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The first time you kiss a boy the taste of blood won’t leave your mouth. There’s a confusion of who it belongs to, if he’s drawn it from the way his teeth are pressing or if you have bitten too harsh. Maybe it was there before, little drops of freshly bled blood that dots the swell of your lower lip. It shouldn’t matter, not when his knuckles had been the ones to grace over it, not when you had chased after them and revelled when his hand had collided well enough to leave a permanent reminder. There’s still that thought in the back of your mind though - he’s kissing you, and it tastes like blood, and you wan’t to say sorry (sorry that there’s blood in your mouth, I hope that it’s mine). There’s plenty you want to say, but can’t, not with his lips on yours and not ever.
The first time you kiss a boy it feels nothing like a kiss at all. There’s hands holding your jaw in place, hands that throw punches and shove you when you say something crude. Hands that you know to be littered with cuts and bruises, and you can feel each callous against your skin. They’ve never held you this long, not this tender, even as his fingers dig hard enough to bruise. It’s the first time you realize that they are warm, so much heat paired with all the roughness. His lips are harsh too, just like his hands, and there’s nothing loving about the way he kisses you.
The world is still the same; it does not stop spinning, birds do not stop singing, and your skateboard rolls away and dinks against the ramp even as you are having your first kiss.
When he pulls away he says nothing. Your first kiss is over before the want has kicked in, that longing that kills sitting somewhere in the distance. You’ve liked him so long that you should want to surge in for more, to confirm if the red staining his lip is yours or his, but as he pulls back you stay in place. He rarely speaks, not before the kiss and you assume nothing will be spoken after it, either. He prefers to keep his quiet, and some times he just listens. You ache to hear him now though, you know his voice to be soft and warm, and you’d feel soothed if he’d only tell you what he had meant by the kiss. Tell me , you urge silently, tell me if you want this to ruin me or if you want it as much as I do.
Instead, his thumb catches onto your bottom lip and swipes over it. It collects blood and spit, and he sucks it between his own lips, all while his eyes dare you to watch.
You go to bed that night, tracing your lips with your fingers. They seem so rough to the touch now, not inviting or soft, not the lips of someone that a boy would want to kiss. Should a boy who kisses another boy like the feel of his lips? Should a boy who kisses another boy feel anything? Did he feel anything when he kissed you?
It’s the summer of 2013, and you’re no longer just a boy with a friend. It’s summer, always fucking summer. It’s been the same since you were a kid, summer break is spent with your friends at the lake or camping or skateboarding. The summer of 2013 is different though, and you’re still you; a boy with a friend who lives on the end of the street. This is the summer you spend with him and him only, and it’s the summer you fall in love.
In june you have no idea of the crashing whirlwind speeding in your direction. In august you will return to school, summer break will be over but the sun will still be hot in the sky and you will have grown a little taller, and most of all – you’ll have had your first love.
That summer you have your second kiss, and your third, and the fourth and you lose count around 13, 14, 15… 20. He no longer makes sure to soften the blows or smooth it over with his knuckles, some times he kisses you without a punch, just his lips and his hands curled around the back of your neck.
It still tastes like metal though. Red, thick, metal, like each kiss carries the memory of that first.
When you fall on concrete and scrape your knees he’ll wipe the dirt away, then he’ll kiss the tender spot prickling with blood. He always gets it on his mouth, and he never wipes it away. Some times he’ll lean forward and press his mouth against yours, and you can taste yourself on his lips.
In the back of the skatepark, behind that big ramp, he often challenges you to fights. You’re both stronger now, can throw punches that catch eachothers jaws and noses just perfect, it takes nothing more than a hit to coax blood. He rarely speaks, but he laughs when your knuckles collide with his face.
It’s entirely unspoken, the fact that you both need to kiss after it, that you fight until you can’t take it any longer and you need to kiss it better. His hands in your hair, yours around his neck, his mouth on yours, blood on your tongue.
That summer gives you more wounds than you’ve acquired since, in the accumulated years you’ve been alive. To his credit, he doesn’t cause all of them.
The worst comes when you’re going down that hill, that stupid hill you’d promised your parents and grandparents to never even think about skating. You’ve nailed every trick you’ve attempted, and all you want is a new thrill, something that will whirl your belly the same way a fistfight or a kiss does. So you skate the hill, and fall flat on your face, and it’s 11pm at night and no one is there to see your crying. No one to kiss your wounds. It’s 11pm, and where do you go?
