I'm Your Wreck

20- I'm Straight

I couldn't feel my face for a solid three days after Banks kissed me.

He was completely avoiding me, not answering my texts, not walking with me to class like we normally did, hiding away in his room at all hours and not answering when I knocked. Even though I could hear him moving around in there.

Hopefully, he'd be willing to work through whatever happened after Thanksgiving break. He was staying at the house with Ollie since their family lived so far away and they'd be going home for Christmas in a month. What was running through his mind when he kissed me? What was running through his mind in the days that followed?

Was he embarrassed or scared or angry for some reason? I wish I could tell him that I wasn't upset, that we could just pretend like it didn't happen if he wanted. I said as much in the texts that he hadn't responded to.

"I've been authorized not to speak on the matter," Ollie had said when I broached the subject with him, because Banks would have definitely told him about what happened.

It was consuming every thought in my head. I replayed the moments before the kiss, the moments after. I had been leaning forward a bit, my palms pressed into my thighs and I remembered smelling the sweet scent of his gum. I was trying to get him to open up.

And then there were lips, on my lips. Softer than I would have expected, maybe warmer too. The contact was only for a brief second, not a lot to analyze, but I ran it over in my head a million times to try to grab every bit of information from it that I could.

After the pulled away, he looked like he just shot me or something. Guilty and panicked and scared. So scared. If I was better with words, I could have gotten him to calm down. We could have talked about it, although I had no idea what I would have said. I was stunned. I was still stunned three days later, like somebody tazed me right in the gut.

"You're being awfully quiet," Quinn accused me on the hour long drive home. "Is it Banks again?"

The way my neck whipped in her direction after she mentioned his name already answered her questions before I said anything. "How did you guess that?"

She shrugged and said, "You should know by now that I can read your mind."

"Please stop. It's freaky."

With a proud smile, she tapped absently against the steering wheel and said, "So, what happened this time?"

I didn't want to say, but also the pressure was building in my chest and if I didn't tell somebody what happened, I was going to explode. "He... kissed me? Very quickly, and then he freaked out about it and hasn't talked to me since."

"Shit," she exhaled. "How did you react?"

"I kind of didn't. I mean, I was shocked and then he was gone. I didn't have time to do anything," I explained to her. "I've been trying to get him to talk to me, but it's been radio silent."

She pinched her lips together in thought, nodding along, and then in a slow and cautious voice, she asked, "And how do you feel about kissing Banks?"

I blinked at her a couple of times. "I mean... I'm straight."

But if I was as straight as I thought I was, would I really have the shape of his lips memorized by heart now, after just one very quick touch? Would I still remember the way his nose brushed against mine as he pulled away in a hurry?

Quinn shrugged, like that was a non-issue. "Sexuality doesn't fit into neat little boxes all of the time. Don't let the 'straight' label stop you from enjoying a kiss."

I didn't respond to that, mostly because I didn't know how to.

For a long time, we drove in silence as Quinn hummed along to the Taylor Swift album she had playing. My mind still stuck on the kiss, I started comparing it to other kisses I had in my life.