The First Last Kiss (2 page)

Stop being silly, Molly
, I tell myself sternly.
It’s only a film. You’re just emotional at the moment; moving is one of the most stressful things you can do. It’s right up there with divorce and having a baby
.

The biscuit is suddenly sandpaper in my mouth and I have to force it past the lump in my throat, coughing with the exertion. I instantly imagine myself being found by a neighbour, slumped on the settee, eyeballs rolling towards the ceiling, one hand clasped around my throat with the other clutching the remaining half of the biscuit. Raspberry jam would be smothered tellingly around my gaping mouth, the bloody evidence of my demise.

‘Such a tragedy,’ my neighbours would say. ‘The poor girl died of a broken heart . . . -shaped biscuit.’

I reach back into the packet and stuff another biscuit into my mouth, reassured by the knowledge that it doesn’t matter if I get fat anyway. It’s not like I’m a teenager, or can have my heart shattered any more than it has been. When you’ve been through what I have, gambled everything on love – and lost – you’re never the same again. Not really.

I press play again and settle back to try and watch the rest of the film but all I can see in my mind’s eye is Ryan Cooper.

My first love – and the one I hoped would also be my last.

The Kiss To End All Kisses

There’s supposed to be ‘a moment’ that every girl dreams about her whole life. You know the one; some guy on bended knee offering you his heart. Well, I was never that kind of girl. But even if I had been, the moment turned out to be better than I could have ever imagined . . .

<

‘I can’t believe we’re actually here!’ I clap my hands together in excitement and press my face against the window as I take in the city I have been desperate to see for so long lit up like a circuit board in the darkness. I gasp as we leave the Brooklyn–Queens Expressway and crawl across the Brooklyn Bridge. Manhattan rises up before us in our yellow cab; the buildings are inconceivably tall and shiny, I feel like we’re looking at them in a hall of mirrors at the funfair. The breathtaking skyscrapers are silhouetted against the navy night sky, like bejewelled teeth in a yawning mouth. Ryan leans over and kisses me on the shoulder then slips his arm around me and I sigh contentedly.

‘It’s so
cool,
just like in the movies!’ Ryan says wondrously, to himself more than to me. I was worried that this holiday we’ve been planning since we got back together wouldn’t be his thing. He’s more of a sun, sea and sand kind of guy.

‘I’m so glad I’m seeing this city with you,’ I say quietly.

Ryan grins as he looks at me, his tanned, handsome face a picture of shock. ‘What’s this? Has my cynical girlfriend finally become a romantic? Has Harry
finally
become Sally?’

‘So what if I have, Cooper?’ I say, folding my arms defiantly, jumping as the cars around us begin to honk their horns and our taxi driver yells out the window. I snuggle back into his shoulder. ‘What are you going to do about it?’

He laughs. ‘You’ll see, Molly Carter!’ he whispers, threading his arm around me. ‘You’ll see . . . ’

I purse my lips and narrow my eyes at him. What he doesn’t know is that I’m also using the chance to study him. I’m drinking in his Balearic blue eyes and palm-frond lashes, the sand-dune slopes of his top lip surrounded by grainy golden stubble smattered over his jaw to match his blond, beachy hair. I’ve been doing a lot of this over the last six months. I’m still amazed that we got back together after all that happened. But Ryan and I made a promise to start afresh, to treat this as the beginning of a new relationship.

I pull him towards me for a kiss before turning back to look out the window. The bridge has carried us over the Hudson River and lowered us gently into the jaws of the city. For a moment I gaze around at the blur of shimmering buildings, the lights, the line of bright yellow cabs just like ours, and feel like I’m in a futuristic pop video stuck on fast forward. I hold my camera up to my eyes to see this incredible city the best way I know how – through my viewfinder – and that’s how I stay, with Ryan’s arm thrown over my shoulder as the taxi speeds us further into the glistening, twinkling metropolis.

