Colin
I took Tatiana’s hand in mine and dragged her out through the front door. The teacher that normally monitored the door didn’t stop us. He, too, had probably heard the rumors and figured we could use the space, or maybe he was too shy to intervene. In any event, I pulled her down the sidewalk and turned her to face me. She was still crying and it was breaking my heart.
“How could you say something so horrible about me?” she whimpered.
“I did not start this rumor,” I put my hands on each of her shoulders, “but I know it’s true.”
Tatiana’s eyes widened. “It’s not.”
“Yes it is. I saw you two at my game. I was benched for the whole second half of the game and I saw you two go behind the bleachers. When you came out, he smacked you on your ass. You even got mad at him because he tried to kiss you out in the open. I saw the whole thing.” Tatiana was looking at me with parted lips and glossy eyes like she was replaying it as I said it. “I knew that it was true, but I made the mistake of talking to Harlie about it--”
“You told Harlie?!” Her cheeks were darker than the rest of her face, but I didn’t know if rage or embarrassment was the cause of the hue. “I--you--it…” She turned her back to me and started off towards her house.
I walked off after her, and when she realized I was following her, she took off running. I ran after her, and I may have been a quarterback on a varsity football team, but Tatiana was tiny, and she was fast. I just barely managed to keep up with her, and if it weren’t for the struggle she experienced, she might have successfully locked me out when she bolted inside and attempted to slam the door in my face. I stuck my hand out and caught the door as it was closing and forced it back open. She abandoned that door and rushed up the stairs towards the bedrooms. I followed after her, taking the stairs two at a time, and fortunately caught her bedroom door as she attempted the same tactic as the front door.
I pushed my way into Tatiana’s room and she turned around to face me, her expression full of rage and anguish. “Get out!”
“No! Just let me talk to you about this! I want to help you!”
“I don’t need help. I’m fine!”
I dropped my jaw. “No you’re not! You’re sleeping with a teacher. He’s got you brainwashed into thinking this is okay, when it isn’t. It’s toxic.”
“You’re one to talk!” Tatiana snapped.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re toxic! I never know what you’re thinking. One day you’re one way, the next day you’re another.”
I felt like I was hearing all the things I should be yelling. “And you don’t do that? One day you’re barking at me about some petty comment you heard at school and then the next day you’re asking me out! Pick a fucking lane!”
“You pick a lane!” Tatiana screamed back at me. “You’re so hot and cold. It’s just like that day you played with my emotions back in the 7th grade! You’ve always been that way.”
My world stopped turning and everything in my brain toppled over. “Wait. What?”
“What?!”
“Me?” I couldn’t find up or down all of a sudden. “You played with my emotions. I thought you wanted to be my girlfriend after I kissed you. The next thing I know, you’re throwing your locket in the dirt and saying that being my girlfriend would be gross.”
Tatiana took a step back, her expression matching how I felt. “Y-you… I only said that because you were all gung ho to go with that random girl to Sadie Hawkins and agreed to go on a date with her.”
I felt like I was having an out of body experience. “What? When did I ever agree to go with anyone anywhere? The only girl I liked was you.”
Tatiana was staring at me like she couldn’t believe what I was saying. “I watched you.” Her voice was no longer loud and forceful, but a confused murmur. “She asked you out and you said yes and when she asked you to Sadie Hawkins you said maybe.”
The day started playing back in my head. I’d just found out that I made the football team and I was so elated I couldn’t think straight. Between kissing Tatiana for the first time and finally being on the team I’d dreamed about for years, I was delirious. I could only think about getting to Tatiana and celebrating with her; asking her to be my girlfriend and starting our new relationship. There were tons of people asking me to hang out and do stuff with them. I figured it just came with the territory since I’d made the team. My parents would have killed me for being rude to anyone. I had no recollection of any specific girl asking me out, but if one had, I would have agreed just to get them to stop talking to me so I could fast-track getting to Tatiana. 7th grade me didn’t think about the consequences of stuff like that, only doing what made him happy. Tatiana made him happy.
“I don’t remember that,” I replied finally. “I mean, I remember lots of kids asking if I wanted to be friends all of a sudden and going out and stuff like that. I didn’t want to get into any complicated conversations because it would have delayed me getting to you.”
Silence fell between us. The same realization was giving us both uppercuts to the jaw. She misconstrued an interaction between me and one of the girls that was talking to me, so she said something she didn’t mean? The past five years, being together, it had all been ruined because of a simple misunderstanding?
Tatiana turned her back to me. “Please leave.”
I wouldn’t--I couldn’t. Learning what we just had, how could I leave after that? Tatiana loved me too, she always had. “No.”
“Colin!” she screamed and I could hear the tearful shake to her voice. “Leave!”
“No!” I grabbed her hand and whipped her around to face me. I pulled her close and looked down into those deep, intoxicating brown eyes, holding her in my arms fully for the first time. “If you can tell me to go one more time, I’ll leave.”
I could feel Tatiana’s heart racing to match my own. Tears streamed down her face. “I hate you.”
I shook my head. “No you don’t.” I pulled her face to mine and our lips met.
Nothing else mattered in that moment as I finally kissed Tatiana with all of our cards on the table.
16
Tatiana
My mind was a tornado, taking everything in its path off the ground, and refusing to set it back down. Colin’s lips against mine were soft and sweet, a feeling I both recognized and didn’t know. He’d grown. Even though I wouldn’t consider our first kiss bad by any stretch, almost-adult Colin was a tsunami. He knew when to part his lips gently, when to lick his tongue out to slide along my bottom lip. He knew how to settle his hand just on the small of my back so that I could feel his heat all the way up my spine, and just how to tilt my face up ever so slightly, giving himself better access.
The emotions I’d locked away within me were clamoring at the bars, and the metal was bending. It was as Colin had marched straight to the center of my brain and caused a sonic boom where he was standing. Everything got pushed further and further away with each additional second he was pressed against me, and even the few strands of logic that still hung on, that knew I should stop kissing Colin and tell him to leave, were overwhelmed by all the other ones that had waited years to kiss him again.