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“A kissing booth.”
“A…what? JoJo, I can’t hear you--”
“A kissing booth!” Jonas bellowed into his phone, startling passers-by, who looked over. He cringed and hunched over the table. “You should come down here. I don’t want to be alone,” Jonas said, trying to sound less desperate than he felt. “Please come down here.”
“I can’t, Jojo. I’m watching half the kids while Sue’s at the dentist with the twins.” Jonas switched his phone to his other ear, feeling his chest sink another inch. Any more disappointments, and it was going to cave in totally. His silence, of course, was loud. He was afraid that if he opened his mouth too much, he might cry. “It can’t be that bad, can it? I mean it’s just a few hours--”
“Yeah, a few hours at a kissing booth! It’s gross and problematic,” he stage-whispered. “No one’s had a kissing booth since like 1950!”
Sidney had the gall to chuckle. “Yeah, you’re probably right. How much for the honor of kissing you?”
“Five dollars.”
“Five dollars?! For flu and a “cold sore”?! No thank you.”
“See? You’re starting to get it.”
Jonas looked across the way to the site of the other kissing booth. The money-maker. Carmen and her friend sat in its shade, cast in orange by the paper banner overhead, while Neil stood beside it, a sort of bouncer who could oust anyone he didn’t want putting their lips on his girlfriend. He didn’t tell Sid about it. He didn’t know where to begin.
“If you’re that grossed out by it, why don’t you tell the sponsor? I’m sure there’s somewhere else they could stick you.”
“The sponsors put me here. Neil’s calling the shots this year. Who else would do something this mean-spirited?”
Oh, how Jonas longed for last year’s Spring Carnival duty. At the time, it had seemed like a curse. Lewis and himself, concession stand, nacho cheese, and a shortage of deodorant by the end of the day. Jonas would throw it all away for that crummy concession truck with the busted AC, to be slipping on pickle juice, to be coated in sweat.
They had been under the sponsorship of the Yearbook Committee that time, and Jonas hadn’t necessarily felt he had been handed an undesirable duty on purpose. Someone had had to run the concession and he’d been stuck with it. Now, though…the basketball team was in charge of planning and execution. The band director mandated every year that everyone in band would work the Spring Carnival (or else no one would volunteer). In return, they could claim a portion of the proceeds. And who should happen to be head of the Sellwood Mollusk basketball team? None other than Neil *@#$ing Beckham (‘scuse Jonas’s French).
It wasn’t so much that Jonas felt “grossed out”. It wasn’t even that he didn’t want anyone to kiss him. It was that no one would. And that was the form of humiliation Neil was counting on.
Sidney sighed. “Sorry, Jojo. I wish I knew what to do. You know if I was free, I’d rob my savings jar and come up there and smooch ya.”
Already Neil’s plan was in motion. Because it didn’t make Jonas feel any better that the only person volunteering to kiss him was his sister. Maybe it really was better if she didn’t show up and become the only reason there was money in his jar.
“I’m gonna go. People are staring at me and if no one’s going to actually come over here, I’m going to try and get some phone game time in.”
“Oh, don’t be like that, Jonas. Plenty of people wanna kiss you.”
“Name one person.”
“Maddyyyy…”
Jonas hung up. He laid his phone down on the table and twiddled his thumbs, staring at the eager line of three people that had already accumulated to kiss Carmen. Neil stood there with his hands in his pockets, a complete tool, rocking back and forth on his heels like some big-bellied old west banker, too rich and fat for his britches. One of the guys in line bent under the banner and pressed a kiss to her cheek.
What Jonas wouldn’t give to do that. He would settle for a kiss on her hand even. Too bad he would never in a hundred year get the nerve to get in that line, even if Neil wasn’t there to tell him to piss off.
Jonas picked up his phone and pulled up a fresh text to Lewis. He was lurking around here somewhere because Jonas had seen about a dozen other Robotics Club members around the place.
Jonas: Where are you today?
A considerable number of minutes later, his phone dinged.
Lewis: I got fucking bathroom duty. Nobody can tear up a bathroom faster than some of these jocks I stg! We’ll have to burn the wallpaper!
