the kiss

Listen: He said no and I said yes. It turned around a million times. I remember in my head I was wearing a summer dress. He had his glasses on. Pushed into an alley on a late night walk back home. Our mouths finding each other quick and fast and up against a brick wall. He would have his hands tangled in my hair. But in a way that was different than it was. I would pull him close and kiss his neck. Pull him to me. To me. I would sigh in his ear. That sigh. That girl sigh. The sound of yes and now and yes and now. His hands would wrap around me to my back and I would be held. Tight. There was unspoken curious there. These kisses were all about the maybe, all about the what could have been, all about the not right now. In the alley up against the wall. With him pushing into me. The pricks of mortar finding their way to the small of my back. The summer night air enveloping us.

But then: I said no and he said yes. It turned around a million times. I was wearing blue jeans. Smelled of cigarettes that I didn’t smoke. Tinge of vodka on my breath. His glasses were in a case on a nightstand somewhere far away. He said meet me in the middle and leaned over. Half closed eyes and his sly smile. Meet me in the middle. In the middle. Meet me. I had wondered and wanted and worried and wished and met him in the middle in my head a hundred times before. Then I met him in real life. Eager mouths, eager hands. I kept sliding them off me and back onto him. Too much, I said. Too much. But I kept on kissing. His hands were tangled in my hair and pulling my head back. (Rough.) Passionate. (Hard.) Sexy smooth. He was kissing my neck. And telling me how pretty my hair was. Your hair is so pretty. Your hair. Your. But there was something else. Something unspoken that wasn’t about daydreams. Something untold that wasn’t about the what could have been. My soft sigh didn’t come until after a hundred no’s. But it came. It came. And then he did.

And now: Blindfolded and spun around, I stopped to grab hold of him. He grabbed back. He was sturdy and firm and the type to smooth the hair away from my face on a windy day. The type to take care. The type to be there. Me, I was the head in the clouds trying to hold it together girl made up of 400 yesterdays. I was vulnerable and walking on brand new legs. I was looking for the boy to smooth. Smooth my hair away from my face on a windy day. In that kind dad romance novel boyfriend kind of way. When I found him, I handed me over. When he found me, I was put in his pocket. Gleefully it was. Flirting it was. Coyness and cleverness and wondering how his lips would feel. That is what it was. What it was.

It’s what it is.