kissy face; pucker up and close your eyes

     So, people have been posting scenes from their writing today in which the characters kiss each other. It's the Official Kissing Day Blogfest, and I am applying Soft Lips, spritzing Binaca, and trying my hand at this virtual tongue tousle. If you participate, you can link to the hub here.

This is an excerpt from my current WIP, which might be titled ANOTHER MAN DOWN, or FOR THE LOVE OF LAUREL LANCASTER or THE DEAD END, or perhaps none of those. Warning: it's a sad kiss.

     They sat on top of the picnic table outside Latte Da. Adam dangled his legs off the edge and Laurel looked down at her jeans and picked at the frayed edges around her ankles. She could not look at him.
     "I don't know that I've ever really been myself with you," said Laurel. "I want everything you don't. I want the white picket fence and a husband and children."
     "What are you trying to say, Laurel? I know that about you. I think you're yourself with me."
     "I tried so hard to be this adjusted, confident person. But, the whole time we've been together, all I could think about was how it was going to end. I was always so insecure, thinking that you might like another girl better than me. I guess that's why I decided to go ahead and go away to school, because whatever I decided, in the end, I knew you were never going to decide on me. In another year, you'll be the one who is leaving."
     He sighed. The sigh told Laurel that she was probably right, at least in the assumption that he would be leaving town next year. But, the part about liking another girl better? No, it wouldn't be that he found someone he liked better, it would just be someone different. He hoped Laurel understood the distinction.
     "So, you're breaking up with me?" His question came out in a voice she hadn't heard him use before. The words sounded thin, small. She did not want the moment to end, wanted to stay wrapped up in the sadness with him. At least they would still be together.
     Tears fell hot and fast against her face, and she knew that there was no turning back. She did not want to lose him, but she did not want to lose herself either. She just could not envision a scenario where she left for college in a few months with him as her boyfriend, or one where she cancelled her plans and stayed in Kentucky instead. The ultimate mistake, in her estimation, was planning ones future around a man. Regardless, a wave of anguish would come over her and linger; it was inevitable, and she needed it to linger now, through the summer, rather than to hang around her through the fall. That would be no way to spend her first college semester, walking around with a dark cloud over her head and crying her eyes out in bed every night.
     "I need to summer to get used to being without you," said Laurel. She reached for his hand. "I don't know if I can do this." He held her hand in both of his. "I love you. I love you from this deep part of me and it hurts so much to..." She made a fist and put it between her breasts, as if indicating a pain in her chest.
     He did not speak, and she feared that he might stand up and get into the car, and drive her home in silence, and that would be the end of it all. He was always better at goodbye, whether he was leaving her for the evening, hanging up the phone, or getting on a plane to cross an ocean.
     "Adam, if I ever decide I want to move out west, to have a more adventurous life, you have to know that you're the first person I am going to call. And if you decide you want the white picket fence, a wife and a couple of kids... you better call me." She spoke quickly, trying to get it all out.
     "Twenty years," said Adam. His voice was a whisper on the wind, his promise swirling up into the universe.
     He put his arms around her and held her against him. He did not cry, but he did not look unaffected. She wanted him to tell her not to do this, to argue that it did not have to end here. To tell her again what he tried to say in her yearbook. She wanted him to fight for them.
     "Can I kiss you -- one last time?" Laurel would laugh at how dramatic she sounded, if it had not felt so poignantly dreadful.
     "Yes," said Adam. "Yes, you can. Of course you can."
     There was a longing in that kiss, an urgency that Laurel feared she would never again match with her lips.
Time wasn't going to change the way she felt for him; miles would not make the ache inside her heart go away. Soulmates do not need a zip code in common, or the label of a relationship to thrive.
     "Can we still be friends?" Laurel asked, shaking her head a little at how banal she sounded.
     Adam brushed a tear off her cheek and put his hand on his heart. "Friends of best-ness," he said.


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