Jonas: Yeah well I’m at a freaking kissing booth. Trade me?
All Jonas received in response to that was a laughing emoji.
Jonas: You have any money on you?
Lewis: Are you about to proposition me?
Jonas: Ew, you don’t have to kiss me freak. Just come slip 5 bucks in my jar. I’ll pay you back later.
Lewis: $5! You’re not worth that much to me!
Jonas: … Fine. I’ll throw the kiss in.
Lewis did not text back. But in his defense, he was elbow deep in teen boy toilet splatter, which was the worst kind. Teenage boys had bad diets. Very oily.
Right away, a crowd of students shuffled by on the path in front of his booth. Still clouded with thought, Jonas watched them with his chin in his hand. They were chatty and giggly, and refused to stray further than an inch from each other’s side, as highschoolers do. Everything was just kicking off so they pointed at this and that, looking all around. They spotted Carmen across the way with a line that refused to die down, and there were mixed reviews about that. A couple of the girls thought it was slutty, but the boys were all over it, so nothing novel there.
It was when one of the girls turned and spotted Jonas that the inescapable nature of his situation hit him like a bread truck.
She caught an eyeful of him and promptly snorted, whipping back around like that was going to smooth over what had happened. She tapped her friends on the shoulder and--in full view of him!--tried to discreetly point him out. They covered their mouths to stifle their laughter, but at fifteen feet away in broad daylight, Jonas could piece it all together. He was an honors students.
Humiliation sweltered over Jonas’s face, burning his eyes, prickling his ears. As if allergic to the sight, his throat began to close up in a way that warned of tears. Childishly, he wished for a place to hide his face. Inside a bag, behind his mother’s skirt. But there was nowhere. Something huge and sharp pierced his heart so that a wave of pain radiated out from his chest and into his stomach. The ache of shame.
Bored of the ridiculous sight of him, they moved on. Jonas wanted to dissolve right there, but he kept his spine up and his jaw tight, trying not to blink fully or breathe too hard. Anything could do it. Any little sign of life, and he could spill.
Resting his chin in his hands he pretended like nothing was wrong. Through watery eyes he watched two people in the distance trip and fall out of a photo booth and forced himself to chuckle at it.
“Hey, Fagner!”
Jonas’s brimming eye slipped shut, overflowing.
Dear asteroid that is hurtling towards Earth…please, I’m right here…
Neil funneled his hands around his goofy-looking mouth and shouted across the way so that anybody listening could be a spectator to his humiliation.
“I see you’re not getting any business over there! I’m gonna need you to find a way to make yourself more marketable! This is a fundraiser and we have money to make!”
“No shit,” Jonas allowed, certain that he couldn’t be heard.
“Maybe try sitting up straight and suckin’ it in a little! Nobody wants to kiss a revolting pig!”
While Neil doubled over at his own cleverness, Jonas sat as still as he could. He’d lost two tears already, but there was plenty more where they came from. Already they were forming a bifocal over his eyes. He looked past Neil at Carmen, who was so occupied with the demand for her affection that she didn’t appear to notice them.
“Tell you what!” he shouted, recovered from his laugh attack. “You even make twenty bucks before the end of the day and I’ll let you pack and leave right then.”
He didn’t wait for Jonas to respond. He turned around and immediately began hassling somebody else about their eligibility to kiss Carmen.
Jonas wasn’t going to make five dollars today, never mind twenty. That was four kisses. Four people willing to kiss him? Here? At the same set of coordinates on Earth?
The tears crawled back up his throat to his eyes. It was so tempting to just get up and leave, but if Neil saw him, he’d go straight to the band director, and Jonas would get crucified the next time he showed his face in the band room.
It was a trap, and he was in it deep. This was possibly the worst position anyone had ever put him in, and that was saying something for a chubby, freckled band nerd at Sellwood!
An hour proceeded to tick by with Jonas in and out of tearfulness. Some people noticed him and passed by without comment or performance, but just as many had a good hearty laugh at his expense.
