I’ve played Spin the Bottle before, and the kisses are always either quick and perfunctory or incredibly showy performances designed to get a reaction out of the group. For a second, I’m positive this is the second kind of kiss; everyone around us starts whistling and screaming the way you do when you’re slightly drunk and everything is way funnier than it should be. Zoe doesn’t seem like the kind to beg for attention, and for a second I feel used and start to pull away. But she holds me in place, and I’m suddenly not sure whether she’s kidding or not. I can’t even figure out whether I want her to be kidding.
Zoe finally ends the kiss and opens her eyes. For a few seconds, she hovers a centimeter away from my lips, still so close to me that her false eyelashes brush my cheekbones when she blinks. I inhale the smell of her foundation and her grapefruit shampoo and her vodka-cranberry breath, and even though my heart is racing, there’s nothing in me that wants this moment to end. Across the circle, people are still whooping and hollering, but it feels like there’s a barrier between us and them, like their voices are on the radio or underwater.
“There,” Zoe says in a quiet voice meant only for me. “Now you’ve kissed a girl.” She takes her hand off my neck and sits back up like nothing unusual just happened.
Because I have no idea what else to do, I pick up my cup and drink.
And then the world moves forward, like Zoe’s kissing me isn’t a monumentally big deal. Livvy takes her turn, telling us that she has never hooked up with someone older than thirty, and then the girl on her other side says that she’s never lied during a game of Never Have I Ever. But I’m not paying attention anymore. What did Zoe’s kiss mean? Did it mean anything? Would I be disappointed if it turned out to mean nothing? Livvy hasn’t kissed a girl, either, so why didn’t Zoe kiss her? Was she looking for an excuse to kiss me?
I grab my phone, turn on the flashlight, and stand up. “I’ll be right back,” I say.
Zoe touches my ankle, and even that seems to mean something now that it wouldn’t have meant two minutes ago. “You okay?” she asks.
“Yeah, of course.” I hurry toward the bathroom, and she doesn’t follow me.
Once I’ve made sure I’m alone, I set my phone on the metal ledge under the mirror and point the light at the ceiling so it casts a diffuse glow around the room. I’m breathing so fast, I’m starting to feel a little dizzy, and I brace my hands on the sides of a sink and force myself to calm down. I have no idea why I’m so worked up; I have no problem with girls kissing each other. Women kiss in front of me all the time. Theoretically, I believe nobody is totally gay or totally straight. It’s just that I’ve never applied that idea to myself before. I’ve never even thought about kissing a girl. I certainly didn’t expect to enjoy it.
Am I taking this whole thing way too seriously? Maybe Zoe’s kiss only seems earth-shattering because it feels amazing to be chosen by someone so important to me. But maybe it wasn’t about me at all; she could be the kind of person who will kiss anyone when she’s a little drunk. In the morning, maybe she won’t even remember that she did it. Or what if it was some sort of joke, something another apprentice dared her to do before I got to the party? I’m not sure I could stand that.
It didn’t feel like a joke, though. It felt like she really wanted to kiss me. And if she wanted to do it again, I’m pretty sure I would let her.
I tell myself there’s no way that’s going to happen. The whole thing was probably a throwaway gesture; everyone here is overly affectionate with each other. Plus, Zoe has a boyfriend, and she’s totally happy with him.
But it happened. I’ll always know it happened, even if it never happens again.
I close my eyes and replay the kiss in painstaking detail, fixing it in my mind so I can pull out the memory whenever I need it. And then I lean in close to the mirror and inspect myself, trying to figure out if I look any different now that I’m a girl who has kissed another girl. The only evidence I see is a smudge of silver sparkles across my cheekbone. I leave them there. They match how I feel on the inside.
The moment I wake up the next morning, I start wondering if Zoe and I are going to talk about the kiss today. I grow increasingly nervous as I tiptoe around her sleeping form and get ready for my crew call, trying to predict whether things between us will be more intense and charged or more complicated and distant after last night. I’m afraid it’ll be the second one; Zoe cheated on her boyfriend with me, and she’ll probably feel pretty guilty about it now that she’s sober. I decide to let her initiate the conversation, if we’re going to have one at all. I don’t think I could handle seeing a look of pity flash across her face if I brought it up and she had to explain that it can never happen again—or worse yet, that it didn’t mean anything to begin with.
I’m a little relieved Zoe hasn’t woken up by the time I leave. She isn’t around at dinner, either, so I eat with Jessa, who spends the whole meal telling me a convoluted story about her ex-boyfriend. I see Zoe in the wings during the performance of Midsummer, of course, but it’s not like we can have a private conversation there. She squeezes my shoulder on her way to the stage at the top of act two, and I spend the rest of the show trying to figure out whether there was a hidden message in the brief pressure of her fingers. Sorry about last night? Don’t even bother thinking about it?