Kiss Me Like You Mean It

Oliver had spent the rest of the night introducing me to everyone important in his life—his bandmates, their miscellaneous wives or girlfriends, some of the management at his clothing store downtown, random musicians in bands I’d recognized the names of from Sam Goody, and so on. Most of the party had died down just after five that morning, and even though there were still some guests roaming around his stupidly large house, Oliver stood up from the couch in his living room and announced that he was going to sleep.

By then, I was mostly sober—just aside from the fact that things I probably wouldn’t have laughed at without any alcohol in my system had made me wildly guffaw—and I could tell Oliver was, too, but he still turned to me before walking away. “You coming?”

“Uh.” I quickly nodded and put down my can of Coke on the coffee table because even though I wasn’t all that tired, there was a role I was playing that included me attaching myself to him at all times.

I followed him back up to the third floor and stopped at my bedroom door. “’Night, Oliver.”

He spun around with a confused look on his face. “Where are you going?”

“My room?” Why was that even a question?

“Oh, you’re just changing and then coming over?”

I furrowed my eyebrows at him. “No one’s up here.” There was no point in acting without an audience.

“Stay with me tonight.” His voice was so soft and sultry in that moment that he probably could’ve told me to stab a priest in the eye and I would’ve obeyed. I wasn’t sure why he wanted my company for the night, but I just chalked it up to him probably expecting someone to walk into his bedroom at some point and not wanting to be alone for when that moment came.

“I’ll be right there, then,” I murmured in response before opening the door to his guestroom, slipping inside, and quickly shutting it.

My eyebrows stayed involuntarily knit together as I rummaged through the drawers for something suitable to sleep in with my friend. I was usually one for a simple pair of underwear and a tee-shirt, but that wasn’t much of an option when I’d be sharing a bed with a boy. I hadn’t even resorted to that after three years of dating Shawn.

A white cami and black pair of leggings seemed acceptable enough, and pulling my hair into a messy ponytail was surely in order.

When I returned to Oliver’s bedroom, he was sprawled across one side of the bed in just a pair of blue-plaid pajama pants, his torso completely bare and his one arm curled under his head. He started guffawing wildly the second he saw me.

I folded my arms across my chest and narrowed my eyes at him. “Are you laughing at my socks?” They were off-white, fleece, ankle socks with a light brown bunny’s head sewn onto the front of each. Literally every person that ever saw them laughed at me for it, but they were the warmest socks I’d ever come across in my entire life, and Oliver kept his house cold, which made his hardwood floors even colder.

“They’re adorable!” he exclaimed in the midst of his giggles.

I remained silent because the laughter usually died down after a few minutes, so I was just letting him have his moment.

Sure enough, after about a minute of exclamations about how cute they were and how he wanted a pair, he calmed down and patted the spot on the bed beside him. “Come on, then. What’re you waiting for?”

I obliged and sat down next to him. I fluffed up the three pillows he’d set aside for me and laid back, eyeing him curiously because he was just watching me with a playful smirk on his face.

“What?” I finally demanded, halfway yelling it.

His smirk stretched into a grin. “I’ve never seen you in your nighties before.”

“Be grateful I dressed up for you.” It was quite a sight when I didn’t wear a bra—and not an attractive one. My chest was too big for it to be cute.

He laughed at that. “You’re something else, love—you know that?”

I scrunched up my nose at him because I wasn’t sure if he meant it as a compliment or not. “Is that a good thing?”

He nodded. “I love it about you.” He must’ve still been drunker than I’d thought because using the word love when talking about anything in relation to me was just an unnecessary exaggeration.

“Oh, yeah?” was all I said in response, quirking my eyebrows.

“Well, sure.” He laced our hands together once more and peered up at the ceiling, humming in thought. “I suppose you’re a bit standoffish with people, and quite sarcastic, and very cynical.” I glared at him and he simply laughed; “and you don’t like my band’s music—”

“That’s not fair!” I interrupted. “I said I wasn’t a fan of Count Your Blessings, but I also said That’s The Spirit was one of those albums I could listen to without skipping any songs—if you remember correctly, you douchebag.”

He giggled wildly at that. “You’re also hot-headed and have quite a mouth; and you burp worse than any bloke I’ve ever heard in my life—”

“Oh, come on—that was one time! I didn’t know you were in the store, and I’d just had cheese fries, and I apologized for it like ten times.”

