Whole Stole the New Year’s Kiss

Written by Barney Parmington

For years, the five families had gotten together several times a year. They had first become friends long ago when they all lived at the Keswick Apartment complex together as young couples. Over the years, they had all advanced in their careers and long since moved out of the apartment complex. Yet, they had all remained friends. In addition to the occasional party in which they all got together, they always rented a great big house on the Outer Banks of North Carolina for four days over New Year’s.

One of the things that made it easier for all of them to remain friends was that each couple had children that were all about the same age. Each couple had a teenager between 14 and 16. They all also had children in the 8 to 10 year old range, a total of eight children in this age range among the five families. All of the children had been friends since the day they were born, all of the older kids having been born while their parents lived at the apartment complex.

While the younger children were evenly split into four boys and four girls, the same was not the case with the older children. For the older children, there were four boys and just a single girl: Aly. For most of the time growing up, Aly was a tomboy who fit in perfectly with the other boys, but this New Year’s was different. While she was still an athlete who enjoyed sports, Aly was turning into an attractive young woman. That fact was most certainly not lost on the four boys. Aly’s dad Tom certainly made note of the attention that his daughter was now receiving from the boys. He was going to do his best to keep an eye on his oldest daughter.

As was tradition when the families went to the Outer Banks, the families split into two groups. The adults took over the giant great room on the top floor next to the kitchen. There they would play cards, talk and watch TV while everyone took turns in the kitchen. Meanwhile, the children went to the playroom on the bottom floor. This room had a pool table, a ping-pong table, plenty of couches and a big screen TV. It was not problem keeping the kids occupied. Long ago, the kids had set up a rule of winner stays on the table for the ping-pong and pool tables. All of the little kids hoped that someday they would be able to unseat the long time champs. Danny owned the ping-pong table. As always, he got on the table and won every game he played. His plan was to see if he could play from right after dinner until sunrise without losing a game. Meanwhile, Reese owned the pool table. He fancied himself as a pool shark and he certainly seemed to play like one. Having heard Danny’s challenge, his goal was to do exactly the same thing on the pool table. All of the other children took turns challenging first one and then the other. Everyone knew that if anyone ever beat Danny or Reese, there would most certainly be a loud celebration.

For the most part, Tom was prepared to enjoy New Year’s Eve. When everyone first arrived, he had scoured the house to ensure that there was no lingering mistletoe that might prompt one of the young boys to steal a kiss from Aly. However, he was really worried that at the stroke of midnight, one of them would be tempted to steak a kiss. He knew however that as long as Aly was downstairs with everyone, she would not kiss anyone in front of all the other children. Thus, he put his mind to rest and enjoyed his New Year’s celebration.

As she always did just before midnight, Diane took a big plate of her world famous chocolate chip cookies down to the kids. The rule was that as soon as it hit midnight, they were free to pounce on them, but not a moment before. They never lasted for more than a minute or two before the kids had finished them off.

As the clock struck midnight, Tom went out onto the top deck with all of the other parents to watch the fireworks that always went off a few minutes after midnight. That was when he saw his daughter climb over the sand dune and head back into the house. Although Tom did not see any of the boys with Aly, he was pretty certain that Aly had been on the other side of the sand dune at midnight with one of the boys. While he was confident that Aly would tell him the truth about kissing one of the boys if she did it, he also knew that she would never tell him who it was. Thus, he was going to have to figure it out for himself if he was going to ever know.

Telling his wife Diane that he would be back in a few minutes, Tom went downstairs to talk with Aly and the other kids. The first thing that he did when he got downstairs was to ask the kids if anything special had happened tonight. Other than it being just after midnight on New Year’s Eve, there was nothing unusual that happened. He then asked Aly if he could talk to her in private. She giggled and said yes. When he asked her what she was doing out behind the sand dune at midnight, she told him that she had been with one of the boys. She also told him that indeed, she had kissed him. The pounding in his head told Tom that it was going to be a very long year, even if Aly was a really great kid. His next question was who was the boy. As expected, Aly refused to give him the name. It looked like he was going to have to do some investigative work.

Jeremy, his face covered in chocolate, came up to Tom and told him that as always, his wife had made the greatest cookies. Tom was too busy to pay attention as he was trying to figure out who it was that had kissed his daughter. Unfortunately, he had no clue whatsoever, so reluctantly Tom headed upstairs to face Diane. After telling everything to Diane, he asked her if she would please try to get Aly to tell her who had kissed her. Diane said that she did not need to ask, as she already knew.