Describe your first kiss.
We were kids in a dead end town with one gas station and a rundown theater. We spent our summer days catching fish and chasing trains and running through unmowed fields, daring each other to climb trees and swim across the creek. We laughed and cried and shrieked like banshees, we whispered and giggled and sometimes even sat in silence. We had a secret base, but nowhere was safer than when we were together. No adults could hurt us or tell us what to do, so long as we had each other.
We didn’t know what love was. It was something for parents and aunts and uncles and grownups. We were just happy when we were together, and it hurt when we were apart. Love wasn’t for kids. We didn’t need love when we had each other.
We made plans. We would get a car and drive far away. We would find a house and we would work and live freely away from everything that chained us and everyone who beat us down. We would support each other, because that was what we did. One with the other, always.
Someone told us that was love. We laughed. We didn’t love each other. We had seen what love could do to people. Love made people sad and crazy and jealous and angry. It tore families apart. Love was pain. Your father taught you that lesson on many nights. We wouldn’t be a part of that. We would not hurt one another. We held affections for one another, but surely those weren’t love.
But once it was in the air, we couldn’t stop ourselves from wondering. We lay panting in the field one evening after chasing fireflies, the dewy grass cool beneath our backs as we laughed at the shapes of stars in the sky. My parents loved each other. They kissed and held hands and spoke in silly voices to one another. Was that what we should do too?
I took your hand in mine and rolled closer to you. Maybe love wasn’t what your father did to you. Maybe my parents had the right of it. If it was like that, maybe we could have love. I said as much to you. Your smile made my stomach feel funny.
You pulled me onto your chest. Had you always been so tall? How easily I forgot you were several years older. You would be in middle school in the fall. I wouldn’t get to see you as much then, so I hoped summer would never end. You agreed that a love like my parents had wouldn’t be so bad. You asked me to kiss you, to see if we had such a love between us.
I was curious, too. So I did. A quick peck, as I thought it was done. It was nothing like the movies. There were no fireworks, no magical transformations, no songbirds singing glorious melodies to commemorate the occasion. The princesses always seemed brighter and happier after they kissed their prince, but I felt nothing new. In your arms was still where I wanted to be. Wherever you were, I wanted to go. That hadn’t changed.
We laughed at the ridiculousness of it all. We made our plans again. This time, we really would go. We would run away and start our life someplace exciting.
We were just kids playing pretend.
We were just kids, but you weren’t pretending. You left without me, and I learned just how much love could hurt.
Notes: This was inspired by several “relationships” I had before I was 10 but is mostly a work of fiction. I was a bit of a tomboy, was always the only girl in a group of neighborhood boys. When you’re that young, your knowledge of kissing and such is pretty well limited to movies, tv, and however much PDA your parents chose to display in front of you. There was one boy, my best friend’s older brother, who I was pretty infatuated with. We always said we would run away together. He followed through on that. I don’t think I did ever see him again after that, though my best friend did say he told her he would come back for me. There was another who only lived next door with his dad during the summer, but he eventually made the move permanent to go to school with the rest of our gaggle of misfits.
I had a hard time coming up with a story for this prompt after rereading the one I wrote back in October. I couldn’t think of which characters I wanted to write a first kiss for that I hadn’t already done. I almost went with Mika and Youko but theirs comes after several weeks of sexual tension and a battle where they almost die and I didn’t have it in me to write that one tonight. Cute romantic kisses are hard enough to write, never mind steamy post-battle trysts. I was going to turn this into a series of first kisses. The first kiss as a kid, the first kiss with the first “real” relationship, the first kiss with an eventual soulmate/life partner, the first kiss as a married couple. But the kids tale took over and became the only portion I told.
My, it is getting late now. Who let me stay up writing past my bedtime? Oh well. Not like this is anything new. It’s your turn with this prompt anyway! Tell us all about your first kiss! Write about your characters’ first kisses! Aw man, I’m just now realizing I missed the perfect opportunity to write a silly piece about the chocolate! Maybe you can tackle that idea!
Have a great night! I’ll see you tomorrow!
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