Arthit Rojnapat's KISS list

Kiss list

1.

Since he was a young boy, Arthit Rojnapat has had a KISS LIST with all the people he wants to kiss written out in his neat hand.

Over the years it has changed as he has grown, starting with at least ten names of girls from school and evolving as he became a teenager and then a young student at university.

Throughout its evolution, many names have been stricken from the list as Arthit had lost interest or the person had moved away or found a long term partner, and he had started new pieces of paper as the pages had become too messy to read. But on the version he keeps now there are still a handful of names left from his youth as he enters his second year of university.

He keeps it with him at all times, just in case he has the desire to add or eject a name at will. Today, he has pulled the tattered paper from his pocket and is contemplating the name at number three. The name that has been at number three since he was fourteen and has been written and scrawled onto multiple lists as he has changed them over.

He watches as his best friend leans in towards the pretty girl beside him, the girl who he has been following him around since the start of the new semester. Arthit's fingers itch for a pen, and, five years after he'd added it, Knott's name is crossed out.

It's painful for a few minutes as he looks at Knott's name, but then he remembers when he'd added it, the day of the Sleepover when everyone had been teasing him about liking Dara and he had started to get really upset and Knott had taken him outside and told him that it didn't matter who he liked, he would always be his best friend.

He had added Knott's name to his list, not because of any attraction to him, but because he's genuinely one of the nicest people Arthit knows and because he has always made him feel like he can be himself.

His mother had always said you should only kiss someone who is genuine after all. Still, there's a tug on his heart as he lifts the pen and slides it through Knott's name.

Even if it was no great romance, it's the end of something after all...

2. 

Namtarn and Jay, Jay and Namtarn. Namtarn. Jay. Arthit.

Since grade school they had been the three musketeers, always together, playing games and getting into trouble, skipping out on classes and trying new things.

Generally, Jay and Namtarn had been the little devils on Arthit's shoulder encouraging him to try things he was a bit wary of. In fact, the one and only time Arthit had tried to smoke was with them and he can always recall how he had coughed so hard he had been scared he was going to cough up a lung and had never touched another cigarette again.

But, they were friends. Good friends and both of them had been on Arthit's kiss list at one time or another. In fact, Namtarn held the record for the most number of times she had been on and off it so much.

For a long time, in grade school, she had been number one. But when they were thirteen and she had gotten her first boyfriend, she had been struck off and when Arthit had hesitantly re-added her, he had placed her at number ten and then kept her there until the day that Jay had asked her out.

After that, every time they "broke up", Arthit had added her again, and when they inevitably got back together, he sliced through her name with a red pen and started the list from scratch.

Now, he's waiting for a phone call that will tell him whether he should strike her from his list once more..

As he waits, he looks down his list, eyes flickering over the names that are there and he wonders who it's going to be..