It was the best day of the week. Not because it was Thursday—in fact ‘the best day of the week’ wasn’t always the same day—but, because it was the day Dana, Rhys, and I would meet in town and pool our money to buy a new record at The Exchange. That wasn’t even the best part, really, because after we’d deliberated, argued, and concluded which record to buy, we’d go to Rhys’ house to listen to it. I’d get to stay late at his that night, and his stepdad would cook some amazing meal as always, and I’d spend a cozy evening in a warm house with my best mates rather than a damp evening wandering the streets and avoiding my father’s house.

That specific day in late October 1974 promised to be even better than usual, because Rhys’ stepdad Paul had upgraded the big stereo over the weekend and it was a killer system. Dana hadn’t heard it yet, and I was delighted by the promise to see her look impressed. Impressed joy looked so good on her noble face, and I was always looking for ways to get her to show it. Sadly, I wasn’t very impressive to her on my own, but I wasn’t too finicky about it. I’d be happy to witness it second-hand and give the glory to the stereo. I was a keen observer of the art of Dana, not an artist.

Rhys always took the longest to get to town if we were meeting there instead of at the train station. He always said it was because he had to finish schoolwork or take a shower, but I’m pretty sure he was getting distracted by clouds and caterpillars on his walk to the bus. If I wasn’t there to keep him moving, he could get totally lost in the neighbour’s garden, and I’d taken to pretending I had to ‘go home’ before meeting everyone in town so that I could smoke a few cigarettes in peace without him or Dana seeing it. In that way, his lackadaisical jaunt towards the city wasn’t so unwelcome, I smoked nearly half a pack that day.

Of course, I was the first at the shop, even after taking a long walk from two stations further than I usually departed the train, but I dared not enter the shop before my mates arrived. That was a rule we had in place for Rhys’ sake, because he needed us all to enter together in order to pay off the confusing ghosts in his head that made him tap and count things. The very ghosts who distracted him from ever making a straight line from Point A to Point B. Dana arrived much earlier than usual, though.

“Hey Mort.” She waved coolly as she approached. It was windy that day, bits of sunset orange were being blown through the grey rainfall, and the noise of the rain and the city traffic had been enough to muffle all the silver buckles, zippers, earrings, and chains that always chimed as she walked.

“Alright, Dana!” I smiled and accepted a hug from her. I never knew when she’d greet me with an embrace, I never worked out the formula for it, but it was always a surprise that made my day better. The best day of the week could not improve any more at that point, I thought.

We stood under the awning as the rain picked up, but that wind made it rather useless, so I suggested we break all tradition and wait inside.

“Or you’ll dissolve?” She gave me a teasing grin.

“I am awfully sweet.” I shrugged. “So, maybe.”

“We can’t break Rhys’ routine, you know how he is.” She put her hand out to catch raindrops in her palm. “I’m not bothered by the rain.”

“Me neither, then.” I put my hands in my coat pockets to make the lie sell better.

“Good.” She flicked rainwater at me and laughed, then gasped and said “oh no!”

“I told you!” I touched my face like I needed to hold it together.

“Shouldn’t I be a puddle by now, then?” She looked over her wet hand as though it were actual science.

“Nah, you’re sweet and tough like…taffy?” I made a strong fist, unsure if taffy was the right example. “Whereas I’m like candy floss.”

“Right,” she snorted. “Candy floss sounds really good, you got any on you? I’m proper Hank Marvin.”

“Fresh out.” I laughed. “Wonder what Paul’s making tonight, though. Should be big and celebratory, whatever it is.”

“Celebratory?” A little fear blanched her and she tried to remember the date, “28th of October? It’s no one’s birthday is it?”

Technically, it was three days before my 17th birthday, but she didn’t know that. No one did, aside from my mother and I. As far as Dana, Rhys, and the legal system knew, I would turn 14 in January. The lie my father had forged to explain why he had failed to send me to school was going strong eight years on. At that moment, Dana still thought she was a year older than I was.

“No, no birthdays.” The lie wasn’t hard to tell, I was so used to it by then. “But, it’s the day you’re going to meet the new stereo!” I snapped my fingers and pointed to her with flair.

“Oh! Right!” She laughed in her relief. “The stereo you two keep bragging about. You’ve really built it up, you know.”

