I kissed Michael today.
A ‘real’ kiss.
One minute he was congratulating me for a particularly good
last jump for the ride I’d just finished on one of the park trails that need to
be ridden one person at a time; and the next I’d gone from hugging him in
thanks to sharing a soft, lingering kiss with him.
If I hadn’t subconsciously crossed over yet, that kiss
pulled me across the line; and there is no going back now.
I thought it was the Fourth of July for however long that
kiss lasted; and the wide-eyed, astonished expression on Michael’s face when I
took a small step back left no doubt that he felt exactly the same way.
For a moment, there was a very good chance that we’d be
sharing a second kiss, but the sound of a bike making a run up the far side of
the last jump had us both stepping back and looking to see whether it was Tim
or Rowen joining us next. Tim sailed out
and over the top of the hill, catching some air; and landing about half-way
down the hill where the slope became less severe for the rest of the hundred
feel or so to where Michael and I were standing next to our bikes. The fact that Tim had gone ahead of Rowen was
a good thing for Michael and I, since Tim was oblivious to anything except the
biking and wanting to compare his run to ours.
The last hill on the trail is also the highest; so everyone at the head
of the trail knows when it’s safe for the next rider to start – and hides the
end of the trail from them – another bonus for us in this particular
instance. We’d both mostly recovered by
the time that Rowen joined us; but not enough that she didn’t notice that
something had happened.
We’ll get to that part of today’s recap in a bit, but we
should really back up about ten hours from that unexpected, breath-taking
moment.
Where was I? Right –
everything that happened today before that kiss. I have a photographic memory – I can do this.
:^)
My day started out with hugs and kisses too, though I can
assure you that none of the kisses from Mom, Dad, Ethan, or Ehlana felt
anything even remotely like the one with Michael this afternoon.
Ditto that for every other kiss I’ve ever shared with
anyone.
Is it hot in here?
Where was I again?
Stop laughing. Yes, I’m
looking into the future at you, Aunt Leanne; and don’t need to use my Sight to
see your reaction to reading this.
Take a deep breath, Proctor.
Tai Chi by the river was next. Ethan and Ehlana sat on the dock and played
while Mom, Dad, and I exercised. We
followed that up with a standard school and work morning breakfast; and then I
was ready to go early enough to meet up with Rowen at her house. Mrs. Warren, and most of our other teachers,
were allowing anyone with missed or late assignments to use the class time to
get them done and handed in before marks were finalized, but the rest of us
mostly either had fun make-work activities; or we were actually put to work
helping to get classrooms cleaned up. As
usual, Phys-Ed and Music were my favorite classes, and we all had fun getting
the extra outdoors time during Phys-Ed this morning.
My report on the tweeirdness while we were at school
probably would have been different if I didn’t have a different perspective on
the whole thing tonight. I’d say that
Vanessa’s perspective would be different tonight too, but she and Nora were
already mad at me – and Michael and Tim – by the time we were set free after
last class anyway. That’s because we’ve
had a beautiful, sunny day, and not only did the two boys pick biking over what
the girls had wanted to do instead, but Michael invited Rowen and I to go with
them. Nora and Vanessa were invited too,
but they didn’t want to bike the trails; were ticked off that the boys chose
biking over what they’d wanted to do instead; and inviting Rowen and me to go
along was supposedly the last straw for them.
That lasted until Michael and Tim had their ball practice;
but I’ll get to that in a minute – it’s time to get back to the after-school
action.
After collecting bikes along the way, Michael, Tim, and
Rowen came home with me for a quick snack break with Mom, Ethan, and Ehlana;
and then we biked over to the park and hit the trails. Some of those kid and teen-made trails take
the path of least resistance through the woods, and there are only a few that
have been worked on specifically to make jumps and challenging turns or
obstacles. We’d started riding those
trails at the river end of the park and worked our way north. There were other kids out riding too, but not
many teens for some reason – maybe there was make-up work going on after a
couple of weeks of concentrating on exams.
‘Our first kiss’, as I’ll be thinking of it for the rest of
my life, happened on one of the favorite built up trails; and Michael’s
comments about my riding had come after our third time through the trail. The four of us had been having a blast up to
that point, and we continued to have fun after Michael and I shared that
remember-forever moment while someone dangerously was setting off those
fireworks in the woods that only he and I apparently heard. We didn’t really have much time left to bike
after that before Michael and Tim needed to go have an early dinner before
their baseball practice, but if Michael thought my riding was good before the
kiss; he must’ve been very impressed with how I did on the last few trails we
hit on our way out of the park.
That might have been because my hyper-active had kicked up a
half-dozen notches; and I’m pretty sure that every hormone in my body had
decided to run a marathon. Hormones gone
wild could have had a lot to do with why I temporarily lost control of my lips
too, but let’s not spoil the moment with pesky little biological details. What needing to get home early did do,
though, was keep Michael and I from having a chance to talk about what had
happened. While we couldn’t do that,
Rowen didn’t let me escape that easily; and she dragged me up to my room as
soon as we got home to grill me about what had happened.
