5 Times Samson and Delilah Kiss & 1 Time They Don't

Tue, 14 May 2013 05:15:53 -0400

One

The first time they kiss, they are both seven years old. They’ve known each other since they were five and a tale as old as time guaranteed that they hated one another on sight – Sam, because she was prissy and had bows in her hair and Del because he was rough and seemed to occupy a permanent seat in the corner of the class, the seat reserved for those who misbehaved – but the animosity eventually gave way to a fragile friendship hidden away behind the closed doors of the Lisbon home when Sam’s mom constantly brought him over to apologize to Delilah for whatever bad deed of the week he is guilty of. The Lisbons invite Sheryl in and Sam and Del are left to play and both come to find they don’t mind it half as much as they had thought they might.

Now his visits are no longer made under the guise of having to apologize to Delilah for calling her stupid or pulling her hair; now they are regular compatriots, sharing sandwiches at lunch and trailing after one another during recess.

On this particular playdate at the Lisbon household, the topic of discussion – kissing – is started by something they’ve seen on television and now they’re both curious.

“I wonder why they do it – mush their mouths together and move their heads and stuff,” Del muses, driving the black car, almost an exact replica of her father’s 1976 Cutlass Supreme tucked away in the garage, over a landscape she and Sam have crafted with Legos, creating a town and peopling it with her dolls and his action figures.

“They look like they have fun when they do it. They smile and stuff,” Sam shrugs, working on fitting together pieces to complete the tower he is building.

Delilah looks up, her mouth scrunched in disbelief. “Why would it be fun to mush your mouths together? Looks like it hurts.”

“How should I know?” Sam shoots back, exasperated. She’s the smart one out of the two of them so if anyone should know, it should be her. Why is she asking him questions when all he wants to do is play?

She is quiet for a long moment and then “Okay. Let’s kiss then!” Her voice comes from very close to him and he doesn’t realize until he looks up again that she has crawled so that she’s sitting beside him, her green eyes fixed expectantly on him.

When his face scrunches up, it is not in disbelief, but in slight disgust. He doesn’t want to mush his mouth to Delilah’s; he just wants to complete his building and use one of the cars to knock it down. But he also doesn’t want to be a baby and say no. “Okay,” he says and they turn to face one another on their knees and then lean in, eyes squeezed tightly shut. They press their mouths together, lips puckered and neither waits long enough for the head moving part before pulling away again quickly as if burned. Both kids wipe their mouths on the backs of their hands, twin looks of reproach on their faces.

“That wasn’t fun,” Delilah mutters. “You got my lips all wet.”

“I bet I have cooties now,” Sam collapses back onto the floor dramatically. He only has a moment to do so before Delilah pokes him, hard and makes him laugh and their play continues on as if the horrible kiss had never happened.

Del thinks maybe the head moving part was what would have made it fun, but as it is, she can’t understand why people do it.

Two

The second time happens out of necessity. Technically, anyway. They are 12 and in the same English class (Miss Lester’s, she’s kind of a bitch in Sam’s opinion but she seems to like Del and so doesn’t mind when he knows she catches them passing notes) and assigned to the same group for their project – a performance of the death scene from Romeo and Juliet. Sam, as the only boy in the group, is automatically cast as Romeo and Delilah is picked by the other girls as Juliet because they say she has the look and maybe it’s something about the glint in her eye when the possibility of anyone else kissing her best friend comes up.

“Could at least get your face near mine,” she complains after the sixth run through of the scene where Sam still doesn’t know his lines (no surprise there) and still won’t even play at kissing her. She gives him a light shove on the way out of school. “Some of us actually want to pass this class you know.”

“I’m not kissing you, Del. Jeez.”

“I didn’t say kiss me! I said put your face close to mine.” The performances are to happen that Saturday evening in the auditorium, parents are invited. Del is the neurotic kind of student who wants to make good grades, make a good impression on people, make her parents proud; Samson couldn’t really care less about the entire thing.

The night of the play finds Delilah lying prone on a table dressed up as a makeshift funeral bed for her, Sam leaning over her. She’s had the onus of memorizing his lines and her own so that she can mutter his lines to him out of the corner of her mouth and when it comes time for “And thus with a kiss, I die,” she doesn’t wait to see if Sam will follow through on what he’s supposed to.

Their kiss rewrites history when Juliet, supposedly still under the affects of the drugs that have left her in her living death, comes to long enough to pull Romeo to her by the tunic and make sure that thus with a kiss, he dies.

Three

“Delilah Lisbon,” Missy Holden says when the bottle lands on Delilah, a mischievous glint in her eyes. Bitch Delilah mentally screams. She’s 14, but she hates these kinds of parties – thrown when parents go up to New York for a night, thrown by the kids of friends of her parents, kids she’s supposed to be friends with by proxy, but kids that she actually hates. She’s only here because Sam and Lydia have made her and she hoped to see Jordan Watson here, let Lydia dress her up (a white sundress under a blue jean jacket) and do her makeup (eye shadow that sparkles, pink tinted lipgloss that makes her mouth feel sticky) and she feels like she must have done something right when even Sam does a double take but she still feels stupid and angry because they’re playing some combination of spin the bottle and truth or dare and Jordan Watson looks like the cat who got the cream after he and Missy have just parted from their kiss.