The sun slanted through his empty glass jar, leaving a watercolor streak of light on the tablecloth. He opted to stare at it for a while and give himself a break from the trauma of people’s reactions. It wasn’t such a bad position to be in when you took all that away. The breeze twitched through his hair, and the light on the gingham cloth danced. It might have been a picnic blanket on the beach. If he laid his head down in his arms right there, he could fall asleep and never know that people pointed or how loud they laughed.
Except that Jonas did not have the luxury of escape of any kind. Because right about then, a shadow visited him. It fell across the cloth, interrupting the shivered light of the glass. Its shade slapped away the warm touch of the sun, and a dark chill flooded into the booth. Two large, rough hands planted themselves on the table in front of him, and Jonas knew by the scars on the knuckles alone…
Oh, no…
With old alarm bells screaming in his head, Jonas raised his chin an inch at a time, putting off its arrival at the last face on earth he wanted to see. His throat was so tight he could barely breathe, and tears flooded to the rims of his eyes almost on principle.
“Well ho-ly shit! Will you take a fuckin’ look at this!” Mitch exclaimed, face lit up with delight at finding him in such a position. Jonas couldn’t bring himself to do anything but stare at those big teeth while his eye swam with unshed tears. “No line at the Spots Wagner kissin’ booth? You already kissed everybody here or what?”
Jonas’s spine went so limp he couldn’t even straighten up. How had he not seen how much worse this could get? Of course this was his life: parked at a kissing booth that warded people off like it was radioactive, while Carmen sat within view, kissing everyone in town but him, and Neil remembered him occasionally and gorged himself on Jonas’s misery.
And why shouldn’t Mitch Mueller show up to a nonessential function to catch him at it? On the one day he could be slacking off in a trap house or wherever, here he was in Jonas’s pink, mortified face.
Mitch ducked under the banner and leaned crudely onto the table. “Whatsa matter? Yer tongue get a cramp from suckin’ too much face, or did you--”
The pools of tears slipped down the curves of Jonas’s cheeks. And now that he could see clearly, he watched the smile drop off of Mitch’s face in a rare display of surprise. And when that, too, was gone, Jonas didn’t understand what it was he was left with. Disgust? Discomfort? Pity??
The rest of the dam started to give. His chin trembled just a little; he sniffled. Unsurprisingly, crying in front of Mitch was like a rotten cherry on top of a shit pile.
“Joey…” Mitch said. “…I’m just teasin’ ya.”
Jonas turned away to wipe his eyes on his hands. He hated his own guts, hated that he was so pathetic that even Mitch Mueller was throwing in the towel and backing off.
“C’mon, Joey. I ain’t bein’ that rough with ya, am I?”
“M-mitch…I just…don’t wanna be here, okay? I’m-m embarrassed…and I wanna...g-go home…”
“So go home! What the fuck?”
“I c-can’t,” he gulped, hating his emotional self. “This is a requirement.”
“They requirin’ you to kiss people these days?”
Jonas took a couple of deep breaths that trembled in his very lungs, acutely aware of Mitch watching his every move. He needed all the air he could get, so he offered a brief “Neil.”
Mitch twisted to look over his shoulder toward the evergreen line of Carmen’s booth; more specifically, the figure of Neil standing next to it. He shook his head. “Nasty little creep. What that over there is, is a brothel.” He turned back around, his eyes settling on Jonas, who was slowly pulling himself together. One of Mitch’s fingers tapped on the table. He seemed unsure of what to do with Jonas now that teasing him was off the menu. “So what? You gotta sit here all day?
“Yeah. Until four,” Jonas answered, stiff in Mitch’s shadow. “Unless--” He bit his tongue. What was he doing offering up details unprompted? Making chit-chat?!
“Unless what?”
Now you’ve done it. “…Un-unless I make twenty dollars before then. Neil said he’d let leave early.”
To Jonas’s surprise, Mitch didn’t immediately break into laughter, but he didn’t say anything either. He seemed to be having an attack of thought, something Jonas had never seen his face do. He wanted him to leave, but you didn’t tell Mitch Mueller to leave.
“So he’s your pimp too, huh?”
Jonas shrugged. That wasn’t an unrealistic interpretation of things. “Looks like it. I’m way better at getting laughed at than kissed, though. It’s too bad I can’t charge for that. I’d make a fortune.”