“Good! It deserves the buildup.” I flapped my coat about by the pockets for extra drama. “Oh, Dana, it’s crackin’. It’s got a built-in graphic equaliser and twin channel input—proper stereo, like. You can tweak the bass so it comes through a dedicated sub-speaker and all! Paul let us muck about with all the knobs and sliders, and I somehow made Rubycon sound like it was echoing down a ginnel. Don’t ask me how, just started turning things and it went all atmospheric. It was ace. Oh, and it’s got dual volume controls, left and right, so you can get it exactly—”

“Right, right.” She stopped me, a bit of a pained expression on her face. Not the pretty impressed regality I’d been waiting for, but I was smitten enough to think her annoyance or dread was beautiful too.

I figured I’d talked too much. That happened sometimes when I got excited enough to forget that no one cared about the things I care about. But, before I could apologise, she apologised to me.

“Sorry, I…uh…” her eyes were frantically scanning between my eyes, my hair, and my mouth. She looked more serious than she had in a long while, like whatever she was going to say next was dire. A confession was coming, and I really expected it to be something like ‘let’s just be quiet until Rhys gets here, he’s the one I actually like, you know, my actual mate, I just tolerate you.’ I did not expect her to ask me a life-changing question.

“Can I kiss you?” Her eyes settled in mine. “I’m…I’m going to kiss you, is that okay?”

I’m shocked, to this day, that I didn’t stumble for a single beat. The only dream I’d ever had was to one day hold her hand, and I was being offered the whole universe instead. I really should have fumbled, stumbled, and tripped over my utter disbelief—should have asked her if she’d forgotten who she was talking to, because I was just the accessory to her mate Rhys for the past three years, or at least that’s all I thought I was. But, I tried my best to just be kissable and said “please, please do kiss me.”

It wasn’t my first kiss ever, no, in my secret life in the Jones’ house, I’d been snogging regularly. I’d been doing a lot more than that, actually, but at least most of the kissing was consensual and expressive. My mouth was pretty awful at words, but I still found my ways to communicate with it, and kissing was my very favourite way to get my thoughts out. Kissing Dana, though, that was the first time a picture got painted in my head over it.

Her lips were over mine like a whisper, a breeze among the storm—but she was the storm. She tasted the way storm clouds smell, as they roll over the moors in summertime. She was soft, but rolling into power, and I was watching her overtake the sky from a grand willow tree, where birds excitedly sang her praises. The magic of the way she felt to me took away every thought outside of the moors. If I couldn’t see it from the tree, it didn’t exist. The Jones’ house was gone, my mother had never been, human woe was uninvented. She and I were the only things left that were real.

My quiet subconscious realised the vastness of the moment, though, and knew reflexively that the experience was most likely a one-time occurrence. So I took that opportunity to finally do everything with her that I’d ever wanted to do. I touched all the lovely parts of her that I had been admiring all those years: I pulled her tight against me, softly streamed over her curls with my fingers, traced the line of her neck and shoulder; and finally reached down to hold her hand in mine. My solitary prayer since the day I first saw her. Then, I changed all my hopes and desires, begging the sky to kill me. It was the perfect time to die, it was the best day of my life.

I was granted no more wishes, and as my subconscious re-emerged, I realised that I may have moved, I may have trailed my hands across her, but Dana hadn’t moved at all. She had put her mouth to mine and then frozen solid.

I knew that I often froze when I was uncomfortable, so I graciously squeezed her hand one final time, kissed her cheek, and removed my body from hers.

“We can go back to just being mates.” I assured her. I was sad to think she’d hated it, but I was willing to swallow all my love for her again so I wouldn’t lose her.

“Ehm…” she bounced from foot to foot while she tried to come up with the words she wanted. It was uncharacteristically adorable, and I tried not to fall deeper for her since I’d just promised we could go back to being platonic. But, my cheap lipstick was all over her face and all I could think about was how badly I missed the storm clouds.

She picked my hand up during one of her hops and said “okay, this time, you kiss me.”

Once again, I didn’t question my luck, I said “anything you want,” and pulled her back to me with my arm around her waist.

“Wait!” She paused me. “Right there, just wait a second.”

I tried to move away from her, but she firmly stopped me from letting her go, annoyedly shushing me and looking over my torso. “Just a second.”

She hadn’t been disappointed, she’d been nervous. As I watched her dance her hands around me, I realised that she hadn’t moved because she hadn’t known how. She had no idea what to do with her hands.

I smiled as I let go of my previous promise to just be mates and softly nudged her towards my shoulder as a hint for a good spot.

