Read After the Kiss for Free Online

jacket—just a light little tweed thing; it was still summer then—trying to count the number of people ahead of you, to see if he’d call you next. you don’t remember what he was wearing that day but you are picturing him now in the striped gray slim pants and the nubby wool sweater, the art institute badge around his neck, along with his collar and tie done in that way that made him look british instead of preppy. above that the firm hard knob of his adam’s apple (oh that adam’s apple, the sinewed hollows of his neck)worked up and down over what he would say to you the
fourth
time you came in, after it was clear you were going to have something to check each visit. when it was clear this had become a habit.
    these parties
    have ever only served one purpose: drink to mouth and then mouth to mouth, from the beginning of time. it doesn’t matter who you are or where you are: what city, town, or country. when you are beautiful and young and bored you will flock together like beads of mercury. here conditions are particularly ideal since this town’s host is—at least you’ve heard—no one’s best friend, only a rich kid college dropout party boy who’s still trendy with the teens but too odd for his own kind. so as the weekend turns its lazy corner toward you, the messages get sent and the radar is detected and everyone spends all of friday going
who-will-drive-us-what-will-you-wear-is-she-going-what-time-will-you-get-there
, and just like in charlotte where everyone was everyone else’s business and there wasn’t anything else for anyone, you are swept up and dressed up and carried away. these-jeans-not-those and definitely not a skirt. that-top-no-this-one because it’s warmer than it looks. ten minutes until willow arrives to pick you up and you almost chicken out—mom’s not asking but you can feel her excitement for you buzzing up the stairs; she’d curl up with you and a movie in a minute though—maybe it’s safer to just stay in. but then even just that idea in your head makes you suddenly a desperate bird in a cage, beating wings to be let out. the doorbell rings and itis time to go. you smile as mom smiles at willow-edgar-dorie just inside the doorway. you are not sure you are (will ever be) one of them but just like always your coward heart wants to make sure she is the only one who doubts.
    ellen explains it all
    leaning against the cool smooth stainless steel of this stranger’s refrigerator—you have not met the infamous host (are unsure even how many people live here, besides the two bong-eyed college kids collecting fives at the front door)—you are sipping only tonic, and are here only because it’s where all your friends are, where everyone seems to be really: even everybody from everywhere else. although you are tired of noting faces, keeping track, paying attention, pretending to listen to these anybodies who will turn into nobodies in a few short months, you are still standing here and you are still watching everyone who comes in. it’s like ellen’s reading your mind then, because she rolls her already-bleary-blond head over to look at you, waving her cup in the general direction of all these nobody/everybodies both here and beyond, explaining,
this is what it’s all about, man. we won’t be here much longer. so crush as many people against you as you can. soon they’ll be gone. and we’ll be gone too. but if we experience everybody, maybe somebody will remember.
she clinks her cup with yours and gives you a lopsided half-sad grin, and though you feel yourself already becoming a nobody—though she’ll never know (oh how well you know) the people you’ve crushed—this minute she just made you her somebody and you are both glad.
    the surprise
    he comes into the kitchen, and before you’ve even thought twice you’re asking ellen who he is. when she tells you