Jade
by Jef Coburn
When Neil meets Jade, he is struck by her exceptional personality. But Carly is a long-time friend who becomes available for more than friendship. Suddenly, Neil has to decide whether to pursue the promising relationship or the surprise romance. He has to adjust when he learns there’s more to someone than he had thought. In the absence of a sure thing, how shall he gamble?
Chapter Two: Kiss and Tell
Once I got off work the next day, I wasted no time making my way to the Den of Uniquity. I didn’t want some other patron to beat me to Jade’s corner booth. The red-faced hostess smiled in a way that suggested she recognized me from the night before. I made my way from the red zone back to the green zone, passing a couple bathed in orange.
Jade was there. “Hi, Neil. I’m glad you made it,” she said warmly as I scooted into the booth. She took my hand between her hands and squeezed it gently before letting go. She held it a bit longer than most people would, but I tried not to make too much of it because I could already tell that was her way.
“What’re we having tonight?” I asked, looking at her plate. She told me the name of it, but I instantly forgot it. I had already decided I would choose my own order tonight. It seemed important, although part of me knew that was silly. I ordered something when the waitress stopped by, and with that bit of business out of the way, we were free to chat.
“How was your day?” she asked.
“Good. Busy enough to make the time pass but not frantic.”
“Where do you work?”
“I’m a building inspector for the county. I work in the Simms Building on Center Street.”
“So what do you think of the lighting in here? Would we pass inspection?”
I smiled and gave my stock answer. “I’m off duty at the moment.” The waitress brought my water. I thanked her and took a sip. “I don’t think I ever asked what you do, either.”
“No, you didn’t,” she said coyly.
“So,” I played along, “what do you do, Jade?”
“I’m a Registered Health Information Technician, which means—”
“Which means you complete and process medical information for billing and/or filing purposes.”
“I’m impressed.”
“Thank you, ladies and gentlemen,” I said, waving to the room. “Goodnight. Drive safely.”
“Quitting while you’re ahead?”
“It’s tempting, but I think I’ll push my luck and see if my streak continues.”
“Look,” she whispered, pointing with a nod to the orange table. “You’re not the only lucky one.”
The orange couple were seated in such a way that we could see them both from the side. They were already leaning in over the table between them, their hands clasped atop the menus. He leaned in closer. She did likewise. They kissed.
“Aww,” Jade cooed discreetly, “their first kiss.”
“How do you know it’s their first?”
“I just know. I could tell by the way they had to work up to it. He was a little nervous. When he took her hand, I knew it was on.”
I snuck another glance. The couple smiled at each other, their faces beaming like incandescent tangerines.
“Do you remember your first kiss?” Jade asked, turning her eyes to me as she took a bite of her tapas.
“First grade,” I said fondly. “Sandy Miller, on the playground at recess.”
“Kindergarten,” she countered. “Brian Boone, on the floor during naptime.” She took a sip.
“You hussy,” I scolded jokingly. She almost spat her water out laughing. I felt bested, but it was okay. I could tell Jade was the kind of woman who had seen more, who knew more. It was daunting but engaging. It intimidated me and intrigued me at the same time.
“What about your first kiss kiss?” she asked, still wiping the water off her chin with her napkin.
“Sophomore year of high school. It was a party at somebody’s house. I didn’t even know him.”
“Him?”
“The kid who lived there. A lot of us didn’t. You know how it goes. Word got around that his parents would be out of town on a Friday night.”
“What was her name?”
“I don’t know,” I said, dreading where this would lead.
“You forgot her name?” She shuffled her food, choosing her next bite.
“I never knew her name,” I confessed.
“You dog!” she said, feigning shock. “You French-kissed a stranger?”
“Maybe. Technically, I don’t know if she was a stranger.”
“How much were you drinking?” she asked.
“I wasn’t. Still don’t,” I clarified.
“Then why don’t you know if she was a stranger?” She took her bite.
“I didn’t know who she was, so it might’ve been somebody I knew.”
She put her fork down ceremoniously and leaned back. “You have my attention, sir.”
Mission accomplished, I thought. Somewhere — I wasn’t sure where — I had shifted from being evasive to baiting her. Was I trying to flirt, or did she just bring it out in me? I had told the story before, so it came naturally.
“Sophomore year. I have this friend named Rachel. We’ve known each other since third grade. Anyway, one day she’s going around during lunch and taking a survey. She’s asking people whether they tilt their heads to the left or the right when kissing. At this point I’ve never kiss kissed, as you put it, so when she asks me, I say, ‘I don’t know.’
