The Kiss

given himself. Jonathan asked if she’d like something to drink while he called Nathaniel downstairs.
    The girl’s face fell. “Umm, I’m not sure he’ll come down if you say I’m here…”
    “Then perhaps it shouldn’t be up to him. His room is upstairs, last door on your right.”

Chapter Ten

    She was standing outside Nate’s bedroom. Nathaniel’s bedroom, his father had told her.
    Funny how she’d never wondered what Nate’s real name was. Even funnier that she could never have guessed he had a father like the man who told her to call him Briggs. She hadn’t given Nate’s place much thought, but never in a million years could she have imagined it’d be full of light, with frilly curtains and coasters on tables. Or crystal vases with flowers on them dispersed throughout the house.
    She reached Nate’s door and took a deep breath, pondering on whether she should knock or not.
    Maybe she should just barge in, with a jolly hello there .
    She knocked timidly.
    “Come in, Dad. I’m decent.”
    She would have snorted if her legs weren’t a bit unsteady. “Er…guess again.” She opened the door and…walked into an alternate dimension.
    Nate was wearing glasses. And reading. She looked at the cover of the book he was holding. It was poetry .
    She wouldn’t be surprised to hear Welcome to the Twilight Zone any minute now.
    “I—I—I…” Eloquent. So very eloquent.
    Nate jumped off his bed, tossing the book aside. “Eliza? What are you doing here?”
    He sounded different, too.
    Not knowing what to make of all the information clouding her mind, she went for her favorite course of action: attack. “You kissed me. Why did you kiss me? Twice!”
    *
    He had fallen asleep while reading. There was no other explanation.
    Eliza was there, in his room , because it was all a dream. Damn, he still had his glasses on. His dad had warned him on more than one occasion that sleeping with his glasses on was like begging for a scratched eye. He took off the spectacles and placed them carefully on his desk. The same desk the woman of his dreams leaned against, arms crossed and eyebrow arched.
    If she wasn’t something his mind had conjured, he was in quite a bind. And he had to stop thinking like a wimp. In quite a bind . He snorted.
    “Well?” she asked.
    She was real. Really real and really there, and unless he found something smart to say he could lose his only chance to make her see…
    “I just felt like it.” He couldn’t make her see anything. She was only there because she felt he owed her an explanation. After he satisfied her curiosity, she’d probably warn him to never bother her again and walk out of his life for good.
    *
    She never should have gone to him.
    It was a mistake—she could see that now. First he’d completely ignored her, and now he was as cold as a popsicle. He just felt like it . She felt like doing many things, but had he ever seen her moon the Contemporary Lit Professor? Had he ever caught her rolling on the grass or throwing the cafeteria meatballs on the linoleum, to see if they bounced? No. She never did things just because she felt like it.
    “You just felt like creeping up to me in the dark and kissing me, like…” Like he was starving for her lips, like he needed her breath to survive, like he craved her. “And then, in my room. You kissed me again.”
    “ You kissed me that time.”
    Did it matter? He’d returned her kiss. He’d deepened it. She searched his eyes for the passion he’d shown her just the previous night, but saw nothing. “You ran.”
    *
    There was no accusation in her voice; she was just stating a fact, but it hurt him to be reminded of what a coward he’d been.
    He still was one.
    She was so close, he could smell her shampoo. He could just reach out, tangle his fingers in that shining mane of golden locks and seal her questioning lips with another kiss.
    He knew he wouldn’t. He couldn’t risk seeing that look of disappointment in her eyes again, so he would just do what he’d been doing from the start; scare her away.
    “I ran.” He nodded. “And so should you. Run along now.”
    *
    This Nate she saw before her was the one she was used to. He was the Nate who insulted, who made fun, who hurt her every chance he got. She knew how to deal with him much better than with the sensitive Nathaniel she’d been allowed a glimpse of.
    Too bad that something inside her told her the Nate she was seeing now was nothing more than a front. Even