“Wait…” Peter's eyes squinted. “You mean…?”
She laced her fingers together around her knees and shrugged, looking out the window. “Well, it wasn't exactly my first kiss.”
“It wasn't?” he said, irritated at how his voice sounded so small.
He must have looked a little too disappointed. “Well, it's not really that important, is it Peter? I mean, that was a long time ago.”
His eyes narrowed. “Who was it? Robert Bowman?”
“No, it wasn't Robert Bowman.”
“Tim Polowski?”
“No, of course not. You know, I really don't even think I—”
“Kent Wilkins?” He looked at the ceiling, thinking. “Uh, that Steve guy with the freckles? Martin what's-his-name in your art class? Dennis—”
“It was Brian McDermott and we were at a birthday party in his basement and my friends dared me to kiss him so I did and that was all there was to it,” she blurted.
“Brian McDermott? 'Fissure Chin'?” Peter gave a short laugh.
Kate folded her arms. “Well, you just had to know, so there.”
“Brian McDermott.” He nodded. “Did you know he's a plastic surgeon in
Texas?”
Kate's eyes widened. “Really?”
“Yup. You could have been the wife of the only plastic surgeon in the country who needed more work done than his patients.”
Kate flashed a sarcastic smile but said nothing.
Peter looked out the window. “Well, it was my first kiss.”
“Oh, come on.”
“You were wearing a purple dress and had those yellow flower clip things in
your hair that you always wore, one on each side. And you smelled like strawberries from your Strawberry Shortcake perfume.”
Kate stared at him. “I did?” she said softly.
“And you were wearing orange sandals, and all I could think of was 'Please,
God, don't let our braces get stuck together.' ”
“They didn't, as I recall.”
Peter turned to face her, smiling. “So you do remember.”
Now it was Kate's turn to stare out the window. “Sure. Everyone remembers
their third kiss.” She untangled her legs, crawled to the ladder and turned to climb down.
“Mmm-hmm. Wait—third kiss?”
Kate's head disappeared down the ladder with a sly smile.
Chapter Ten
Kate left Peter struggling to get down from the treehouse and stepped through the fresh-cut grass, smiling. The vacant look on his boyish face when she left was priceless. Boyish but also rugged now with its two-day stubble.
She made her way to a pair of chipped white metal garden chairs set next to
a vine-covered gazebo in the corner of Peter's yard. The chilly metal felt good through her jeans. She stretched her legs, kicking off her shoes. The grass was cool, almost cold, but it felt good between her toes. Couldn't do that on the concrete outside her high-rise apartment in the Chicago Loop. She could only afford a low floor, so she couldn't even see Lake Michigan. Her view was of rows of anonymous windows in the next building and sky-crane-dotted
construction down the alley where there would be more anonymous windows
soon.
Not that she was there all that much. Mostly just to sleep and eat when she
wasn't working. She'd only been back to Golden Grove a couple of times and it
was already starting to seem like a completely different life.
She watched Peter make his way down from the treehouse quickly but