“She doesn’t get it. She says, ‘Come on, think about it.’ I’m pretty embarrassed, and I say, ‘Rachel...I don’t know.’ I see the light go on in her eyes. Even though nobody else has heard us, she feels bad for me. She apologizes sheepishly and moves on to somebody else.”
“Okay, so clearly it wasn’t Rachel because you know her name.”
“That was exposition. I’m building up to it. Think of it as previews before the movie.”
“I do like previews. Go on.”
“That Friday night I’m at this guy’s house. The place is packed. Rachel walks over, taps me on the shoulder, says ‘Come here,’” and leads me to the guy’s parents’ bedroom.”
“Go, Rachel!” Jade cheered jokingly.
“No, nothing like that. Rachel says she’s sorry if her question made me feel awkward. I tell her it’s okay. ‘There’s no shame in it,’ I say, hoping it sounds philosophical and not just defensive. ‘It’ll happen when the time is right.’ ‘Maybe the time is now,’ she says.
“Go, Rachel,” Jade said more quietly and profoundly than before.
“I just look at her, speechless. She says, ‘Think about it, Neil. It won’t have to be tainted with any bad memories. Most people end up breaking up with their first kiss, but we’ve been friends forever, and we’ll still be friends.’
“I think about it. Hard. After a deep breath and a frustrated sigh, I say, ‘That’s just it. If we kiss like that, I think I might get... hung-up on you, and then things will be weird between us.’
“She nods understandingly and then takes a moment to think. Then she walks over to the nightstand beside the guy’s parents’ bed and starts rummaging through the drawers. Noticing my bewilderment, she says, ‘Hold on. I’ve got a plan.’”
“Petty larceny — some plan,” Jade mused.
“That’s what I’m thinking too! Then she says, ‘A-ha!’ and pulls out a sleep mask. She walks over to me and asks, ‘Do you trust me?’ I just say yes, at a loss for anything clever to say. She puts the sleep mask on me. She asks me if I can see anything. I can’t — just black. She says, ‘What you need is the experience without the entanglement. You can’t get hung-up on somebody if you don’t know who she is.’
“I point out that there’s nobody else in the room with us, and she says, ‘I’m on it. I might be gone a couple of minutes. Wait here, and don’t take the mask off.’ I start to ask her where she’s going, and she says, ‘Leave it to me. Tonight’s the night, Neil Madison. We’re gonna get you kissed!’ That was exactly how she said it. I remember it like it was yesterday.”
“She went out and hunted down a volunteer for you?”
“She did!”
“I take it she found one.”
“Yeah, I’m standing there — I don’t know, ten minutes, I guess. It feels like forever, because I’m afraid someone else will walk in and see me wearing this mask but, at the same time, I’m not really in a hurry for the wait to end, because I’m getting nervous. I can feel myself starting to sweat a little. My heart’s racing. I’m wondering if my breath is okay. For a moment, I even wonder if it’s a set-up. I think, Man, if she brings some dude in here, I’m not gonna be happy with her.
“Finally I hear the door open and close, and Rachel says, ‘It’s okay, Neil. It’s just us.’ I hear her tell the volunteer to wait just inside the door. I hear her walk up to me and whisper, “Don’t be nervous, Neil. You’re gonna do fine. Just don’t be over-aggressive. Follow her lead. Do what she does. Start gently and end gently.’
“I nod. She pulls away and says, ‘Okay, come on over.’ I hear the mystery lady’s footsteps, but she doesn’t speak. My heart is pounding now. Rachel’s voice, off to the side of where the footsteps had stopped, says, ‘Are you ready, Neil?’ I nod. ‘Here it comes,’ she says. And then we kiss.”
“And?”
“It’s strange. Then it’s wonderful. Then it’s over.”
“You sure it wasn’t a guy?” Jade needled.
“Absolutely. Rachel had a sick sense of humor at times, but she’d never do anything like that to me. I trusted my friend.”
Jade nodded.
“Besides,” I added, “when the mystery lady moved in close, I could feel her chest against mine. That was no guy.”
Jade laughed.
“Also, after I thanked her, I heard her whisper something to Rachel and giggle as they walked to the door. I wondered a bit about the giggle. Laughter’s not always the best response.
“After she left the room, Rachel gave me the all-clear, and I took off the mask. She had the weirdest smile of accomplishment on her face. ‘I picked a good one, yeah?’ I agreed and asked her what our brave volunteer had said. ‘She said you’re welcome.’
