Notes of Apology

Notes of Apology

Noel Laflin

11-16-18

I had the money for dinner, but on his dare we left without paying. Dine and Dash - I had never even heard the term before, let alone found the nerve to do so until that night.

On the way home we staged a phony fight in a convenience market and stole two bottles of cheap wine in the chaos.

And somehow, we got away with that too.

In teenage fashion, we later drank the wine.

And that is when he stole a kiss from me.

I had never been kissed by another boy before but did not mind the theft.  Consequently, I returned it with newfound passion.

With dawn came the task of driving my fellow thief from my home to his.

There was no mention of the kiss.

But it was all I could think of.

Later that week, I stopped by the restaurant we’d stiffed and slipped a ten dollar bill on the counter with a note of apology.

I left four dollars near the register of a neighborhood convenience market.  There was another apology note attached as well.

The stolen kiss was eventually discussed and then sloughed off by the other as a drunken episode that would never be revisited.

And although I was sorry about several things in regard to my behavior that night, and tried to make amends, the return of his kiss was never one of them.

But here would never be a note of apology on that issue.