Mitch’s attention was drawn to the large empty glass jar. He touched it; put his fingers inside the rim and ran them along the edge with a show of care that was astounding. He looked up then to the orange banner almost right in front of his face. “Five bucks no French,” he read, translating from the original text of ‘$5, *No lips’. “That’s fuckin’ lame as shit. How else are the kisser and the kissee s’pposed to have fun?”
“What are you doing here?”
Both Mitch and Jonas turned to discover a sour looking Neil standing in their midst. He scowled at Mitch like he was covered in trash.
Mitch shrugged, clearly about to be a smart-ass. “Shouldn’t that be pretty fuckin’ obvious. It’s a free school event, ain’t it?”
“I meant what are you doing here?” He pointed at Jonas.
“Getting in line before you, so wait your turn.”
Rarely, Jonas was around to hear Mitch say something so out of line that it was actually funny. He didn’t smile, but the corner of his mouth curled imperceptibly, even if the implication that Neil was here to kiss him made him want to puke blood.
“You know, normally I don’t give two shits about you hassling this freakazoid loser, but I’m going to have to insist you do it on your own time because your humongous junkie ass is making all the decent, money-having folk run for the hills.”
Jonas balked, resisting the urge to let his jaw fall open. Neil was on some kind of power-high for sure to be talking to Mitch like that.
“Well you’re over there pullin’ train on yer girlfriend and I didn’t wanna wait that long. But if you really don’t want me here I can get in her line. She’s movin’ through ‘em pretty fast, don’tcha think?”
Neil’s eye twitched. He was probably doing what Jonas was doing and imagining Mitch kissing Carmen. And for some unknowable reason, it was less gross than the thought of Neil doing it.
“I would rather shut the whole carnival down.”
“And I would rather kiss a dog’s ass, so don’t bother. I think I’ll just do what I want since you’re fake-in charge here.”
Jonas wanted to crawl under his table. It seemed there was nothing Neil could say to that. Mitch was allowed to be here. And Jonas couldn’t believe he was saying it, but if the only thing Mitch was going to do here was run Neil off of him, he could stay a while longer.
Frustrated to no end, Neil heaved a sigh and turned away. “If you insist on lurking around here, you could at least spend some money so none of us have suffered in vain.”
They watched him stalk away, expensive preppy-boy pants riding too low on his butt.
Mitch whipped back around. The razor sharp look in his eye nearly cut Jonas’s head off.
“How bad do ya wanna get outta here?”
A weighty dread pulled in Jonas’s stomach. He hesitated, but not long because the heat of Mitch staring at him was almost unbearable.
“...Bad,” he said truthfully. “More than anything.”
The first sign that he was possibly getting in with the devil here was the way Mitch’s crooked smirk dragged one side of his mouth up. His hand slipped into the pocket of his pants and suddenly there was a twenty dollar bill on the table, trapped under three of his long, rough fingers.
Jonas stared at it like it was the Ark of the Covenant. Mitch surely wasn’t about to offer him that, was he? Like out of the goodness of his heart?
He leaned down onto the table again, bringing them too close. “So what does twenty bucks get me?”
Time slowed to a screeching halt as it sunk in. “What?”
“Whadda ya mean ‘what’? I’m buying you out?”
“But I--you…you want me to kiss you?!”
Mitch shrugged. “Well shit, I could kiss you if it helps.”
The universe became a kaleidoscope, tearing apart and refusing all wrong, colored by chaos, psychedelic in the way it made Jonas wonder if this was really real. He’d wondered before if it was a nightmare, knowing all along that it wasn’t--just a run of terrible luck. But this seemed so outside the bounds of possibility that he had to take a moment to check the world around him for other tell-tale signs of unreality.
Everything was the same. There was a clang, and the dunk tank was dropping someone into the pool; the concession stand was lined up down the sidewalk, fryers smoking; Carmen was over there kissing half the boys in school; and Neil was doubling down on the number of people kicked out of line.
When Jonas returned to his body, Mitch was watching him patiently, if eager.
