Sweet and Sour

"Do your parents ever kiss in front of you?" Zachary asked me innocently. He turned and offered me a curious half grin. I rolled my eyes and shook my head.

"Nuh-uh. Not really." I stared at him, furrowing my eyebrows. "Why?"

"Cause I heard that Tommy tried to kiss Maria at recess, but she wouldn't 'cause boys got cooties." He blabbered on mindlessly. I rolled my eyes. Maria was such a baby. We were in the second grade. Jimmy, Ross, and Albert all had girlfriends already. Some of them have even kissed them before. Cooties was such a kindergarten thing.

"I wouldn't mind getting cooties if it meant kissing Maria." He noted as he took a bite into his peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

I choked on my Capri Sun. Zach with a girlfriend. It was such an odd idea. I looked away from him, finding myself unable to meet his eyes. I felt his finger jab my shoulder blade.

"What's up with you?" I turned to face him. To face his golden fringe in his shiny blue eyes, and soft pink lips, and tried to imagine him kissing Maria. I cringed. It didn't seem right. I tried to imagine him kissing Sophie, or Riley, or Teresa, or Lola. No matter which girl, it just seemed wrong for him to kiss anyone. I twisted my mouth into a frown.

Maybe that thought was not totally true. I guess I could imagine him kissing one person...

But, no, that didn't seem right. No one else had ever bragged about doing that.

"Have you ever kissed anyone Zach?" I mumbled, trying to act like it didn't matter to me. Even though it did. A lot.

"Mhm! I kissed Cindy under the monkey bars last Tuesday during recess. She wanted me to be her boyfriend but I said no because that meant that I could only kiss her."

I could feel the bitter sting welling up behind my eyes. I couldn't cry here in front of Z. He would call me a girl and stop being friends with me. 'Maybe if you were a girl, it would've been you with Zach under the monkey bars instead of Cindy?' The thought did nothing but thicken the water in my eyes.

"What about you Bass?" Zachary continued unaware of the throb in my chest, "Have you ever kissed anyone?"

No. I wanted so desperately to be able to slip the word out, move on from this conversation. For the lunch bell to ring so I could go to the bathroom and cry. But my throat had already welled up so tight, that the words could not possibly come out.

I felt a wetness on my cheek and realized I had let a tear fall, and quickly wiped it off.

Zach tilted his head to the side and examined me over the crust of his sandwich bread. He must have notice that I was crying.

"Why are you crying Bassy?" Zach turned his body to face me completely. He looked worried now, unsure of what to do next. Any second now he was going to call me a loser and run away with... with Cindy to go make out some more.

"Is it cause you've never been kissed?" He probed.

Crap. That was the word that I learned from Ms. Edison when she spilled coffee all over her computer during nap time. It seemed to be an appropriate time to use it now. I'm the computer, and Zach is the coffee. We don't belong together, and so being around him... it hurts me.

"Maybe," I whisper, even though it isn't true. I am not crying because I have never been kissed. I am crying because he has been.

Silence.

"Well it's not that big of a deal really," Zach scratched his brow in thought. Like he was thinking about mental long division. He wasn't really good at math just yet. I felt relieved. He wasn't calling me a crybaby, he was trying to make me feel better.