{"id":420,"date":"2018-02-14T20:33:55","date_gmt":"2018-02-14T20:33:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/?p=420"},"modified":"2018-02-14T20:33:55","modified_gmt":"2018-02-14T20:33:55","slug":"story-of-the-month-the-kiss-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/?p=420","title":{"rendered":"Story of the Month: The Kiss"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>They always ran out of ice.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It was her way, perhaps, of disowning the parties.\u00a0 <\/span>There were moments during every one when she retreated to a quiet corner, puzzled at being somehow vaguely in charge of all these people.\u00a0 <\/span>It was a feeling she also had occasionally about her husband and their six children, who seemed to her at times like a dark bruise whose origin she couldn\u2019t recall.<\/span><\/p>\n

Her best friend’s husband drove her to get the ice.\u00a0 <\/span>He also had six children, but they didn\u2019t baffle him.\u00a0 <\/span>They were voices at dinner, backseat wrigglings in the car’s rearview mirror, characters in the little stories his wife told him before he fell asleep.<\/span><\/p>\n

Both sets of children were sleeping in his house, two blocks away from the party.\u00a0 <\/span>She wanted to stop by to check on them.<\/span><\/p>\n

The children were all in one room, some asleep on the floor, the rest tangled together like dirty laundry in the two twin beds.\u00a0 <\/span>Someone had draped a green scarf over the lamp.\u00a0 <\/span>She removed it and caught the smell of burnt hair.<\/span><\/p>\n

She stepped carefully around the children on the floor, touching each one on the shoulder as if they were good luck charms.\u00a0 <\/span>He pulled blankets over the children on the beds, tucking in one arm that dangled over an edge.\u00a0 <\/span>At just that moment, she turned off the light, so he couldn’t tell whose arm it was.\u00a0 <\/span>He felt an indistinct affection flowing out to all of them.<\/span><\/p>\n

She waited for him in the dark hallway downstairs, silhouetted against the screen door by the porch light.\u00a0 <\/span>There was something vacant in her stance, as if she were expecting to wait a long time or had already been waiting a long time.\u00a0 <\/span>He was seized with the desire to kiss her.\u00a0 <\/span>She saw it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

She had once come upon her husband and his wife in a passionate embrace at one of the parties.\u00a0 <\/span>They hadn’t noticed her, and she had never said anything.\u00a0 <\/span>It was just the way they were, her husband and his wife.\u00a0 <\/span>It didn’t mean enough, or it meant too much, to sort out.\u00a0 <\/span>The marriages stayed marriages.\u00a0 <\/span>The friendships stayed friendships.<\/span><\/p>\n

She wondered if he knew and if that was why he wanted to kiss her.\u00a0 <\/span>She wondered if that was why she was going to let him.\u00a0 <\/span>She didn’t care.<\/span><\/p>\n

When he approached, she felt a quiver deep inside her, like the leap of a small fish.\u00a0 <\/span>He placed his hands flat against the sides of her head, blocking out all sound except her own breathing.\u00a0 <\/span>She watched his mouth lower slowly to hers.\u00a0 <\/span>His lips were soft; she felt them tremble.\u00a0 <\/span>Then came the press of his teeth, the eloquent prowl of his tongue.\u00a0 <\/span>The kiss slid languidly down their bodies and then faded away like an echo.<\/span><\/p>\n

They drew apart, still watching each other’s faces, and laughed.\u00a0 <\/span>It was the freest laugh she’d had in some time.\u00a0 <\/span>He liked the sound of it.<\/span><\/p>\n

They left the house.\u00a0 <\/span>He caught the screen door so that it wouldn\u2019t slam into the children’s dreams.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cThe Kiss\u201d was published in the journal, Kalliope<\/i>, Jacksonville, FL, 1997.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

They always ran out of ice.\u00a0 It was her way, perhaps, of disowning the parties.\u00a0 There were moments during every […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"Layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["entry","author-noellesickelswp","post-420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-allposts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=420"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":422,"href":"https:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420\/revisions\/422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noellesickels.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}