I’m not ready, I think again as I stand on the stage with Bastian.
Mama Jo claps her hands together. “Okay, everybody out but Bastian, Cass, Nyla, and Bender. We’re going to give Bastian and Cass some privacy to actually practice the kissing scene. So Nyla and Bender, you have to stay, obviously, because you’re going to need to be part of this scene in the middle, but don’t gawk at them, okay? Let’s be sensitive.”
The rest of the cast files out of the theater. Then Bastian and I are essentially alone. Up on the stage. Under the lights.
Bastian exhales with a short “whew” sound and smiles at me nervously. “Oh, wait,” he says, digging into his pocket. “I came prepared.”
He produces two tubes of lip balm and gives me first choice at picking mine: orange or cherry flavored. I pick orange, because I loathe anything cherry. He nods and opens the cherry one and makes a big show of slathering his lips. I do the same.
I think we may slide right past each other.
“Also—” He goes for the other pocket and holds up a little container of orange Tic Tacs.
“I love those!” I gasp.
“I know.”
“You know?”
“Nyla told me.”
I glance over at Nyla, who’s talking to Bender offstage. She meets my gaze over his shoulder, then looks away.
“Are you two ready?” Mama Jo asks.
No, I think. My stomach rolls. Don’t puke, I tell myself sternly. That would not be sexy.
It’s not like it’s a big deal. It’s just business, really. It’s acting. That’s all. It’s silly that Mama Jo always makes a production out of the first kiss rehearsal. She thinks this is going to make it easier, but this is somehow worse than if we’d been kissing in rehearsals all along. It puts a false importance on what is, in the end, only a kiss.
“Cass?” Bastian’s looking at me.
I didn’t answer Mama Jo’s question: Am I ready?
“Yeah,” I say quickly. “Let’s do it.”
It’s only a kiss, I tell myself.
“Be patient with me,” Bastian whispers as the music starts. “I’m new at this.”
“This?”
“I’ve never kissed a girl before,” he admits, scratching his eyebrow.
I find this incomprehensible. Bastian is hot. He’s funny. He’s smart—he memorized his lines before any of the rest of us. He quotes Shakespeare at random times. He has a voice that could melt any heart into a puddle of butter. How is it possible that Bastian Banks has never kissed anyone?
“All right. Places,” calls Mama Jo, and I don’t have time to question Bastian about this, because we start on opposite ends of the stage. And we end up (breathe, Cass, breathe) kissing.
It goes okay. Bastian, as the confident, womanizing prince, sings, “May I kiss you?”
Then we kiss. It’s that simple. His lips, my lips.
It’s supposed to be a little awkward, actually, since the baker’s wife is completely shocked that this handsome prince would be interested in kissing her.
“May I kiss you?” Bastian’s hands are at my waist. Pulling me into him. His mouth touches mine, soft and supple and not at all slimy with cherry-flavored lip stuff. He smells good—I’d almost forgotten how amazing he smells, like the bar of Irish Spring at Grandma’s house, and orange candy, and sandalwood, or whatever it is they put in guy’s cologne.
“Keep your body stiff at first, because the baker’s wife is shocked,” Mama Jo directs me. “But then go limp. Give in to it. Put your hand up to his face.”
I do as she says. This is so weird, I think, choreographing a kiss. His cheek under my palm is soft, as smooth as mine, and warm.
“Now break,” Mama Jo says.
“No,” I gasp, stumbling away from Bastian. “We can’t. You have a princess. And I have . . . a baker.”
Mama Jo chuckles. “Great,” she says. “Let’s stop there for a minute. How was that?”
I turn to Bastian. “How was it?”
It was . . . only a kiss.
He puts a hand to his chest. “I felt the earth move.”
I laugh, but it comes out as a snort. I put my hand over my mouth.
“So that was the first kiss,” Mama Jo says briskly, all business now. “Let’s do the next one.”
Right. There are five kisses.
It’s going to be an interesting night.