Banana Pancakes

Banana Pancakes (Part 10)

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Part 10

Banana Pancakes

Kongpob and I had an accident when we turned seventeen.

For all the wrong reasons, we did something that twisted our best-friends relationship at a half-angle where we seem to be permanently at. Even though it has only been a year ago, I can remember the incident as though it happened just minutes – seconds – ago. From the time that we were little kids to now, Kongpob and I have never really thought of each other as anything more than just best friends. In his eyes, I wasn't a friend in his eyes, and in my eyes, he wasn't a friend. I was just his Arthit and he was my Kongpob.

Until that day.

My birthday.

Truth is, I had a terrible breakup with my boyfriend during that year – a week before my 17th birthday; he was my first serious boyfriend. I had liked him a lot for all the right reasons, but liking someone isn't enough reason for a relationship to last. External factors caused us to break up and I haven't spoken to him since. He is the one Alex is always referring to. Even my brother says he's a good guy, a great guy – but our breakup ended rather awkwardly. I remember breaking out in mountains of tears when our phone call ended at exactly 12:14 that night.

The only person I could run to was Kongpob.

When he found me at our usual spot at Sky Park, I was crying hysterically with droves of snot and tears following down my face. It took Kongpob half-an-hour to calm me down, after asking me how I got out here alone. When he found out the reason I was crying, Kongpob didn't say anything. He let me use his shoulder as a tissue at my disposal. He was with me that whole entire night while I cried until dawn, and he finally took me home, no questions asked.

For days on end, I moped around. Sad. Definitely. When you break up with your first love, you'd cry too. What made it even worse was the fact that there was no way to go back to the beginning – the very beginning. So it became hopeless to hope. After all, I was a teenage guy getting over my first break-up.

But what did Kongpob know about sensitivity and painful emotions.

"It's been a freakin' week! Why won't you just snap out of it?" Kongpob had asked me on the afternoon of my birthday when we were back at Sky Park, chowing down some birthday food that he had bought for me – which he ended up eating it all. I remember staring around the wrappers with the labels on them: Banana Pancakes – thinking Kongpob was crazy. 

"Eat." He threw one of them at me, out of the many that he had bought in a pack.

"Breaking up hurts," I told Kongpob, ignoring the banana pancakes he was slaughtering around. "It hurts, Kongpob. I won't be able to talk to him again; I won't be able to see him again – in person. It hurts." 

Kongpob rolled his eyes, placing the two banana pancakes he had been eating down at the bench we were sitting at. "Can you please just stop talking about him?" 

When I shook my head, Kongpob groaned, getting up from the bench.

"What?" I stared up at him through teary-eyes. "Gosh Kongpob, can't you let me mope about this? He's my boyfriend – was my boyfriend. You don't know the feeling of breaking up with your true love."

Kongpob scoffed, rolling his eyes as he looked around the park. Placing his hands on his hips as he chewed the last pieces of the banana pancakes in his mouth; Kongpob demanded, "Hey, are you the first living creature to break up with a boyfriend? You think fishes don't get sad when their spouse get caught by fishermen? You don't think birds mourn when their significant other isn't next to them singing when they wake up in the morning? You don't think bees miss their other half when they don't return from flowers? HUH? You think you're the only guy in the world who knows the feeling of breaking up with a boyfriend?!"

I remember Kongpob's words distinctly because it was the first time I heard him say things like that. Not only was it so poetic and deep, it was like the words came from another person – not the Kongpob Suthiluck I knew. When did that kind of language get inside of his stubborn brain? I blinked at him in surprise, "Hey! What's wrong with you?"

"NOTHING!" Kongpob snapped when he sat back down on the bench to me. Picking up another random, unwrapped package of banana pancakes, Kongpob started chowing it down, looking angry.

"...Kongpob!? Hey...what is wrong with you? Slow down! Why are you eating so many banana–" I had barely started to ask him the question when Kongpob turned to me, doing something that would forever change our relationship.

At first, I didn't know what hit my face. I had no clue what closed my lips and smoothly glided across them. When I realized what was going on and the fact hit me – Kongpob Suthiluck was kissing me – it was too late. I was already sprawled across the bench, on a bunch of opened banana pancakes, with Kongpob on top of me – kissing me. The shock hit me like millions of speeding bullets and I was lost for air. Kongpob pinned me underneath him, just laying his lips across mine as his hands touched my arms softly. There was nothing I could do – I was powerless.

So I kissed him back...

...I kissed my best friend back.

Until––

"Mommy, what are they doing?"
"Oh gosh!"

We snapped back to reality the moment the little girl's voice drifted to our ears.

Kongpob immediately let me go, jumping up and away from me approximately five feet. I sat up on the bench, with my hand across my mouth, staring at the little girl with her mother who were passing by the area. The old woman glared at us while covering her daughter's eyes as she dragged her daughter away. "They're bad kids honey, bad kids."

I remember looking at Kongpob who looked away from me, looking beet red.

"We will never talk about this." Getting up from the bench, I walked away from Kongpob – wiping the places his lips had touched on mine – but to no vain, my lips were still tasting like banana pancakes.