Missy is the kind of girl Delilah hates – she’s too blonde and too tan and pretty in a way that seems to beat you over the head with how pretty she is and how attractive you’re supposed to find her and not only that, but her curves in over the summer and every male with a pulse in their grade has noticed while Delilah’s chest remains as flat as a board with only the mere suggestion of the possibility that maybe one day she’ll have breasts to put into dresses instead of just hopes and dreams.

“Truth or Dare?” Missy asks and Delilah, without even thinking about it, picks Dare. She doesn’t know why; she’s not exactly cautious but she wouldn’t describe herself as particularly adventurous either. That’s always been Samson. They’re names fit perfectly together as do their personalities; he is the ying to her yang, the peanut butter to her jelly. She is all reason and cool logic and charm and he is passion and fire and pure spirit. “Kiss Sam,” Missy gestures to him.

Delilah whirls around to see who she is gesturing to and Sam seems just as caught off guard as she is, a beer raised halfway to his mouth. Automatically, they exchange a look of mutual disgust. “Gross,” Delilah complains and she knows Samson doesn’t take offense – It’s not that they find each other repulsive. “It’d be like kissing my brother,” she explains. And everyone knows that, everyone knows that they’ve known each other since they were 5 and they don’t feel that way about each other but kids like to make fun of them anyway. Everyone seems convinced that there’s more to them than there really is.

She blushes furiously as she tries to argue against it and Jordan catches her eye and she feels stupid all over again because the one boy she wants to kiss has kissed someone else and the one boy she doesn’t want to kiss is the one boy everyone is now chanting for her to kiss. “Fine,” she mutters. “Get over here.” She makes a flippant gesture to wave Sam over and his mouth is still curled down unpleasantly, but she knows he’s more prideful than she is and so he steps over to her. He got taller than her last summer and so she has to look up slightly to catch his gaze. Their eyes lock and the look on his face softens and a look passes between them, a look that says “let’s go ahead and bite the bullet”.

Delilah sighs and is in the middle of rolling her eyes when Sam catches her off guard and steps in to kiss her before she can realize he is going to kiss her. She inhales sharply, her brow furrows, and her hands go to his shoulders to keep herself steady. She expects it to be the same kind of kiss she vaguely remembers them having when they were curious kids – a quick press of the lips and a quick parting and recovery – but he knows about her crush on Jordan, knows how she hates Missy, and hates to see her embarrassed. He’ll be damned if he lets those two get the better of them (he tells her this later). The kiss is longer than she expects, but it’s also more of a kiss than she expects and when they part, she has to blink to clear her vision. Their gazes lock again and they quickly catch themselves, laugh, and she pretends to wipe her mouth. “I have cooties now.”

The party had gone silent when they kissed now erupts into cheers and laughter and Del, her face hot again (though this time not from embarrassment) is glad to lean over the table to spin the bottle. Leaning on the table feels like the only thing that might keep her legs from collapsing under her.

Four

They don’t talk about the kiss at the party; why would they? It was just one of those things that happened between them. A kiss that meant nothing in the grand scheme of things. Except it does mean something because sometimes when Sam speaks, she finds herself staring at his mouth and wondering what it tastes like when not clouded over with the bitter taste of a beer. He’s 15, has picked up smoking some kind of clove cigarettes Ronan has. She bummed one once when they were at a bonfire at the beach and it wasn’t unpleasant – a little spicy, something dark. She bets Sam tastes like that.

But she doesn’t linger on those thoughts because they’re dangerous. She has homework to do, she’s learning to drive, she’s thinking about trying to plan the rest of her life, and she doesn’t have time to wonder what her best friend’s mouth tastes like.

Especially not on a night like this – when she’s come over to the Godfrey family home to spend the night with his sister Tara (she’s older than them by a year but she and Del have always gotten on well). Nights like this, spending the night with Tara is just a guise because as soon as Tara is asleep and the house is quiet and still, Del creeps from Tara’s room to Sam’s (Tara knows this, has learned it long ago and most times, Del doesn’t even wait until Tara is asleep, just until Sheryl has gone to bed). She tests the door, it turns easily under her hand, and she lets herself into his bedroom where the only light is the fluorescent glow of the light in the back cutting through the blinds. He lifts the sheet up for her and she slides in next to him. On nights like this, it’s a chilly journey from Tara’s room to his and the warmth of his bed is a welcomed feeling.

They talk about everything, giggle into the pillow like children, share the same breathing space, use each other as pillows. It’s peaceful, comfortable; it makes her feel like they’re the only two who exist in the whole world. Sometimes there are silences between topics, maybe they doze and drift back to one another through a vague dreamscape.