He was getting a lot of enjoyment out of calling me out. The smile on his face was bigger than any of the expressions I’d ever seen him wear before, though, which made it hard for me to be mad. “You don’t accept gifts very well, either—not even half as well as you give them. Plus, you’ve never seen Jurassic Park, which happens to be one of the best films in cinematic history and usually a deal-breaker in my friendships with people, along with—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah—along with Nightmare On Elm Street, Rocky Horror Picture Show, Fight Club, and District Nine. They’re your five favorite movies, and they all have meaningful lessons, despite what I may assume about them,” I interjected, sarcastically quoting him.

We’d had numerous conversations about “cinematic history”—as he liked to call it—and every time, he’d give me a lecture about how I absolutely needed to watch his list of life-changing movies. According to him, Jurassic Park was a reiteration of Robert Burns’ “To A Mouse” poem, echoing, In proving foresight may be vain, for the best laid schemes of mice and men go often askew and leave us nothing but grief and pain for promised joy; Nightmare On Elm Street was a demonstration of how karma always came full circle; The Rocky Horror Picture Show brought perspective to its viewers of how small and egotistical humanity was in relation to the entire universe; Fight Club was an exhibition of man’s duality; and District Nine was a testament to disparage humanity’s seemingly ingrained nature to judge one another.

I had to admit that he had a truly insightful mind, but my mom had all but convinced me at a young age that TV melted a person’s brain. Televisiophobia was about a panic attack away from being a legitimate affliction in my life.

“Yeah, and you’ve still yet to watch any of them!” he cried. “How do you live with yourself?”

I rolled my eyes at his dramatic exaggeration. “Easy. Watching a TV screen for any reason increases your chances of heart disease and diabetes; it promotes premature death and negatively impacts your eyesight and hearing; and it puts a damper on your brain development—which, by the way, doesn’t stop just because you became an adult.” I had officially become my mother, but regardless, I still needed a closing to my argument; so I added, “Did I also mention it was for any reason? That includes Jurassic Park, you fool.” I swatted the side of his head with my free hand to make my point.

He was laughing so hard at my outburst that he actually snorted.

“You can also be a bit supercilious at times,” he went on, playfully grinning at me like a buffoon; “and you roll your eyes at me quite often. Plus, you’re a very poor communicator on your mobile.”

“Because phones ruined face-to-face interaction,” I grumbled, snatching my hand back to myself and petulantly folding my arms over my chest.

He moved closer to me on the bed, slid his arm over my thighs, and affectionately laid his face against my stomach; “but it’s all why you’re my favorite,” he concluded, offering me a small, sweet smile.

I peered down at him in curiosity and studied his face. “Your favorite what?”

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “My favorite everything, I guess,” he replied amidst exhaling.

Even though he couldn’t see my face, I felt my eyebrows pull together. “I can’t possibly be your favorite everything.” We’d barely known each other two weeks—there was no way that that was a valid emotion. He was simply star-struck at the novelty of having someone different in his life, and so was I.

“You’re right. Saying you’re my favorite everything is too general.” He opened his eyes to pore into my own face, adding, “You’re my favorite part of life right now.”

I swallowed hard because everything he was saying and doing just felt like he was pretend-dating me too well; and no one was even around to witness him sweet-talk me, so I couldn’t understand why he was doing it.

“You don’t have to say those kinds of things when no one’s around,” I finally murmured, absentmindedly playing with the ends of his hair.

He closed his eyes once more, and a small, almost satisfied smile planted itself on his lips. “I believe you’ve called me an idiot in the past. Well, the word we use here is pillock, and you’re a pillock.”

I rolled my eyes and only remembered midway how he’d called me out for it, so I was immediately grateful he wasn’t watching me. I was not a “pillock,” though. The insult deserved an eye-roll, in my defense.

“Did you just roll your eyes at me? Because you said nothing in response, so I can only assume.” He was smirking because he knew he was right.

“No. I don’t roll my eyes that often;” but we both knew he was right.

“You certainly do, love; but it’s alright because your cynicism makes up for my naivety.”

“You’re not that naïve.” I thought about it after I said it. “...Actually you are, but there’s not much you can do about it at this point in your life.”

He chuckled and buried his face into my stomach, making my bellybutton hot with his breath. He was almost tickling me, but I didn’t want to tell him because I didn’t want him to move. His body being halfway on top of mine was warming me from the cold in his house.

That was the story I was telling myself, at least—and I’d planned on sticking to it for the rest of the night until he moved.

We were both quiet for a long while, just laying like that, so I eventually closed my eyes to try and relax myself. I hadn’t been tired, but I’d usually be able to make myself sleep if I focused on it long enough.