“I don’t know, Mitch…I don’t…”
“Ya don’t what? Ya don’t kiss boys?”
It wasn’t that Jonas wouldn’t kiss a boy--he never had, and twenty dollars today was twenty dollars. But of all the boys that could have come up to him…Mitch.
“It-it’s not that. It’s just…I don’t understand.”
“A’right, lemme make it easier on ya,” Mitch offered, shifting feet. “I’ll let you choose. Four kisses your way…or one kiss mine.”
“Dare I ask, but what’s your way?”
“On the lips,” Mitch replied, not missing a beat.
Jonas watched those clear, amber eyes, waiting for a sign--any sign--that this was a joke. But Mitch’s face was solid. He didn’t blink as he watched Jonas back.
“That’s against the rules,” Jonas panted, breaking out in a sweat at the thought of kissing Mitch on the mouth.
“In case you ain’t noticed, I like to break rules,” he said, smirking. “C’mon, Joey. I mean, what’s worse? Dealin’ with Rat Face for four more hours, bein’ embarrassed, having people laugh at ya like ya said? Or, fuck! Literally anything else?”
It was four more hours, wasn’t it? And people were still arriving; people who hadn’t seen him yet. He could still feel the stiff brine around his eyes from his earlier weep session, and the dull pang of humiliation hadn’t finished ebbing. He had only been here an hour and a half. Four hours of on and off staring and crying and pop-ins from Neil… Or--for God knew what reason--a kiss from Mitch. One, maybe two seconds max. And then he could pack up and leave. That liberation sang to him, just the thought. Mitch couldn’t very well use this to tease him with later, if a trap was what this was, because…it had been his idea. He’d be laughing at himself.
And there was something undeniably genuine about Mitch right now.
Slowly, not believing himself, Jonas nodded. “Okay. Fine.”
Mitch’s face lit up. “Fuck, oka--”
“But not on the lips.”
And Mitch’s face fell. “You’re willing to let me kiss ya four goddamn times?”
“I understood the terms, you know.”
Mitch took a moment to chew up and choke down an argument. “A’right.”
Jonas swallowed loudly, sizing up the gap between them, and said something he never thought he’d say to Mitch in a hundred lifetimes. “Come closer.”
On his command, Mitch leaned in so far that he had to be on his tip-toes outside. The air inside got hotter immediately as Jonas reached up and laid his hand against the edge of his jaw, firm and prickly with stubble. When Jonas pressed his lips to Mitch’s cheek, he tried to consider it a thank you gesture, thinking of Neil skulking off with his tail between his legs, and the cool shade that Mitch’s shadow cast for him, and the freedom that would be his after this.
Jonas came away with a soft smack, immediately guiding Mitch’s face to the other side. As they passed by, his eyes tracked the nearness of Mitch’s mouth, and Mitch’s eyes tracked him. He smelled the way he always did, like cigarettes and cheap cologne. His cheek had none of the pillowy softness that Jonas’s did, but it was warm and Mitch held even stiller for his second than he did for his first.
Jonas eased back into his seat, withdrawing his hand. Mitch’s eyes were heavy-lidded and intense. Without looking, he fumbled the twenty around until it found its way into the jar.
“Jesus fuck…” he muttered, out of breath. “My turn?”
Feeling a little intense himself, Jonas nodded.
Mitch’s hand lay gently around the back of his neck where it cradled the base of his head. There was a burst of hot air against the side of his face, and Mitch pressed a kiss there. It was low, and Jonas tilted his head for it. Tension coiled deep in his belly, making him squirm in his seat. He was really going to have to face this demon later, because Jonas considered himself to be pretty self-aware, and all signs pointed to the staggering truth of him enjoying this. It was only that nobody ever touched him this softly, and for whatever reason, Mitch wanted to kiss him so bad…
When Mitch pulled off, they were both buzzing. A few inches of space formed, wherein the reality of what was occurring in broad daylight struck Jonas like a gong. He took a few frantic glances around Mitch’s bulk crowding the booth. Neil had vanished from his post, and Carmen was--
“Huh-uh,” Rough fingers redirected his chin. “Don’t look at her. Look at me.”