She lays next to him and she has those thoughts again and being this close to him, feeling the warmth of his body wash over her, watching him as he doesn’t sleep, her gaze lingering on his mouth. It’s dangerous, but it’s a pull she can’t deny.

She dips her head down and the motion catches his attention, makes him look up at her, makes it easier for her to capture his mouth with her own. Her heart pounds so hard in her chest that she knows Sam must feel it, must hear it. He goes still but he doesn’t push her away and after a moment, his mouth softens under hers and he kisses her back, allows her to part his lips with her tongue and he tastes the way she imagined. His hand finds its way to the small of her back under her t-shirt and his hand feel like it must be blazing hot, somehow snaps her back into herself and she pulls away quickly, sits back on her knees and they’re both breathing hard then.

He looks at her there in the near darkness and she doesn’t know what he sees in her eyes (she’s too afraid to try to read the emotions in his), but he holds out a hand to her and she goes back to him. She doesn’t kiss him again, but she curls against him and rests her head on his shoulder, an arm lazily thrown over his stomach.

She falls asleep and forgets to sneak back to Tara’s room in the morning.

Five

They’re not dating. That would be too easy. Or too hard. Who knows? Dating each other would involve talking about this thing growing between them and to acknowledge it would make it real; to make it real would change everything.

So they don’t talk about the kiss and Del no longer sneaks into his bed and she swallows down the knocking in her chest and the white hot jealousy she feels flare up from the pit of her stomach every time she catches him leaning against another girl’s locker, every time she sees a hickey mar the flesh of his neck, every time she imagines lips on his that don’t belong to her.

She’s 17 when she gets her first real boyfriend. His name is Charlie Baker. The Bakers are another family whose son she is friends with by proxy but she actually likes Charlie. He’s brilliant, albeit a little cocky at times, but she loves to put him in his place with her own technology know-how, loves to talk about books and computers and art and things she could never talk about with Sam. She manages to drag Charlie to a party one weekend – Sam’s there with his flavor of the week, blonde, stupid, her shirt doesn’t quite make it to her bellybutton – and by now she’s gotten her curves, fills out her tank tops, fills hot when she wants to, but Charlie doesn’t exactly make her feel that way. Maybe she’s doing something wrong, not trying hard enough.

So she pushes him down into a lounge chair on the back sunporch of whoseever house they’re at, settles herself in his lap, tosses her hair over one shoulder and presses her mouth to his. She feels him start slightly, relax a little, can feel how nervous he is. When she kissed Sam, she thought of lightning, but when she kisses Charlie, she thinks only of…nothing. She thinks nothing, she feels nothing. Only sad that the only boy she wants under her, wants to be kissing has been copping an attitude with her since she blew him off to be with her boyfriend, thinks only of how afraid she is that she and Sam are drifting away from one another.

A door shutting pulls her attention from Charlie, makes her break the kiss and look toward the sound and – Sam. He’s standing on the sun porch now and the look on his face is angry and hurt and something inside of her smiles cruelly at that look on his face. Good, let him hurt. He’s been snippy with her for a month.

“Don’t let me interrupt,” he says roughly, crossing from the backdoor to the screen door and letting himself out into the night.

A voice tells her to let him go and it’s actually not a voice in her head, but Charlie trying to catch her hand but it’s too late, she’s out the door and after Sam before she realizes it. The backyard is expansive and Sam has disappeared out of sight down and down a hill and is almost to the woods at the edge of the property when she catches up to him, breathless from running and calling his name. Delilah grabs his arm and he turns then, tangles his hand into her hair and hauls her to him. He presses his mouth to hers so hard and with such aggression that her gut reaction is to protest “Sam!” and push him away. In the moonlight, his blonde hair shines white and he looks hurt again. She’s even more breathless now and shaking, shaking from how scared the violence in his kiss has made her, shaking from how much she wants him, shaking from the realization that she’ll never want anyone the way she wants him. But her eyes are wide and he misinterprets her fear as something else.

“Fuck,” he swears, rubbing a hand harshly over his face as he turns away from her. She grabs him by the arm and pulls him back again, kisses him again as hard as he kissed her. He slants his mouth over hers and steals her breath again and again and again, kisses her like he is drowning , sucks the life from her, tangles a hand into her hair and uses a hand to press her body to his until all she knows and feels is Sam.

One time they don’t

They’re both cowards. At age 18, after 13 years of friendship, they know this now and unfortunately, there is no real cure for cowardice. They can kiss and they can destroy worlds and rewrite history with their kiss, they can stop each other’s hearts and they can give life but they can never talk about it after the fact.

Del waits until May (despite knowing in January) to tell Sam that she’s accepted a place at Stanford University back in California and when it comes time for her to board her flight, her eyes shine with the words she won’t so and she silently begs him to kiss her in such a way that she changes her mind.

But he wraps his arms around her and they stand together for a long moment, Del’s eyes squeezed shut, trying to take deep breaths so that all she feels won’t come pouring out of the hole in her heart and when they part, they share the same breathing space and they tremble with longing but they don’t kiss.

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