Kissing My Villain
It was raining harder than usual when you kissed me on the gravel path in the park. The rain peppered our skin, breaking the calm of the silver-watered sound surrounding our island. How you grinned, Aaron.
Rain. Sleet. Death. Not a concern for you. I would’ve met you anywhere: on a ledge, skydiving, under dark Antarctic waves. Good ol’ Bridget, up for anything dangerous.
The ducks glided by in pairs — the hens returned to protecting their eggs. And you pulled me under a veil of moss-covered trees. Your combat boots disturbed the pink lilies, their half-round petals guarding the pistils. Banana slugs slithered into the crevices of decomposing logs. The mountain, green from the rain, spilled into the valley’s rivers — lightning branded the hillside. Your five o’clock shadow brushed my cheek, as if the years since you’d been gone didn’t matter, because there we were, both of us, born for rainy days.
Gray-blue smoke wavered up from the chimney of a cabin across the sound. It wasn’t far from our kissing tree. Between breaths, I whispered, “Stay this time.”
“Then the rain wouldn’t fall.”
I pictured scratching secret words to you on a desert stone.
Sometimes smiling. Sometimes laughing. At other times sighing with the pleasure of flashbulb-lightning strobing like we’d been caught on camera. Our existential questions lost in the grumbling thunder. I pressed my lips harder to yours.
In truth, if those photos were developed, I’d have been standing alone against that tree. I’m sure of it.
“Do you see other women?” I asked.
You chuckled, evil-like.
Tight green tulip buds sprouted near your graceful feet. You took a breath. Your wet face, your cheeks soft in my hands, your hair slick between my fingers; you pushed me harder against that cherry tree. It began snowing petals. Pink drifts covered our feet.
Some women never get kissed like this.
Ridges of bark pressed against my back, tangling in my hair. “You’re such a distraction.” My words, lost somewhere in your mouth. The smell of cherry blossoms. I rested my fingers between our lips. “If you’d been scared a little more, felt things, we wouldn’t be here.”
You glanced at the river washing over rocks, threatening the ledge where we stood. One of the tulips lay trampled. And you put it between your teeth. With your matador smile, you said, “Why do you think I don’t feel things?” And, so briefly, yet I saw it, your eyes darted toward that cabin and away, as the river broke the bank, tree, roots, ground, us. Two flames disappearing in the rapids.
You squeezed my hand and let go.
Through the mud, through the cold, and always that rain, I found the slope back to the path. The lights were out in the cabin. The tree stood steady. The tulips trampled. The rain fell quieter now, and the sound lay smooth again.
The rowboat waited at the dock. I climbed in and began to pull my way back.
Kissing My Villain was workshopped in Ross Turner’s writing class on Motifs. It currently appears in For a Breath I Tarry, a multi-author short story anthology co-edited by Edward Campbell and Joanna Friedman on Amazon.
