at least have the good grace to appreciate his luck. But it sounded like he really believed that I was more interesting than a vacation in France, and who was I to dismiss that compliment?
We ate the baguettes, a carpet of stale crumbs spreading out below us, until we got to the gates of Stonehaven. But once we were inside the property, Benny didn’t launch himself up the steps of the house. Instead, as we walked up the drive, he grabbed my sleeve and tugged me to the left, into a stand of pines on the side of the house.
“What’s going on?”
He put a finger to his lips and pointed at an upstairs window. Mom, he mouthed.
I didn’t understand what he meant by that, but I followed him through the pines and down a dirt path that took us around the edge of the property before depositing us at the caretaker’s cottage. Once inside, he marched into the tiny kitchen where we kept our snacks and pulled a bottle out of a cabinet. He held it up for me to examine: vodka, expensive-looking stuff, from Finland. “My pot stash is gone,” he said. “But I stole this from my dad’s liquor cabinet.”
“Gone? You smoked it all?”
“Nah. My mom did a room raid before we went to France. She found it under my bed and flushed it down the toilet.” He looked abashed. “I’m in the doghouse. Actually, you’re not even supposed to be here. They forbade me from seeing you. That’s why we didn’t go inside the house.”
I put two and two together: His curious bravado, the way he threw his arm around my shoulders on the bus like I belonged to him—it was all a middle finger to his parents. “What you’re saying is…they blame me. For the pot. They think I’m a bad influence because, what, my hair is pink? And I don’t ski?” A hot bubble of self-righteous anger rose inside me.
He shook his head. “I told them it had nothing to do with you. Problem predates you. They know that. They’re just being…overprotective. Irrational. As usual. Fuck them.”
The vodka bottle was still hanging between us, a totem of some symbolic transition, or of rebellion, or maybe apology. Finally, I reached out and grabbed it. “Is there juice? I’ll make screwdrivers.”
“Shit, no. Just vodka.” He blushed when he met my eyes and I thought of a term that I had read before in a book—liquid courage. I unscrewed the cap of the bottle and lifted it to my lips and took a swig. I’d sipped at my mother’s martinis before, but this was a proper, showy gulp. It burned; I choked. Benny reached out and whacked my back as I spluttered.
“I mean, I was going to offer you a glass but…” He took the bottle from my hand and lifted it to his own lips, convulsing when the liquor hit his esophagus. Vodka dribbled out of the side of his mouth and he wiped it away with the sleeve of his T-shirt. His eyes were watering and red, and as they met mine we both started laughing.
The vodka lit up my stomach; it made me wired and punchy and hot. “Here,” he said, handing it back to me, and this time I swallowed down a good inch before coming up for air. Five minutes of this and we were drunk and giddy, and I was tripping on the chairs in the dining room and laughing from the lightness in my head. When Benny grabbed me to stop me from falling and spun me around, I finally screwed up my courage and kissed him.
I’ve been kissed, all these years on, by so many men, almost all of them better kissers than Benny. But the first kiss is the one you always remember; and even now I can break that kiss down in detail. How chapped his lips were, but also how softly they gave way. The way he kept his eyes closed even when mine were open, and the way that made him look so serious and intense. The terrible sound of our teeth clicking against each other as we jockeyed for position; him stooping to pull me up to his