Page 16 of The Rival in South Africa
“Nonsense, don’t discount yourself. You’ve been on some amazing adventures, and the important thing is the experience, right?”
She patted my arm. Rowena was in her sixties, if I had to guess, but very sprightly, as expected by a globe-trotter like her. “You’re too young to understand just yet, but the memory’s not what it used to be. And climbing Kili was nearly a decade ago. I didn’t take enough pictures then, and I won’t make the same mistakes now.”
* * *
“What didyou mean about the kissing thing?”
Alex leaned against the doorway to the toilet, the curtain fluttering by his side while I flossed back in our tent after dinner.
“I don’t think it was a big mystery,” I said between teeth, looking at him behind me via the mirror. “You didn’t like it.” I shrugged. “I’m over it. It was ages ago.”
Alex watched me for a few moments before speaking up again. “I did like it.”
I scoffed but kept my focus on my teeth, pulling the floss out and swallowing before answering. “Sure, you did. That’s why you pushed me away, practically ran out the door, and told everyone I was a terrible kisser.”
We had kissed at Tommy Mitchell’s seventeenth birthday party. His parents hadn’t been home, and like the rich kids you see in stereotypical Hollywood movies, he’d thrown a raging party. Unlike American movies, with keg stands and weed, the vices of choice had been X and the good scotch stolen from the liquor cabinet.
I hadn’t done any drugs. But I had gone to hang out with Alex. After the graffiti incident, we’d had lunch every day and did our homework together. Alex tutored me in programming, and I helped him with maths.
But at the party, I’d been a horny, impatient seventeen-year-old with a whopping crush. And when Alex and I found each other alone in a hallway, I’d strapped on a pair and kissed him.
“Well,” he said slowly, still watching me in the mirror, “I was a teenage boy no longer in control of his hormones, and the girl with the best tits in school had pressed them up against me. I had to run; otherwise, I’d have jizzed my pants.”
My arms lowered, the floss unspooling from my fingertips on the way down until it dangled from my teeth.
When I didn’t say anything, Alex tacked on, “Which part has got you tripped up? Jizzing in my pants or the spectacular tits bit?”
“Did you jizz your pants?”
“Nah. I made it to my car and came in the driver’s seat. Dad still thinks the stain on the leather was mayonnaise.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Ew.”
He shrugged. “Teenage boy, great tits—and even better, they were attached to you.”
My brain locked up for a moment, reprocessing the evening. The feel of Alex’s lips on mine, being pushed away, my face burning. I came back to myself and finished flossing in a hurry. Alex still watched me, his arms folded across his chest.
I spit in the sink. “Then why did you tell everyone I was a terrible kisser?”
He rubbed his chin. “Now, about that part. Either we have different recollections, or something got bungled. Because I seem to recall you saidIwas a terrible kisser.”
“Who told you that?”
“Bernice. Who told you I said you were a terrible kisser?”
“Bernice.” I narrowed my eyes. Bernice, one of my former friends who Alex dated for all of Year Twelve.
“Well, didn’t that work out nicely for her then?” I tossed the floss in the bin under the sink and banged around for a bit, putting Alex’s toothpaste on my brush and aggressively attacking the plaque on my teeth.
Over my furious brushing, Alex continued. “Here’s the thing. We probablywererubbish.”
“Speak for yourself,” I grumbled around the toothbrush.
“We were seventeen, Nikki.”
I kept my eyes straight ahead. Talking about kissing Alex with Alex was irritating me.
“I think I’ve gotten a lot better at it,” he went on. “I wouldn’t have known what to do with you back then. You were confident, and I was fumbling around. I would have wanted it to be good. I would have wanted to please you.”