Oliver’s gentle voice soon distracted me, though. “Do you ever believe the things I tell you, Violet?”

I opened my eyes to peer down at his face and found him already gazing back at me. I pursed my lips because I didn’t want to offend him by saying, Rarely, but the truth was that I didn’t really believe anything anyone ever told me since Shawn had left. It was nothing personal.

I liked Oliver a lot—tremendously more than I liked just about everyone else I’d ever come across in my life—but I was just waiting for him to leave. All of the emotions that I felt with him were the same as what I’d felt with Shawn almost four years prior. They were both charming, and neither of them annoyed me the way the rest of the population did; but Shawn had left me empty-handed with nothing more than a broken heart and soul full of bitterness, and if I was being honest with myself, I wasn’t really expecting much more from Oliver—especially because Oliver was married.

Over the course of our friendship—regardless of how little time for it had passed—no matter how badly I wished I could shake it, there was just always this nagging suspicion in the back of my mind that he would leave me high and dry after his wife came crawling back to him on her desperate hands in knees; and there was no doubt in my mind that she would come crawling back eventually. It was only a matter of time.

“Do you?” I didn’t realize I hadn’t responded until he asked again.

“Sometimes,” I finally answered.

He twisted his lips from side to side before speaking again. “Like when?”

I gazed up at the ceiling to try and think of an instance. “Like when you say you wanna buy me dinner or you wanna drive me home.”

He was silent but kept his eyes fixed on me, so I assumed he was waiting for me to continue. “Like when you tell me that you like some of my music but also admit that you hate other parts of it,” I obliged; “or when you continually promise that you’re gonna tie me to a couch one day so we can watch Jurassic Park.”

It was hard to think back on everything he’d ever said to me and which sentences I’d taken to heart, but his expectant stare made me feel obligated to at least try and think of some more examples.

“Sometimes I believe you when you say I look nice.” I actually only believed him for the first time that night—when I’d first joined him on the patio—and was convinced that he just gave me lip service every other day, but I didn’t feel like that minor detail was very pertinent to our conversation.

“I don’t think you’ve ever bullshitted me about anything with Hannah.” He’d shared that he hadn’t been positive if he was 100% in love with her before getting married, but he’d convinced himself that her love would stop him from relapsing in his future. It was probably the most honest thing I’d ever heard before in my life, so I had to give him that.

He furrowed his eyebrows at me. “What are the things you don’t believe me about, then?”

That was a much easier question to answer. “I think you tell me a lot of things I wanna hear, like just about every time that you say I look nice or whenever you praise me for being a hard worker. I think you want to believe that there’s no difference between us, but to finally address the elephant in the room that follows us everywhere we go, it’s okay that you look down on me for being such a broke bitch or that you feel sorry for me because of the way I live my life in such reclusion. It is what it is, and I would be judging me, too, if I was in your position. You have money; I don’t. It’s inevitable that you’re gonna judge me just a little bit.

“Plus, you always tell me how you think I’m this exceptionally intellectual brainiac, but almost everything I know is just common sense. I mean, I almost got held back my junior year, dude, so it’s just like, I know there’s no way you could be sincere about that.

“I do believe that you have the best intentions, and I know you just wanna make me feel better about myself because—let’s be honest—my complete lack of self-esteem is painfully obvious to the rest of the world. It’s just that you tell me things that are literally impossible to believe—like if you were Pinocchio, your nose would reach Alaska.” I kind of felt bad for being so honest, but he had asked.

“For example,” I went on, “you talk about how I’ve become your best friend—and I really do appreciate that you wanna make me feel special—but you’ve been in a band with three of the same guys for ten years; you got married and tattooed your wife’s name on your chest; and we’ve only known each other for two weeks. How are you gonna tell me that honestly and expect me to believe you?

“I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m all for being besties right now, but we both know that once Hannah comes back you’ll be over it because she’ll want you to be over it and your marriage will depend on you to be over it.” The sentence came out of my mouth before I’d gotten the chance to censor it.

Had someone thrown something so tender in my face as Hannah was to Oliver, I probably would’ve hit them, but he just continued laying there, his head on my stomach and arm over my thighs. In fact, rather than freaking out on me the way I would’ve done to him had our positions been switched, he just slid his hand from the arm that wasn’t draped over me into mine.

“You’ll believe me someday,” he murmured finally before closing his eyes once more.

Neither of us said anything else, and within about ten minutes or so, Oliver had fallen asleep with us in that position and was snoring lightly against my stomach with a tiny pool of saliva dripping into the fabric of my cami.