Between Seasons by Aida Brassington Page A

put my lips on hers, just like I’d seen Paul Varjak do to Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffa n y’s –not that I’d ever admit to seeing such a girly movie. Her lips parted slightly, and our teeth clinked together.
Everything stopped. My stomach turned over, and I thought I might puke for a second, but Brenda’s hands touched my shoulders, pulling me out of my nervousness long enough to enjoy the feel of her mouth. Still, it was weird. I wondered about the germs in her spit –I could feel it on my lips, and as I pulled back, a thin string of saliva connected us.
    Patrick couldn’t believe it worked. He didn’t know what he’d done differently or what about this moment made it so special, but he was overwhelmed by the sheer bizarreness of it. For the first time in forty years, he’d managed to actually communicate with someone intentionally. It was so heavy. His mind sped in circles, wondering if he could do it with anyone or if it was just Sara.
    “That is… wow, that’s so sweet.” Sara’s voice was surprised, and Patrick could tell she was rereading it, her hands still on the arms of her desk chair.
    “Sara, will you invite someone over? Maybe Megan or Mrs. Stout… oh, but neither of them are writers. How would I know if they could hear me or feel me or whatever the Hell I’m doing? Shit.”
    “My imagination is better than I think – my first kiss was nothing like this.”
    Patrick stopped brooding and stood next to the desk, watching her smile gro w fond. “No?”
    “I was much older – sixteen.”
    “Damn, you make me sound like a playboy.” For the first time in a while, Patrick’s invisibility worked to his advantage – there was no way he wanted to tell Sara he hadn’t kissed another girl after that for a while. He’d rather she think of him as some sort of stud.
    Sara slumped back and pulled her knees up, resting her feet on the edge of the seat. “Jimmy Becks,” she said, sighing and glancing out the window. “A much different situation too –my neighbor from across the street asked me to a movie. My parents wouldn’t let me date until I was sixteen … and for being a big town, they seemed to know everyone.”
    “You couldn’t date until… wow, my parents didn’t really have a rule for that.”
    “Anyway, Jimmy asked me out,” she recounted, fingers twisting the hem of her jeans, “and of course I said yes. I wasn’t that into him, but no one else was dying to date me.”
    There were no pictures of Sara in the house as a teenager – well, as far as he could tell, anyway –so Patrick tried to imagine what she looked like. If she was as foxy as she was now, he couldn’t imagine that she really hadn’t had a lot of dates. Then again, he’d been kind of a nerd when he was fifteen or sixteen … braces, skinny as Hell , big into comic books. Maybe she’d been too.
    “It was summer, and Mom’s jasmine that she’d been babying had bloomed. I remember the smell, you know? Jimmy walked me up to my porch after the movie and just sort of stood there, and I didn’t know what to do. I mean, did he expect me to kiss him? Or, I mean, we were kids –what if he expected something more than that?”
    Patrick snorted and tapped at the desk, disappointed when his hand sunk through. He wished his own desk was here; he felt like he needed to make noise of some sort to let her know how amused he was . Now that he’d somehow gotten his thoughts through to her, he wanted it to be easy. He wanted to talk to her, get her to laugh at a joke or something.
    “Knock knock,” he murmured. For a brief second, he hoped everything he knew was wrong. He wanted Sara to answer him back with a “Who’s there?” He just wanted her to see him.
    “It just got really awkward. The two of us were standing there staring at each other, so finally I just plopped down on our front step. Jimmy sat next to me and sort of blew in my ear. I, of course, started to giggle because it tickled, but Jimmy