Robin Buckley wants a kiss.
Robin Buckley wants a kiss.
It's okay if you're not Robin's first kiss, that happened way before you met, way back when she was eight.
A playdate her mother arranged with one of the girls on her soccer team, they ate smuckers goober grape spread sticky on that yellow potato bread she hated her mother always bought from the Piggly Wiggly. They snuck a box of mallowmars and ate the whole thing in her bedroom until their stomachs hurt.
Curled up together, resting on her bedsheets of giraffes and ivy, Robin read her passages from the Secret Garden until the friend's father came to pick her up.
That whole time though, all she could think about, as her friend rested on her shoulder and dozed off to the sound of Robin's voice soothing tummy troubles, was wanting to lean down and place a gentle kiss upon her cheek.
Nothing like the kinds of kisses princes give to sleeping damsels, not like the kind her Bubbe gives after a pinch to the cheek.
A small kiss, a dry little feathery peck upon freckles that matched her own, though, not as prevalent, to express just how happy she was in this moment.
On this girl it was cute, dainty and sweet.
Strawberry shortcake sweet like a doll.
On Robin, her mother always mistakened it for dirt. Dried mud from digging holes that would leave a ring around the tub.
She’s never told anyone about it, a secret kept for years in fear it would be held against her. Everyone would know the girl who used to sing Hall & Oates around the halls of Hawkins High before moving to Nashville was kissed by one of the band geeks while she was sleeping.
Now, though, none of that matters anymore.
She doesn't live in Hawkins, she doesn't have to sling ice cream and fake a smile.
Robin can just be Robin.
Robin kisses girls and you kiss Robin.
You kiss all over her paint-flecked nose, cheeks, forehead, chin, chest, shoulders, arms, hands with citrus reminiscent fingers from after-dinner tangelos- anywhere you could place your lips upon Robin. There's not a speck you haven't met.
She watches as you kiss up her scuffed and scarred knees, up the length of her big thighs, your head staying on her soft tummy with more sweet kisses before you look up to see her whole face in a raspberry blossom blush.
"Kiss me," Robin breathes, a ring-decorated hand to the side of your face to pull you back up to her, and you never dare refuse.
You'd give her a life time of kisses to make up for what simple pleasures she's been aching to have done to her, her way.