I'd had a crush on Kelly for as long as I could remember. Her folks owned the house just behind ours, and our dads would both stand out and bullshit across the fence, mostly during the summer.
It was the typical crush. The one you kept to yourself, got a little giddy about when they were around, and generally tried to squelch when your friends were there. I mean all of us had that one asshole who'd blurt out that we "liked" the other person, right?
Yeah, okay. Don't deny it. You wanted to strangle that fucker.
Ultimately, it was her brother that spilled the beans. He'd found out at school and kept it all hush hush as ammo against his older sister. And so, during a chance encounter one afternoon while peppering the hill beneath my dad's blackberry bushes with my pellet gun, her brother blew the whistle there in front of her, trying to embarrass me.
Little arrogant prick. He was one of the "popular" kids at school who lived to make my life hell. I mean, Kelly was popular too, but her brother liked to pick on the guys who weren't part of the "in" crowd.
I swore I'd get him back. And I did.
That night, in fact.
As I lay in bed that night, mortified that Kelly knew how I felt, I pondered how Monday would go. I'd probably catch truck loads of hell from all the popular jocks who had eyes for Kelly, banished from the school, exiled from the city, left to a life of struggle and toil in Siberia...
I started wondering if I should have packed, or waited until the judgment fell at school.
I was so lost in thought I almost missed the tap at my bedroom window. Shaking off my thoughts, I looked up to see Kelly standing at my window, a concerned pair of pursed lips and a "You okay?" expression across her face. Standing, ignoring the fact that I was in nothing but a pair of World of Warcraft boxers, I eased the window open, glancing back at my bedroom door, listening for any sign that my folks might be awake.
"Hey."
I barely managed a reply, "Uh, hey."
"Sorry about today." Her voice helped numb my rampaging anxiety.
"It's okay. I'm sure you would have found out anyway. I mean, now that my life is over, at least I got to talk to you one last time before my execution."
Kelly blinked and giggled slightly. "Uh, what?"
"I'll never hear the end of it on Monday, Kelly. Christ can you imagine Jeremy Baker, Danny Boyd, and Stephen Krause? They're going to have a field day embarrassing me."
She rolled her eyes.
"Who cares what they think."
"They're going to make fun of you for the geeky guy having a crush on you, you know."
Kelly grabbed me with two fingers by my goatee and pulled me into a kiss.
System shutdown. Heart stopped, lungs caught on a breath that wouldn't exhale. Infinite seconds ticked by as her warm lips left mine with a deft "smack." Her eyes still closed, she said the words I'll always remember.
"Let them."
I couldn't function. I was still stuck on the kiss. Riveted in place and seized to my core, Kelly backed away a few paces, smiling coyly at me, her eyes narrow and alluring. I barely heard the rest of her words as she seemed to slip into the night, back toward her house.
"Wait till they find out about his little bed-wetting problem."
**Concept for the Kelly Chastain character is copyright
\n\t\t\t\t\tgrimblefuzz. WORK IN PROGRESS. Not sure if I'm happy with the color work yet.**---------------------------------------------
Adoptable I purchased from
\n\t\t\t\t\tking-cheetah. Please do not repost, color, or use without permission.