Turning back to the present and the pictures before us, I realized that Matty was staring intently at the photo of us in our casts. I wondered if he remembered the kiss that happened just a couple of months after the picture was taken. Sensing I was looking at him, he lifted his eyes and gave me a wink, and I knew instantly that he had been thinking about the kiss, too. I smiled back at him as I recalled other kisses we shared.
Over the next four years, Matty and I kissed again several times. Of course, there was the kiss in the swimming pool that Krista had witnessed. But before that, we kissed again at a party in seventh grade where we were all playing “Seven Minutes in Heaven.” Not really wanting to play, Matty arranged to draw my name and we proceeded into Jimmy’s parent’s basement laundry room (the only “closet” in the downstairs area of their house), thinking we could just kill time and not have to do anything. We stood quietly inside, but our friends kept yelling through the door saying they would know if we didn’t do anything and that we’d have to pay the price for not following the rules. What that price was, neither of us knew; but we felt we had to kiss or else face the wrath of our friends. We finally both shrugged at each other and giggled a little before deciding to just go for it.
Matty stepped towards me and put both hands on the side of my face, just like the men in the movies did, although he squeezed a little too hard, making my lips form a pucker. He giggled and loosened his grip before leaning forward and giving me a quick peck on the mouth. And then he gave me another kiss, followed by another. I reached out and put my hands on his waist; and we began slowing our kisses down, letting our lips linger longer and longer against each other.
Suddenly there was banging on the laundry room door, which startled both us so much that we ended up smashing into one another’s teeth before separating. We had gotten a bit carried away and gone over our allotted seven minutes. We endured weeks of teasing from our entire grade as word had spread quickly on Monday as to what had happened, especially since both of us had emerged red faced from the laundry room. Matty and I never discussed it and just ignored anyone who brought it up. But I relieved those minutes we had spent kissing countless times in my mind, and I often let my imagination wander and fantasize about doing more than just kissing Matty. Although at that age, I wasn’t sure what doing more actually entailed. I figured it just meant kissing with your mouth open the way actors did in the movies. Or else maybe kissing while laying down.
One Saturday night early on during eighth grade, Matty’s parents were out in the next city over having dinner; afterwards, they were going to see a touring Broadway show. Matty had spent the day at football practice and I wasn’t expecting to even see him. But at around nine that evening, I heard my window slide open and turned from my desk, where I was finishing my homework, to see Matty crawl through.
“You’d make a great burglar, you know?” I whispered as I went over to close the window behind him. He had thankfully showered after practice; I had told him that if he wanted to come over after playing sports that he needed to shower first as he stunk so much that I couldn’t breathe as he was so sweaty and dirty. Matty told me that he and some of the other guy’s had gone to Jimmy’s house for dinner after practice. “Jimmy’s mom doesn’t cook as well as your mom,” he insisted. “Don’t tell Jean that I was cheating on her food!”
We quickly settled into sitting positions in the corner of my room behind my bed so that if my parents or sisters opened my door, they wouldn’t be able to see us. We quickly fell into our usual routine of going over the day’s events. After about an hour, we agreed he had better leave as I knew my folks would be heading upstairs to bed soon; and we didn’t want to get caught.
As usual, I walked Matty over to my window. But on this night, instead of giving me his usual smile and wave before climbing out, Matty leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. While it took me a bit by surprise, it also felt natural. I smiled at him, watching him crawl out and down the trellis before closing the window. I still remember putting my hand to my cheek to touch where his mouth had just been. For some reason, it felt like a more intimate kiss than those we’d shared before on our lips.
After that, every time Matty was leaving my house via the window, he would kiss me on the cheek. Neither of us asked the other how we felt about it; it just seemed as natural as the waves we gave one another when saying goodbye. Soon, a hug started following the kiss on the cheek; and I began kissing his check before we let go of our embrace. This kiss-hug-kiss routine only happened when we were by ourselves; when anyone else was around, we just smiled and said goodbye. I for one felt it was something special, and I wanted to keep it just between us.
Then came our eighth-grade dance, which took place during the Saturday before our last week of school. While a few people in our class attended together as dates, the majority of us came to the dance with our friends. My mom had driven both Krista and
