The Beginning

(Theo's Version)

The first time I kiss Kit, he tastes like jalape?os and apricots.

We're drunk enough to be brave. Some guys from the restaurant have thrown a Halloween party at their rental house in Cathedral City, and there is a trash can full of mystery punch, and we're twenty-two, the age at which trash-can punch sounds genius instead of evil. I did add a few glugs of apricot brandy from the liquor shelf to take the edge off, at least.

For the last four months since Kit moved to Palm Springs and in with me, we've been talking Halloween costumes. Slutty M it was the promise. When we were fourteen, a year after Kit's mom died, his dad decided to move the whole family to New York. Kit and I got out a map and found the midpoint between Rancho Mirage and Brooklyn. Oklahoma City. We promised to meet there every summer, but I always found excuses not to go, and they were never that good.

His brown eyes are so sparkly in the lamplight, framed by his stupid Cher wig, that I tell him the truth, partly: When he left, I realized I'd fallen in love with my best friend when I wasn't looking. And then he was five hundred miles too far for it to matter, telling me about first dates over the phone, and it hurt too much. Oklahoma City would have broken my heart.

"I'm sorry," I tell him. "It was shitty of me. I was shitty to you."

"Oh" is all he says.

"I'm totally over it now," I say, which is a lie. I've never been more under it. I thought living with Kit would be great exposure therapy, that nobody could stay in love with their best friend after watching them scratch their ass through sweatpants. If anything, I love Kit more now. "So you don't have to worry. I'm not gonna make it weird."

Kit sets down his slice and studies me, my stick-on mustache, hair braided back to fit under my bowl-cut wig. He bites out a smile, tucks Cher's hair behind his ear, and says, "I was in love with you too."

"You—what?"

"Back then, I mean."

I nod, trying to keep my voice steady. "Right. Back then."

And he laughs, so I laugh, and I put on Sonny & Cher to cover up how weird mine sounds. We dance around the living room with grease-slicked lips to "I Got You Babe" until my hand brushes Kit's cinched waist.

I catch the ends of shiny, synthetic hair between my thumb and finger, touch him without touching him. He reaches up and peels off my mustache.

"What if we tried it?" he asks softly. "Just once, to see what it would be like?"

And then I'm in my best friend's bed, kissing him dizzy. Just to see what it's like.

At the bottom of my belly, I know this will change me in a permanent way. Maybe it's wrong, maybe it's completely fucked up to let him do this when I know how I feel and how he doesn't, but it's Kit. Kit loves to make people feel good, and when he buries his face between my legs, I feel good. I feel so good it's awful.

He'll laugh about it tomorrow, and every person I take to bed from now on will be fighting his ghost for my attention.

In the morning, the kitchen smells like cinnamon and butter and yeast, and Kit's at the sink, doing dishes. He's wearing the apron I bought him when we road-tripped up to the Santa Maria Valley to find out if the barbecue was worth the hype. It says, THIS GUY RUBS HIS OWN MEAT.

The table is set with two plates, steam curling and icing dripping from golden-brown dough. Kit bakes from scratch every weekend, and he's been in pursuit of the perfect cinnamon roll recipe for years.

I made a lot of promises to myself when I was falling asleep next to him. I would be cool. It was nothing but a laugh. Two old friends hooking up for old times' sake, pouring one out for the lovestruck kids we used to be.

He smiles at me from the sink, still wearing the bruise I bit into his neck, and I say, "I lied. I never got over it."

Kit lets out a long breath. He turns off the water. And then he says the most incredible thing he could possibly say.

He says, "Neither did I."