We both had fun with that little chat, and Rowen was really
happy to find out that I’d finally crossed over too. She also spent some time teasing me, and
offering suggestions for what to do next – especially since Vanessa was likely
going to have a problem with me kissing the guy she was determined would be her
boyfriend. That part of our chat was mostly
for entertainment, and we needed to get downstairs again anyway; so we didn’t
spend all that much time doing that before going to help Mom and Dad with the
tail end of getting dinner ready.
Mom didn’t say anything to me, but she and Dad – and Ethan
and Ehlana – were directing a few too many grins in my direction for me not to
be suspicious. I wonder if Aunt Leanne
got a call before I even got home today.
Maybe I’ll ask Mom about that sometime – or not. There are some questions that I might not want
to know the answers for.
Rowen stayed for dinner, and then we were drafted to take
Ethan and Ehlana to the park for some play time. By then I was sure that it wasn’t just a
coincidence that my brother and sister just happened to need to get some exercise
while Michael was still there at his baseball practice. I was once again in the tweeird zone once we
got to the park because Vanessa and Nora were there too; and they were not
happy to see me. Michael saw us first;
and it might have been the smiles and looks we exchanged that brought out the
unhappy in Vanessa. It’s a good thing
that I had all of the butterflies and warm fuzzies going on or the daggers
being glared at me from the bleachers while Rowen and I played with Ethan and
Ehlana might have hurt.
As long as we were at the playground, and Michael and Tim
were at their practice, Vanessa and Nora didn’t really have any new reasons to
be upset with Michael or me, but they were both giving me the look when all
four of them came over to the playground after the practice had ended –
apparently because Michael had insisted on playing with Ethan and Ehlana for a
few minutes. When Ehlana welcomed
Michael with a hug and kiss, Rowen couldn’t resist announcing that she was
going to “tell your Mom that her daughter’s been kissing boys at the
park”. The three of us who didn’t know
the double meaning Rowen had intended didn’t think that was nearly as funny as
the rest of us did. Michael thought that
it was as funny as I did, and he got an extra hug and kiss from Ehlana even as
she and Ethan giggled about it with us.
I’ll guess that he deduced that Rowen had been told about our kiss, but
since he didn’t even blush a little bit; I don’t think he was at all
embarrassed.
I wasn’t either, but I did spend some time thinking about
kissing Michael again while he and Tim joined in to play with the twins for
fifteen or twenty minutes. Part of the
reason I was thinking that was because Vanessa and Nora continually made it
clear that they wanted to move on and spend some time with Michael and Tim. It was probably the hormones gone wild and
crossing over that had me warming up to all of Rowen’s suggestions about how I
could save Michael a lot of trouble with other girls if I’d just help him out. I may not be very good at being a tween, but
I didn’t need to be to know that kissing Michael right then would not get him –
or me – out of trouble with Vanessa or Nora; so I managed to keep control of my
raging hormones.
That didn’t mean that we were done with the tweeird zone,
because when Tim finally figured out that he was borderline on getting in
trouble with Nora again and decided that it was time to leave; Michael chose to
stay and walk home with us instead.
Vanessa was not impressed with that news flash, and she and Nora both
tried to get him to change his mind again – with no better results than when
Michael and Tim had picked biking over them after school. I knew that our kiss had changed things for
Michael too, and he was struggling with being nice to Vanessa while deciding
that he couldn’t go along with her flirting and games anymore even if that
meant hurting her feelings.
Unfortunately for Tim, he was an innocent casualty of the
situation; and ended up walking home with us too when Nora and Vanessa made
their dramatic exit that barely stayed civil because there were toddlers with
us. Rowen teased Ehlana again when she
decided that Tim needed a hug and kiss then, and that did seem to cheer him up
even if he would have rather been spending the rest of his evening with Nora
instead of being back in the doghouse.
We gave Vanessa and Nora time to complete their grand exit,
and then we started walking home too.
Ethan and Ehlana needed to stop in and see Michael’s parents, Rebecca,
Jake, and Stephanie, but after spending a few minutes with them; we left
Michael and Tim there and continued the rest of the way home. Rowen stayed long enough to tell Mom about
her daughter’s kissing boys at the park adventures, and while Mom and Dad both
joined in to tease Ehlana; I was sure that they were silently teasing me too.
After Rowen left, Mom kept me busy helping out with Ethan
and Ehlana; and doing a Magi lesson after they went to bed for the night. I was wishing the entire time that I could
have gotten together with Michael for the little talk that I think we need to
have – and possibly to share another kiss or two with him; but that wasn’t
going to happen tonight. Instead of
doing that, I followed up my Magi lesson with some Jacuzzi time and the usual
bedtime studies and computing.
Concentrating on my work was a bit of a problem, and even a short
keyboard practice intermission didn’t help.
That might be due to all of the other thoughts running
through my head right now that have absolutely nothing to do with archives or
languages. I think I’ll wait a day or
two to write more about those musings; but the summer plans Rowen and I have
been making are very likely going to need to be adjusted. That’s really scary – especially when mental
pictures keep flashing into my mind of Rowen and me hanging out with Michael,
Tim, Nora, and Vanessa nearly every day.
What I probably need most right now is to just sleep on it,
and see how everything looks again in the morning, so...
...until next time, this is Magi Master Cassie Proctor; logging
out!