“Then I asked her about the giggle. Rachel’s smile became a grin, and she said, ‘Relax, lover-boy. She said you’re a good kisser.’
“That’s a wonderful story,” Jade said, smiling with her eyes the way she did. She lifted her glass. “A toast: To What’s-her-name.”
“To What’s-her-name.” I clinked my glass gently against hers.
“You never found out who she was?”
“Never did. I broke down and asked Rachel a couple of times. We’re still in contact. She says she’ll take it to her grave. At our high-school reunion, I asked her if it was somebody in the room, but she wouldn’t even tell me that. I think she feels like she’d be breaking a promise.” I held my glass up. “To Rachel.”
Jade clinked me. “Hear, hear.”
Jade took a long drink of water, put her glass down, and looked at me for a moment. “Did you ever wish you had taken Rachel up on her offer?”
“If I’m honest...“
“Which you are...”
“I’ve thought about that from time to time.”
“Neil,” she said accusingly, “was Rachel on your ‘if list’?”
“I’ve wondered about that, but I don’t think so. She didn’t have a boyfriend. I didn’t have a girlfriend. Where’s the ‘if’?”
“Maybe you were right. Maybe it was a bad idea because you were friends. Maybe that was the ‘if’.”
“It’s tricky sometimes, hitting that window between strangers and friends.”
“You don’t think friends can fall in love?”
“I’ve heard of it, but I don’t see it a lot. I read somewhere that a woman knows, consciously or otherwise, whether she’s interested in a guy within the first three minutes.”
“That seems pretty quick to me.”
“Yeah, I thought so. That’d be a lot of pressure.”
“We’re not all the same, Neil.”
“No, I know that.” Her comment reminded me of the one she’d made the night before, when I said she wasn’t like most people and she said it was truer than I even knew. I saw a logical opening to ask her about it, but as I was mustering the courage, I looked at Jade and got the sense that she was mustering courage of her own.
“Neil,” she said with apparent resolve. “Can I tell you my first kiss-kiss story?”
“Please! I’m all ears.”
“Okay, it’s not as good as yours, but here goes. He did it on a bet. His name was Steven, and I think he was an okay guy deep-down, but his friends dared him to kiss me, so he took me on a couple of dates and said a lot of sweet things to me and, being the young fool I was, I let him kiss me. They had set up the whole thing to happen where his buddies could see it, so he had his witnesses — proof that he had kissed a g-” she caught herself, and her voice grew softer again. “a girl who didn’t know any better.”
“I’m so sorry, Jade. I don’t know what to say.”
“The sad thing is, he wrote me a long letter afterwards about how sorry he was. He said he really liked me and didn’t care who knew it. He said he gave them back their money and hoped I could forgive him.”
“But it was too late.”
“Yes, it was. I knew he was sincere, but that kiss would always feel like a lie, and I couldn’t get past that.”
“Because you always want the truth.”
“Always,” she said with a smile that acknowledged my memory of her response the night before.
I spoke without thinking. “Well, Jade, here’s the truth. I don’t need a wager to go out with you and, if I’m not overstepping here, I’d like to take you to dinner and a movie.”
The smile left her face. She sat back. It was the first time she was the one at a loss for words, and that shook my courage. “Neil...” she started, pausing to find her way.
“I’m sorry. I misread things. Would you like me to leave? I could leave.”
She grabbed my hand. “No... please don’t leave.”
It wasn’t a “no.” It wasn’t a “yes.” She was pondering it, but she was holding my hand, and that made all the difference in that moment. I put my free hand on top of hers. She let me. Finally she spoke, almost in a whisper. “Can we eat here?”
“Yes.”
“And then the movie?”
“Yes.”
“The nine o-clock show?”
“Sure.”
“I’d like that,” she said in a hopeful tone.
We talked a while longer, and I excused myself like the night before, but not before offering to walk her to her car. After I said it, I was afraid it might sound sexist, but she didn’t seem to take it that way.
“That’s okay. It’s sweet of you to offer, but I’ll be okay.”
“Of that I have no doubt,” I said respectfully.
“Besides,” she added, leaning closer and pointing with her head to the orange couple, “if I leave now, I might miss the proposal.”
We laughed and said goodnight. I got up, put my tip on the table, walked halfway to the front of the restaurant, turned, and waved. She waved back. I couldn’t see her lips and eyes smiling in the darkness, but I knew they were.
Proceed to Chapter 3...
Copyright © 2021 by Jef Coburn