‘Smile!’ I shout the following morning. Ryan is standing in front of the Staten Island Ferry sign in the glorious early morning sunlight, a cheesy grin on his face and his index fingers pointing down at his crotch where, over his jeans, he’s modelling a G-string that has the Statue of Liberty emblazoned on the front. We have made it our mission to ‘do’ as many famous sights as we can and have set each other the challenge to pick up the tackiest souvenir along the way. Knowing how competitive Ryan is, he’s bound to win. But I have determination and imagination on my side. The best photo wins a prize. Ryan has said if he wins I have to take him to see the New York Giants, and if I win he has to come on the
Sex and the City
tour with me. I reckon he’s got the best deal as, to be honest, he’ll probably enjoy that, too.

I burst out laughing as Ryan adds a foam Statue of Liberty hat to his ensemble, his arm raised in the air just like New York’s First Lady as a bunch of Japanese tourists walk by, recording everything they see. Without a flicker of embarrassment he poses for them as if he’s modelling designer clothes. If only his secondary school students could see him now. Cool Mr Cooper the PE teacher, not looking so cool now!

I pull the camera away from my face and sidle up to him as we amble onto the moored ferry. We quickly make our way out to the deck.

‘You know,’ I whisper, kissing him on the neck and glancing up at his ridiculous outfit, ‘I’ve never wanted you more, Ryan Cooper!’

He pulls me into his arms, pops a matching Statue of Liberty hat on my head and tilts me back, kissing me showily on the lips so that a big group of Japanese tourists gather to take more photos. I blush and hide my face (I’ve never been comfortable with PDAs) but Ryan lifts me back up again and waves at the tourists who bow to him and politely clap their hands.

Ryan pings his thong and grins down at me. ‘Do you admit defeat then?’ he asks. Then he pulls a matching foam torch out of his combat trousers and holds it aloft like Lady Liberty herself.

I fold my arms. ‘Ohhh, so
that’s
what was pressing up against me,’ I say. ‘For a moment I thought I was in luck . . . ’

‘Admit I’ve already won the challenge!’ he grins triumphantly, brandishing the phallic-looking torch.

‘Never!’ I reply. ‘Not if Carrie Bradshaw’s entire Manolo collection depended on it!’

He laughs. ‘So says the girl who a few years ago wouldn’t be seen dead in anything other than Converse!’

‘Hey, I still love my Converse,’ I say, looking down at the red ones currently adorning my feet. ‘And besides, a girl can change, can’t she?’

‘She certainly can . . .
Harry
,’ Ryan laughs.

‘I mean who’d have thought it of the spiky 15-year-old girl with the chip on her shoulder, who wanted to rebel against everything and everyone and who thought love was for “Losers, baby”
,
’ he says, his fingers making inverted commas. ‘Who would have thought she’d become this loving, romantic woman.’ He pauses and grins. ‘
My
woman.’ Then he pulls me into his arms. ‘I’m just glad my high-risk gamble
finally
paid off!’

I narrow my eyes dangerously. ‘Are you implying that I’m
old
?’

He whistles through his teeth and shakes his head. ‘Oh no, I’d never do that, I mean you’re only twenty-six in a couple of days, although, you
are
now officially closer to thirty than twenty!’ He pauses and smiles so that his blue eyes shine. ‘And it also means I’ve been in love with you for over ten years.’

‘You weren’t in love with me when I was fifteen!’ I exclaim, nestling into his arms as the wind whistles through my hair and blows it across his face. I gaze out at the glistening Hudson as I think back to my awkward, mixed-up teen self who could count her friends on one finger and her social skills on . . . none. I was morose, awkward, and so desperate to be different – but only so that I’d be accepted; a contradiction that despite my keen photographic eye, I hadn’t been astute enough to recognize.

He strokes my hair off my face. ‘I thought you were the most beautiful girl in the world . . . ’

‘You’d just been listening to too much Prince,’ I say with a dismissive smile.

‘So’, he adds, touching me on my nose, ‘why did I tell my mum after our first date that I’d met the future Mrs Cooper . . . ’

‘You didn’t!’ I laugh, expecting him to join me, but his expression is serious. ‘What did Jackie say?’

‘She said if I had, then I should make sure nothing messes it up.’

We lock eyes, the intensity of our gazes an acknowledgement of our recent split and then we smile. We’ve come a long way since then. I snuggle further into his arms, feeling like there could literally be no better place in the world than here.

What happened to not being bound by the constraints of a relationship?
my teenage self shouts in my head, the one that caused my break-up with Ryan in the first place. I think of the list I had pinned to my wall at uni that used to remind me why I’d vowed to steer clear of serious relationships.

