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Like Mike and Mikey, Danny had a reputation for being a
charmer and a womanizer, and I suspected it was well-deserved. He
was never without a girl by his side, and whoever she was, she was
always pretty, usually blond and tended toward the vapid. My
brother played baseball, too, and so I had known Danny peripherally
my whole life, although I didn’t actually know him. He, like Kevin,
was a year ahead of me in school and traveled in different circles.
In fact, if I had to guess, I would have said he didn’t know my
name, and I was fairly certain we’d never had a conversation. This
was not a problem for me, since I had never given him a second
thought.
    About a week before the end of my junior
year, there was this big street festival thing in the high school
gym after school. There were booths for games and booths for food,
and carnival rides outside. The temperature was blistering, school
was almost out, hormones were raging. Pauline and I, dressed for
the occasion in shorts and orange and black Minter High School
Bears t-shirts, were making our way through the food booths. Derek
was out of town at a track meet, and Pauline was temporarily
without a boyfriend.
    “Are you sure you haven’t had one? Maybe you
just couldn’t tell.”
    “I would know. I’ve done it myself plenty of
times. I don’t know why Derek can’t seem to figure it out.”
    “Have you told him what to do? I read in Cosmo that a girl should be direct about telling a guy what
she wants.”
    I thought that what I wanted was for it to be
something other than two and a half minutes of grunting and
grabbing, but I wasn’t sure how to tell Derek that. I wasn’t in
love with him, but he was nice so I didn’t want to be mean about
it. Derek wasn’t my first boyfriend, but he was the first one I’d
slept with and so far, I wasn’t impressed. Pauline didn’t have sex.
She was saving herself for marriage. She changed her mind the next
year when she started dating Jack Murphy. I certainly couldn’t
blame her.
    We had just finished eating a couple of
churros and were approaching the varsity baseball team’s booth.
Expecting to find more food, we wandered up. The hand painted
banner read KISSING BOOTH $1, and there were a couple girls getting
their money’s worth. Pauline started into her feminist routine.
    “Hunh. I guess I don’t need to pay some boy
to kiss me. Women aren’t objects, you know.”
    “Uh, Paul, I think the guys are the objects
in this scenario.” I was fishing a single out of my pocket. Don’t
ask me why. It was like my body was completely detached from my
brain and I was watching myself do things, like an out-of-body
experience or a split personality or one of those things I’d read
about instead of doing my homework. Danny Salazar was in front of
the booth, leaning against the counter, talking to a teammate, and
I suddenly found him utterly irresistible. I stared and checked for
drool.
    Pauline shrugged. “Well, I don’t care. I
think it’s disgusting.”
    Yeah, me too. Disgusting.
    I handed Danny the dollar.
    He took it without looking up and said, “I’m
on a break.” Then he glanced over at me, shrugged and said, “Oh,
what the hell.” I have that effect on men a lot.
    He barely leaned forward and kissed me, a
proper kissing-booth kind of kiss on the lips, no tongue, no hands.
And I swear to God, I forgot my name. I guessed it was okay for him
too, because it seemed to last a little longer than it should have,
and then he straightened up and looked at me kind of funny. He
whispered, “Jesus, Lex.” Then he kissed me again, for real this
time. He had his hand on the back of my neck, his fingers tangled
in my hair, and his other hand through the belt loop on the front
of my shorts pulling me into him. I felt his tongue touch mine, and
everything went sort of blurry. It started out tentative but turned
confident and intimate and hot. Eventually, I became aware of
someone speaking.
    “...supposed to be a kissing