The Kiss

is.”
    Eliza assessed the damage to her shoe—the heel wasn’t broken, luckily, just not very steady—while at the same time trying to bring her knees under her and move off the yuckiness without flashing him. The desire to glare at him was squashed by how helpless he looked.
    She could tell her date was suddenly struck by an idea, as if by lightning. His spine went ramrod straight, and his right arm spasmed, as if he started raising it to smack his forehead before remembering it held a glass of wine.
    “Here.” He passed both glasses to her. “We’ll move the whole thing toward the road. It’s bound to be less humid and better lit there.” He winked.
    She reached out but miscalculated the distance, or maybe Bill moved, and watched in horror as liquid splashed the front of his jeans, all the way down to mid-thigh.
    “Incredibly, I feel less of an ass now.” He chuckled.
    His good mood was contagious, and when he found his footing and helped her up, Eliza realized she was grinning.
    The next place they decided on turned out to be extremely close to an anthill.
    Eliza started jumping around, swatting at her hair—despite Bill’s reassurances that there was no way the creepy crawlies could have gotten into it since she caught on to them when they’d barely passed her toes on their way up.
    “I don’t care. I can feel them everywhere!” She saw Bill’s gaze zero in on her cleavage. “So not the right time.” She was getting pissed at him, when he started pointing too.
    She looked down and had to cross her eyes before she picked out the moving black spot on her top. It seemed to be racing toward her skin. “ Get it off ,” she shrieked, but panic kept her from holding still while Bill made every valiant effort to remove the threat without groping her.
    She shrieked again when the fifth-of-an-inch monster set foot on the swell of her breast.
    Bill was pulling on the material at the front of her top, when a handbag knocked him on the head.
    The old lady attached to its handle started landing blows on all parts of his anatomy and calling him a pervert. He tried hard to fend off the blows without harming the woman, while Eliza kept telling her there was a misunderstanding.
    When Eliza’s words finally sunk in, the woman turned to her, called her a slut who puts out in parks, and left with one more swing at Bill’s back.
    Still, the date might have survived even that, if it hadn’t started raining right then.
    It was by no means a storm—just enough of a drizzle to ruin any chance of a picnic. Returning Bill’s defeated look, Eliza asked what he’d prepared for dinner. When he said it was hotdogs, she suggested they ate them while walking back to the dorm.
    They did just that, walking side by side, chewing in companionable silence that was only interrupted by Bill showing off how he could down half a hot-dog in one bite…and choking on it.
    All in all, the evening was fun. Not the sort of fun a girl would like to have with the one , but Eliza kept reminding herself that the sooner he took her to the dorm, the sooner she’d find out if he really was that one. And if he was, well, they’d get plenty of chances to have the perfect moonlit dinner in the park.
    She tried hard to not pay any mind to the small voice in the back of her head that insisted she’d have felt some attraction to him if he was her kisser-in-the-dark. Besides, it was not like she’d ever felt any attraction towards any of the guys who’d been close to her that night at The Zoo .
    Again she ignored the little voice calling her a liar.
    Finally outside her dorm, she turned to face Bill, who was wiping mustard off his upper lip. “Thank you,” she said. “It was fun.”
    “ Yeah, that’s me. Billy-boy is all about the fun .” He sounded sad, and she knew then that she’d kiss him anyway, just to make him smile.
    “Goodnight.” She stepped on the top of three stairs and leaned into him, waiting for him to close the distance. He reflexively pulled back, however, making her stumble and fall forward. To steady her, he closed his arms around her waist in an awkward grasp. Their faces were half an inch apart.
    He wasn’t going to kiss her; she could tell he was too shy. So she kissed him , seeking in the touch of his lips even a glimpse of the soul-shaking sensations the stranger’s lips had evoked in her a few nights earlier.
    All she felt was a hint of pork and mustard.
    ***
    Krista ambushed Eliza the moment she came in