Reasons I don’t want a serious boyfriend

1. They hold you back

2. Grind you down

3. Then mess with your head

It was a short but succinct list. And yes, I was immature, angry and adamant that no one would ever hurt me again like Ryan Cooper had.

But things change, people change – as do perceptions of people, and now I answer in a language that I hope my teenage self will understand (even if I know it’ll make her roll her eyes and stick her fingers down her throat).

Molly Carter + Ryan Cooper = 4ever.

Two hours later we’re standing at the front of a queue that snakes around the most famous, filmed and photographed building in the world – the A-list of architecture, The Empire State Building. I squeeze Ryan’s hand and he grins down at me as he offers me his hot dog. I take a big bite and he kisses the mustard off the corner of my lips. I laugh. It’s like I’m Elizabeth Perkins in
Big
being shown by Tom Hanks just how much fun life can be if only you take it less seriously.

The last few days have been the best, not just of our relationship, but of my entire life. We’ve floated round the city feeling like we’re in our very own romantic movie. ‘
An Affair to Remember
?’ I suggested to Ryan yesterday. But he hadn’t seen it. I should know by now that Ryan refuses to watch or listen to anything that was made before he was born – especially not black-and-white movies. I tried describing the story to him, but when I got to the bit where Deborah Kerr gets knocked down by a taxi on the way to meet Cary Grant at the top of The Empire State Building, he just said, ‘It doesn’t sound very romantic to me, babe!’ and added, ‘If we were a film I reckon we’d be more
13 Going on 30.’
He’d grinned and taken my hand as we’d walked through Times Square. ‘After all,
you
were an awkward, totally uncool teenager when I first set eyes on you and now you’re basically Jennifer Garner! Viva magazine’s beautiful editor!’

‘Picture editor,’ I’d laughingly corrected.

Incredibly, in just four days here we’ve ticked nearly everything off my Things To Do In New York List:

•  Take the Staten Island Ferry to the Statue of Liberty

•  Horse and carriage ride around Central Park

•  Go up the Empire State

•  Eat cupcakes from Magnolia Bakery

•  Spend an afternoon at MoMA

•  Go to the Guggenheim

•  Go to the Met

•  Ice-skate at the Wolfman rink in Central Park

•  Carnegie Hall

•  Shop (a lot)

•  See a show on Broadway

•  Have ice-cream floats at Serendipity 3

•  Go to Strawberry Fields

More importantly we’ve fallen in love even more; not just with this city, but with each other. I feel like we’re at the start of a brand-new relationship. Which is all I could ever have hoped for, after what happened.

‘Come on!’ I say, dragging Ryan into the lift and excitedly clapping my hands as it soars ever upwards. ‘I can’t wait to get to the top!’

‘How’s this, Cooper?’ I yell minutes later, the wind lifting my voice and carrying it over the city’s skyscrapers as I pose on the observation deck.

Ryan is standing opposite me, camera aloft, wearing a New York Yankees cap. He looks out from behind the viewfinder and smiles slowly. ‘Beautiful. The best thing I’ve seen in New York.’

‘I told you The Empire State would be amazing!’ I exclaim.

‘I mean
you
, Moll,’ he calls back. I pout suggestively to cover my smile as Ryan takes photo after photo before someone approaches him and asks him if we’d like one together. He hands them the camera, strides over to me, turns, hitches me up onto his back and I wrap my knees around his waist, resting my cheek on his neck and laughing. I close my eyes for a second. They say you feel on top of the world up here, that you couldn’t feel any higher. And it’s true.

‘I can’t believe it’s our last day,’ I say sadly as we stroll out of our hotel onto the tree-lined, shop-filled 5th Avenue. The pavement is packed with pedestrians, the road a constant stream of cars and honking yellow taxis. The seemingly endless stretch of limestone-fronted buildings are splashed with exuberant splodges of colour from the billboards, theatre posters and the fluttering flags that accessorize this, the most famous shopping street in the world. And most of the shops are so famous they deserve not just flags, but exclamation marks and their own fanfares too – Tiffany & Co! Bloomingdales! Harry Winston! Louis Vuitton! Pucci! Prada!