” he asked, smirking at me.

“Erm, nah,” I said, trying to sound casual.

“Why not?” he demanded.

“Um...ulcers,” I said quickly. “Mouth ulcers. Loads of them. I don’t wanna infect anyone.”

“Eww, gross! Let me see!” Jon said enthusiastically, and I cursed myself for forgetting that he likes anything disgusting.

“No!” I yelped. “Really, Jon, it’s not a pretty sight...I think I’ll just go...and...er...”

“Aw, come on, play,” Jon ordered. “What they don’t know won’t hurt them.”

I sighed, but reluctantly followed him to Pete's lounge of his bar, where he’d gathered a group of people for the game - including Ryan, Melisa, Spencer and Brendon - who had formed a circle. In the center lay a single plastic bottle. I gave it the Evil Eye as I walked in, willing it not to go anywhere near me.

“Okay, who wants to go first?” Ryan asked brightly, as we sat down.

“I will!” Hayley, the lead singer of Paramore, offered. She moved forward, and turned the bottled. It spun around for a few seconds, and then stopped, pointing right at Jon. His face went crimson, but he leaned over and kissed her on the lips for about two milliseconds.

“Jon! That was pathetic!” Ryan barked. “Put some effort into it, man!”

“What, here?!” he stammered. “In front of everybody!?”

“That’s kinda the point,” Melisa laughed.

It went on, and on, and I kept getting more and more nervous. It wasn’t just the threat of the bottle pointing at me; I kept getting worried that Brendon would have to kiss somebody, too. It wasn’t that I wanted to deprive him of kissing somebody; I didn’t want to see it happen. I liked him a lot - I’d probably explode with jealousy or something. But I knew that one or the other had to happen eventually - and it was the former of the two options.

This girl called Anna had spun the bottle around for about the fifth time (I could tell she was aiming for Brendon, so I’d taken an instant dislike to her – luckily she’d had no luck so far) and missed and got Ryan again. Then this boy named Tony spun and it landed right at me. My heart sank, and his probably did too, but we both tried to hide our disappointment.

“Hannah!” Ryan cried delightedly, grinning wickedly at me. I glanced at Brendon, but he wasn’t looking at me – instead, he was gazing at the floor, as if trying to avoid eye contact.

“Go on, then,” Ryan urged me. I threw him a look of pure contempt (after all, now I wouldn’t get to kiss Brendon and it was all his fault) and reluctantly edged towards Tony. At first, I actually intended to do it; I was going to kiss him, purely because I had no way of opting out. But, just before our lips met, I got this strange feeling in my knees. They’d been bent, but now they were straightening up, and my hands, which had been pressed against the floor, were now in mid air. Suddenly my feet were moving...it was almost as if my body had been taken over, for without even realizing, I’d leapt to my feet and darted out of the room in a manner of seconds.

“Hannah!” I heard a voice call, and somebody came running after me. Suddenly I realized what I’d done, and I was filled with embarrassment. I was never going to live that down, never – Ryan would be talking about this one for years. Without bothering to get my coat, I rushed to the front door and left, bounding down the steps three at a time.

I heard the door open again, and more footsteps followed. “Hannah! Wait!” I stopped as I reached the hallway, and spun around – Brendon was just a few meters behind, trying to catch up with me.

“What was all that about?” he asked, with a confused, startled expression on his face.

I tried to think of an excuse, but what could I possibly come up with to cover that? “I just remembered that I left the iron on?”

“I didn’t want to kiss him,” I admitted, feeling my face burn as the words left my mouth. “I didn’t want to, Brendon...I just...”

Brendon laughed lightly as I broke off. “Hannah, it was just a kiss – it’s not like you have to marry him afterwards,” he teased.

“It’s not that,” I wailed. “It’s not the actual kissing that worried me.”

“What was it then?” he asked, with the same look of misunderstanding.

I stared at my feet awkwardly. I didn’t want to tell him.

“Tell me,” he said gently.

I bit my lip, as if trying to lock the words inside me. I didn’t want to tell him.

“Please?” he begged.

“If I kissed him I wouldn’t get to kiss you, okay?” I blurted, the words almost overlapping as they spilled out of me. “I know you only said that as a joke, but I knew that if I didn’t kiss anyone else ‘til my birthday I’d get to kiss you instead, and that’s all I wanted.”

His jaw dropped, and he stared at me in complete shock for a moment. I cursed myself for telling him – he was going to be pissed off, or he’d think I was a complete freak...fear flooded me as I thought of the possibilities. After a few seconds, he blinked, and an extremely serious, grave expression passed over his face.

“I’ve got some bad news,” he said sadly.

“What?” I asked, my voice trembling slightly.

“I’m busy on August 29th. We’ll have to celebrate your birthday early.”

And with that, he put his hands on my hips, and leaned in and kissed me. My body tensed up in shock for a moment, but then I relaxed and began gently kissing him back. I’d been wrong – it was that great. And yeah, it was wet – and probably a bit unhygienic, too – but it certainly wasn’t gross: it was perfect. I found my hands traveling up his body and into his hair, gently playing around with it before we drifted apart.

Then I smiled at him – and he smiled at me – and we laughed. I’m not quite sure what we were laughing at: maybe the fact that I’d been so dumb as to think I had to wait another seven months to kiss him. Or maybe the fact that I’d just shamed myself in front of half of my friends by running away from kissing a guy – it was pretty funny when I thought about it. Or maybe we were just laughing because we were happy. I don’t know – but we laughed, and we were definitely happy. Then he kissed me again, took my hand in his, and led me back inside.

And I may have been the last of my friends to kiss somebody, but it was definitely worth the wait.