Kiss Me

Danny

We went out for six months. All six months I was regretting my decision to talk to her in the hall. I can’t tell if it was because I led her into the group with bitchy girls and obnoxious guys but she turned out completely different. The second I brought her around to my friends she was confident and flirty and lost all the innocence that I found kind of hot. She was just a slutty freshman who would do whatever she could to be popular. It was kind of clear after a while.

I walk downstairs, completely awake. My little brother looks at me with an eager smile and kicks his feet back and forth while sitting on the wood kitchen chair.

“Hey, little man,” I say and ruffle his hair. Austin wakes up earlier than everyone in the house and is pretty independent for only being seven. He’s made breakfast for me a couple of times, even.

“Hi.” Austin smiles at me and takes a bite of his bagel. He looks just like how I did when I was seven with blue eyes that are too big and brown hair that’s a little messy. I don’t think I cleaned up much but as long as I keep getting dates I’m happy.

“Ready for school?” I ask and pull my shirt over my head.

“Yes,” Austin says and lisps on the ‘s’. My dad had been planning to get him a speech therapist but that would mean having to take time off work. Dad spends most his time at work so it’s almost always Austin and I. That’s why I spend so much time doing sports, I have to do something between the hour and a half that my school finished and then Austin’s.

We don’t talk about Mom. She died when I was twelve, about a year after Austin was born, and ever since then there’s no mention of her. I would say Dad’s way of getting rid of grief is by working so much but he did that when she was alive too.

“Then let’s go,” I tell him and nod to the door.

“Alright.” Austin smiles, showing off a mouth of missing teeth and a few that are growing in awkwardly and crooked.

I’ve gotten a couple of comments from girls that he was cute since he seemed to be so generally awkward. Hanna didn’t really like him. She sort of did but since every time she came over he had to be here, she got frustrated. She used to tell me that he had to go somewhere if we were going to do more than kiss. I wanted to do more than kiss, don’t get me wrong, but I had to take care of my brother.

After a while when Austin has his own backpack on and I look at him. “Ready?”

“Ready.”

-

“Hey, man.” Derrick says to me and smiles. Derrick has been one of my close friends since freshman year when we met on the lacrosse team. We’re not the best friends but we hang out a lot. We have a lot more in common than people thought we would. A few people didn’t even think we would become friends because he replaced me as the ‘player’ and managed to get most of the girls interested in him over me. I liked it better that way, it took away my reputation and it barely existed after a while.