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Author's Chapter Notes:

This story, for some reason, came out of nowhere and then continued to give me fits. I figure I've changed it around enough.....so I hope it's okay. Thanks to fireworkfiasco and 69cupsofnoodles for their helpful beta-ing. :) Title from Edna St.Vincent Millay poem of the same name.

 

 

 

 

Whenever people (Kelly) ask her when her first kiss was, she always answers the same: Back in first grade, there was a boy named Kyle that chased her during recess and, one day, she let him catch her. But that’s not the truth.

He did catch her, and he did kiss her, but it doesn’t really count because she was seven and after his lips landed on her cheek near the side of her mouth, he immediately yelled “Yuck”, wiped his mouth, and ran away. He never chased her again.

Another story she’s told is that in eighth grade, she was at a party and someone suggested spin the bottle; no one really knew what that entailed, other than it was an excuse to cross your fingers as the bottle swung in a slow circle, hoping that it landed on the right person. Her friends decided that if you got the same person twice, you had to graduate from cheek kiss to real kiss; three times and you had to use tongue. After two cheek kisses (the rules were amended on a case by case basis) from Rob, a boy with a weird haircut that she didn’t really know well, she faked a stomachache and went home before she had to waste her first kiss (although when this story is told now, she kisses him every time. On the lips).

The truth is that she was sixteen, nearly seventeen, when she had her first real kiss. It was with Roy. He was tall and handsome, and after one date (she doesn’t count the first one because he left and she believes in second chances) she closed her eyes and leaned into him when he said, “I want to kiss you” (which, at the time, she thought was forward and direct, proof of just how into her he was. Was.)

The kiss wasn’t good; it seemed to involve mainly tongue and left her with a detached feeling of oh, that’s what I’ve been waiting for when he finally pulled away. She wasn’t sure whether it was polite or not to wipe her mouth. She could feel excess spit at the side of her lips; just enough to keep her distracted even as she smiled at him and escaped back into the safety of her house. Luckily, the kissing got better. Eventually.

The only other person she’s ever kissed is him, but not really. She doesn’t count the night at Chili’s because she was drunk, and it didn’t feel like a real kiss; more like an experiment that she wasn’t quite ready for, but went ahead with anyway.

The other kiss she should count, but doesn’t, not really; only in the back of her mind does she consider it a real first kiss. First of all, it was perfect to begin with, and when does that happen?

But it doesn’t count. It doesn’t count because it wasn’t hers to give or his to take. It doesn’t count because no matter how she turned it in her mind, there was no perfect answer so she stopped trying to find one.

The perfection of that kiss may have been somehow jumbled up with everything else in her mind when she finally ended things with Roy. But she doesn’t compare first kiss with first kiss; that wouldn’t be fair, right? She can’t consider it a first kiss then, can she?

But now, the potential for their (real) first kiss is endless, and she thinks about it more than she should; Kelly would be proud. She used to only think about it sometimes when she’d be lying in bed, half asleep but unable to turn off the thoughts in her head. Now, it seems to overtake her and she finds herself trapped in a daydream of infinite possibilities. It’s embarrassing, really, just how many of her daydreams seem to be inspired by something she’s seen in a movie or on TV, or read in one of those books she would be ashamed to admit she read.

There’s the angry kiss. They’ll be fighting (which would require them to talk, or fight like real people, but she figures it’s a dream so anything can happen) and suddenly he’s on her, and his mouth is rough against hers, tongue against her lips. It would be fast and desperate, passionate and messy; she imagines that his hands would be in her hair, maybe braced on the wall behind her. For some reason, in this scenario her mind always drifts back to the notion of being backed up against the wall while he presses against her. She really needs to remember what movie she saw that in (so she can watch it again).

There’s the cute kiss. She’ll tell a dumb joke, or maybe he will; either way, they will be laughing about something when suddenly he leans in and kisses her. In this, their foreheads usually bump together, or their teeth might collide a little. She likes to think this kiss would be fueled by affection more than anything else. She imagines that after slowly pulling away, he might tap her nose or kiss her forehead, tell her how beautiful she is. And they’ll be holding hands.

There’s the soulful kiss. This involves some deep discussion, or maybe just a comfortable silence; he’ll look at her, and kiss her with his eyes before leaning in and finally meeting her lips. This is the one where she places a hand flat on his chest, just to feel his heartbeat quicken when she bites his lip, just a little. She likes to imagine whispering “I love you” into his mouth so he’ll feel it before he hears it.

There’s the comfortable kiss. It changes day to day, has many different forms. It might be a quick peck on the lips, or maybe a touch on the cheek or grazing the top of her head. He’s going somewhere and saying good-bye; they know that there have been hundreds of kisses before and there are thousands to come, so something quick and comfortable will do. It reassures her that he’s really coming back, since he’s left some unfinished business.

There’s the perfect kiss. He’ll pull her to him gently and just kiss her; it will mean everything. Her fingers will tangle in his hair and for a moment, nothing else will matter. She never wants this kiss to end because she can never be sure what will happen next. This kiss is the worst because it’s already happened. (Doesn’t count doesn’t mean didn’t happen.) Unlike the others, which are various fantasies and wishes and ifs, this kiss is a when.

The daydream for that kiss always ends the same, and it frustrates her (leading to the angry kiss, then down the line cutesoulfulcomfortable back to perfection, a vicious circle she’s been traveling for months).

She wonders if she’ll ever get a second chance. Because she believes in second chances. One day she sees him kiss her, and it doesn’t hurt like she always imagined it would; rather, she feels comforted, somehow, because it looks (feels) like nothing she’s imagined for herself. Looks like nothing anyone would imagine for themselves.

Looking up after the kiss, he meets her eyes and she’s thrown back into her daydreams, which suddenly seem like they may be less ifs and more when. She smiles at him, and thinks to herself, now.

 



Bennie is the author of 28 other stories.
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