“Okay,” panted Jonas brainlessly. It wasn’t too hard anyway. Mitch really wasn’t half bad to look at when he wasn’t being a total creep.
The warning sign was there, in the way Mitch’s eyes dropped to his mouth. But Jonas’s brain couldn’t rally the rest of him fast enough before, quick as lightning, Mitch latched onto Jonas’s jaw and smashed a kiss right on his lips. It was rough with urgency, but not carelessness. As soon as the shock was out of the way, the pressure softened up, and God help him, but Jonas’s mouth moved into it. Hard not to with Mitch’s lips pulling and pushing against his, coaxing him into participation.
And then he came to his senses. His hand planted itself at the base of Mitch’s throat and pushed them apart. “Mitch!”
Mitch wasn’t sorry. His shit-eating smile said so. His gaze clung to Jonas’s lips like only the thinnest threat of self-restraint was holding him back. Jonas saw it: the urge to take it again. He’d never been kissed before, and Mitch did it with such a fervor. Nothing like he’d imagined; like an animal tearing into meat.
Beneath the hand on his throat, Mitch’s heart thumped frantically. It was useless as Mitch pushed back into his space, slow as a plant growing. And Jonas yielded this time with minimal convincing as Mitch pressed a tentative peck to his lips, and then another, and another, longer every time, deeper. Jonas’s belly swooped hard because it was everything his encounters with Mitch weren’t: tender, and slow, and full of want.
This time, when Jonas put a hand against his chest, he didn’t shove, but he did pull away with a quiet smack.
“You owe me like…a hundred dollars.”
“Ohh, fuck…please, Joeyy…” Mitch strained lightly against the hand, looking too drunk to stand. “If ya wait right here I can go rob a liquor store or somethin’.”
Jonas giggled. He was trembling all over and also in shock, and another thing that he didn’t want to give a name to. Mitch was watching him like a hawk with a gentle smile on his lips and a very obvious flush to his face. He laid a large hand over Jonas’s where it sat over his heart, and squeezed his fingers together. “That was hot, right?”
Fire. Jonas’s face was on fire. “…K-kind of.”
“’Kinda’ my ass. I dunno what everybody’s standin’ over there for.” He jabbed his head in the direction of Carmen. “But I’m fuckin’ glad they are.”
Jonas couldn’t bear this level of flattery, and coming out of Mitch Mueller’s mouth no less! “Um…thanks for bailing me out,” he said, looking away bashfully and burning with embarrassment. “Y-you’re a good kisser.”
“...I could kiss ya like that more often if ya want.”
Jonas looked up at Mitch in what he hoped was a medium level of surprise, and not the rip-roaring kind he felt inside. It had obviously taken a fair bit of gumption to say that, as Mitch was pink all over.
“Eh, you can think it over or whatever,” he said, noticing that Jonas was overloaded. He stepped back and shoved his hands in his pockets. “All I’m sayin’ is, you can have a sad, limp dick time starin’ at that every day,” he gestured at Carmen again, her line dwindling because…well, she’d kissed everyone, “or you can lower your standards and get in a bathroom stall with me.”
That was the sleaziest, grossest thing Jonas had ever heard, and his stomach swooped again even harder imagining no people around; no table between them.
Mitch must have seen that he was tempted because he grinned like the devil. Then he back away from the booth and strolled off, disappearing out of sight.
It was tempting to sit there and process everything with his lips tingling and his heart pounding, and honestly, a partial in his pants. But like hell he was going to spend even one more second cosplaying as a volunteer when Mitch had blown twenty bucks to spring him. Emboldened, he stood up and grabbed his things (i.e. his jar and the twenty therein) and marched over to Neil.
“Easy there, Augustus Gloop. There aren’t any lunch breaks.”
Jonas plonked the jar down on Carmen’s table with a musical, crystalline note. “Fine by me. I’m leaving. Here’s your twenty bucks.”
Neil glared in disbelief at the money in the jar. He even went so far as to pull it out and inspect it for fraudulence. “Somebody gave you twenty bucks?
But Jonas was already walking away, digging out his phone to text Sidney. “Some people pay big money to kiss pigs.”