A Rose for Melinda by Lurlene McDaniel Page B

of last summer, but a real kiss, one that left my knees shaky and my heart racing.
    I can still taste the peppermint of his tongue and smell the lemony scent of his skin. I can still feel the warmth of his body and the touch of his hands on my arms and around my waist. I can hardly hold the pen straight as I write this. But I will try to write it down just as it happened, so that I will never forget what it felt like.…
    In the afternoon, Jesse played at my computer and swore not to peek while Bailey and I got things ready for a special backyard picnic for me and Jesse. Bailey helped me pack a basket and choose special music. We made chicken salad and cut up some watermelon. “And here is a bag of M&M's,” Bailey said before shutting the lid of the hamper basket.
    “You look sad,” I said to her. I had noticed thatshe'd been awfully quiet while we worked—not
    typical for Bailey.
    “No,” she said. “Just green with envy.”
    “You'll find the right guy this year,” I told her.
    “Maybe,” she said, looking like she was going to cry.
    “For sure,” I said.
    Maybe I should have been a better friend and pressed her to tell me why she was so sad, but I didn't because all I could think about was my evening with Jesse. (I'll make it up to her after he leaves.)
    After the food was ready, Bailey helped me spread a blanket on the floor of the gazebo and place big squishy cushions all around. We set thirty-six votive candles on the railings and Mom's silver candelabra on a tray in the center of the blanket. I put my CD player on a bench.
    “It looks beautiful,” I said to Bailey.
    “Yes,” she said. “Like a fairyland.”
    “You think?” I said.
    “You're so lucky,” she said, and hugged me, then jogged away before I could even say thank you. Strange.
    Mom and Dad went to dinner and a movie (very nice of them) and later, when the stars came out, Jesse and I walked together from the house to thegazebo. He carried the picnic basket and at the gazebo he stood for a minute looking at all the flick
ering candles (which I'd lit minutes before), and he said, “You did all this for me?”
    “For both of us,” I told him. “Do you like it?”
    “I like it,” he said. “Very much.”
    We ate and talked and told each other our life plans. We've been friends for years, and I know a lot about him, but not everything. He told me that he really
does
want to become a doctor and I asked, “Since when?”
    “Since you got sick,” he said. “I want to make people well. Especially kids.”
    “It takes a long time to become a doctor,” I said.
    “I don't care how long it takes,” he said. “It's what I want to do.”
    After a while, we didn't say anything; he just leaned against the big cushions and pulled me to his side and we gazed through the candles at the stars. There was no moon, just a million stars winking down at us and a CD playing
Clair de Lune
. Jesse nuzzled my ear and whispered, “I love you, Melinda.”
    I turned my face toward him and his lips touched mine and it was like a rocket went off inside my head and my heart. I said, “I love you too, Jesse,” because I really, really DO love him. I asked, “When did you know it?” (Because I was curious about how friendship turned into love for him when we live so far apart and he has another life way out in California.)
    He said, “Maybe on the first day of school in first grade, when I saw you standing in the doorway. I remember you were dressed in a yellow dress. You looked like sunshine and you lit up all the dark places inside me.”
    I laughed and told Jesse that he had quite a memory. Grandma had given the dress to me along with shiny yellow patent leather shoes.
    He said, “I thought you were a princess.” Then he looked into my eyes, and my heart picked up speed again. “My happiest memories are of those afternoons when I came to your house and we played together,” he said. “Even when I fell out of the tree and broke my arm, I was