“Too obvious,” she shook her head, “maybe…” she decided to compromise the shoulder by putting most of her fingers against the side of my neck. Her other hand, she put on my arm.

“Okay,” she looked back in my eyes again, “keep going.”

“There’s a lot of pressure now,” I tried not to laugh as I saw pink highlight her cheeks. We were being lit by the neon sign of the record store, but she was as cherry red as my coat. To make her feel better, I told her I was nervous.

“You’re doing great.” She chirped out the tiniest laugh.

I was so brave when I kissed her neck. In reality, I was never nervous about things in the realm of sex. At that point in my life it was what I was most confident about. Not that everyone would love my style, but that I knew what I liked and how to express myself. It’s the only place in my life I thought I was more artist than observer.

She gasped a little, which was just what I’d wanted from her, so her lips would part and I could kiss each one independently, and get to know her mouth better. I tried to stay relatively still there, not to overwhelm her with my tongue anywhere past her bottom lip, giving her time to figure out what she wanted to do.

She slid her hand back into my hair and immediately got her ring snagged on a section of it. I never would have said a word about it, but she noticed the resistance and broke our kiss with a different sort of gasp.

“It’s okay.” I chuckled up against her cheek while she anxiously tried to remove it without letting me know what was happening.

“I’m sorry.” She groaned, gripping my coat with her free hand so I wouldn’t let go of her.

“Just rip it out.” I laughed. “It’s fine.”

She didn’t need to be told twice, and once it was free, she put that hand on the side of my face and asked, “can we try just one more time?”

“Dana, I’m willing to dedicate my life to this cause.” I said heroically. “Until we are both experts! I will get a PhD in snogging you, if you’ll let me.”

Finally, she smiled again, that impressed joy taking over her face. I’d done it, I’d finally impressed her, and something new and unbelievable happened to me when I saw that smile. I felt Dana everywhere: from the top of my head to the depth of my soul. When she brought her lips back to mine, I believed in something. I wasn’t sure which deity was suddenly watching over me, but it told me that I hadn’t been wrong all the times I’d argued that sexuality should be holistic. My mother had been wrong to tell me I was supposed to feel it with my body alone, love did exist within the realm of a kiss, and I could feel it rolling over the moors with fury.

The longer we stood there snogging beneath the awning, the less nervous Dana became. Her hands would slide confidently around the space between my chest and the back of my neck, and before long we were comfortably embracing, slowly tasting each other and flowing back and forth with the breeze. Never had I been so happy, never had a day been more perfect. If I had been in control of fate, she and I would still be there to this day.

But, the world discourteously spins, despite our highs and lows as earthlings, and Dana pulled far enough away from me to make me open my eyes and see the neon evening again. 

“We’d better stop.” There was no urgency in her voice, just softness flowing through a sweet grin.

“You got it out of your system?” I half-joked. Of course, I wanted to kiss her until the universe died, but I was pretty sure I could still swallow the love back down if she wanted me to. I’d be able to graciously think about those kisses for the rest of my life and be very happy.

“No,” she bit her lip like she was somehow giving me a disappointing answer. “I just don’t think Rhys should be greeted by it. His routine, you recall.”

“You’re a very good mate.” I put my hand on the side of her face. “But, you’ve got me all over your mouth.”

When I rubbed my thumb over her bottom lip, she turned bright red again. I almost told her I was in love with her right then and there, but I wasn’t stupid or greedy.

She sunk her hand into her sleeve and started wiping it across my lips with scrubbing force. Touching me gently had been the novel struggle we encountered that evening, but this was the same girl who stabbed three holes in my earlobes a month after we first met. She wasn’t scared to handle me.

“Ow.” I complained as her black vinyl squealed across me and her woollen cuff grated after it.

“You’re fine,” she informed me, moving on to sand a layer off of her own face.

“It’s comforting to know that kissing you is just as dangerous as everything else about you.” It felt like she’d rubbed my skin right off.

She laughed a bit, clearly proud of her dangerous ways. “I am sorry about your hair, though.”

“It was charming.” I resisted the urge to comfort the spot on my scalp that still stung a bit where she’d pulled my hair out.

She was still scrubbing her mouth into the collar of her shirt when Rhys came jogging across the street. He was all smiles, with fresh flower petals sticking out of his pockets and pure enthusiasm for our Thursday night activities. That is, until he focused on Dana’s and my lips. 

For a tiny moment, his entire personality cracked and I swear I heard a little “oh fuck” come out of his mouth.