His house is at the end of the street. Your family is home, the kitchen light is on and your father is awake, but you walk past your house and down the street. All you have to do is stand on your tippy toes to reach his window and tap on it, and he’ll let you in. It’s 11pm in july, and he tends to your wounds. There’s a long, bleeding abrasion by your hip. You close your eyes when he kisses right next to it, because you know he will, can feel his breath burn the sting of the wound. He laughs when you hold your breath, and he places another sweet, careful kiss next to it, before he leans up and catches your mouth this time.
You had probably been falling for him since the first kiss, but you know for sure that night when he kisses you and his hand rests so gentle on your hip. He doesn’t speak much, but he laughs and he kisses and he breathes his breath in your very lungs and you’ll take what you can get because you love him.
In august, you return to school, and you’re still utterly in love with him, but he will never kiss you again.
You’re in different classes now. In 7th grade you leave your middle school and move up higher, and you’re both placed in different classes. As kids do, you lose contact. He finds new friends, you do too.
He still lives at the end of the street, and some times he will drive his bike past your house in the morning as he goes to school.
His brothers, all older than him, move out.
He doesn’t skate anymore.
His hair starts getting curlier, and he lets it grow out.
He still likes the color red, and he wears that red sweatshirt until he grows out of it.
He grows taller.
He learns how to write with his right hand. He used to always punch with his left. He carved your initial into the tree in his backyard with his left hand.
You still love him. Sickly, stupid childhood love that has buried and twisted its roots so deep it has built a home in you entirely.
His mom leaves his family some time in 9th grade. He doesn’t tell you, nor do his friends. Your mother is the one who tells you. You can’t say anything about it to him. When he walks the halls in his horde of friends you think about the family dinners at his house, and how empty it must be now, how he must be hurting.
One day he shows up at school, and his hair is cut, and you can’t tell him you like how soft it makes him look. He’s taller, bigger, prettier somehow, and all the scars he’d gotten in your company have faded. So have yours, though you still know exactly where they used to be. There’s a few reminders somewhere, and they’ll show up during summer when you tan and the scarred skin tells little stories of particularly nasty falls from your skateboards. The ones he left on you with his hands were never harsh enough to etch themselves permanently, but you wish they were.
In 9th grade he asks you to prom. You haven’t talked in almost three years, but he asks you to prom.
”You know, my friends and I don’t have anyone to go with, to prom, that is.” he says while you are dancing with him during P.E. He doesn’t look at you while he says it, and his hands are barely on you but you can feel how warm they are still.
When you say nothing, he doesn’t either. Your teachers are yelling instructions over the music, and you find yourself realizing he is dancing the part that a woman usually would.
”We could go, you know.” he says. You have to pretend it doesn’t make your stomach drop, and you have to form a response that doesn’t convey how much you’ve wanted this.
Yes, yes, yes, please. Lets ditch prom, lets go home to your house on the street where we grew up and lets find the tree we carved our initials into and lets kiss there, just once. If you’d just grant me this one kiss, please, I’d be satiated forever.
You say none of it, just hum and tell him ”Sure”.
He doesn’t compliment you when you dress up for prom, and you don’t compliment him either. There’s still a knowing though, a silent understanding or exchange. He looks at you, and you just know, and hopefully he knows you think he looks more beautiful than ever when you sneak glances at him across the tables.
He’s never been a dancer. He’s so tall now, lanky and long limbs and pointed shoulders, he’s never carried himself well and it shows more than ever when he pulls you out on the dance floor. He still dances though, all evening, even when your legs feel like they’ll give out and you’re parched for water, his hands wrap around your waist and your shoulder and he keeps you close. He still doesn’t speak, after all these years – he says nothing. He just leans his head against your shoulder, and sways with you at your 9th grade prom.
You don’t know it yet, but it’s the last time you’ll ever touch him.
He doesn’t speak, he doesn’t try to kiss you, he just holds you in front of your friends and teachers and the world.
When you start high school you part with him. Probably forever. He chooses a high school, and you pick another. You’ll hear through some friends later on that he elected to study technology, and it suits him. His father still lives at home, at the end of that street, and you bet his walls are different.
When you’re 22 you still dream of him. You still love him. When you are 22 years old and taste blood you still think of him.