08
I stood by the door, my fingers playing with metal keys as I shifted my weight from one foot to another. It wasn’t like I needed my keys anyway, since the front door of my building was always open, thanks to the countless break-ins that left the lock as useless as the intercom system beside it.
He stood in front of me, awkward and shy, his hands stuffed into his pockets. He couldn’t really look at me. It felt like a replay of the countless of times we had stood in the same exact place, me ready to head back inside, him about to go, me giving him every open opportunity, him being too scared to take it.
“I… guess I should go now.” I played with the keys a little while longer. If this had been a bedroom scene, I’d be practically spreading my legs open in mid air and wearing a neon sign that pointed to my vagina. But it wasn’t a bedroom scene and there was no neon sign pointing to my vagina. Instead, there was just him and me, standing in front of am old, beaten red door, a girl waiting for a kiss, a guy too shy to give it.
I turned, hand on the door knob. “Okay, I’m gonna go.” My voice didn’t even bother trying to hide the disappointment.
“Wait!”
I turned back, slightly annoyed but, more than that, too hopeful. I mean, we weren’t even dating. We had tried that the year before and for three months he couldn’t rack up the courage to take my face and plant a wet one. And now, I was only a month away from getting on a plane to fly to the other side of the country and he couldn’t muster his bearings and kiss me. I had every right to be annoyed. But more than that, I was just waiting. Hoping. That maybe, just maybe, he could find it in him to kiss me and I would know that we were meant to be and I wouldn’t feel bad about leaving because I would know that it would be okay, because somehow, someway, I would find my way back to him.
“What?”
“Hold on.” He breathed in deeply, his hand grabbing my wrist.
“Okay.”
He took a step closer, and then another, until his face was close to mine and we were breathing each others’ air. I could see the whiskers on his chin, the way one of his eyes had a different fold than the other, the way his nose flared when he was nervous and breathing too hard. I could see a slight mar on the bone of his brow, making his eyebrow grow a little weirdly. I could see a lot of things, but the only thing I could really take in were his eyes, staring straight into mine, and all the love I saw there, reflecting right back at me. It was my face I saw in his eyes, like a mirror, and I understood right then and there that there would be no one in this world capable of ever loving me the way he loved me.
When our lips met, I was almost sure that every star in the universe had realigned themselves into perfect harmony, that the world had stopped in its movement, and that somewhere in the distant heavens, angels sang. Fireworks went off behind my closed eyelids and every part of my skin felt alive, as if lit by an invisible fire that had charged right through and changed me. It was perfect in every way of the word and there was no other way to describe it.
Suddenly, he leaped away, just as a young man opened the front door, stared at us, and walked away. He looked back at me sheepishly before stepping right in front of me and swooping down again.
It lasted a few more seconds before a bunch of kids ran through, screaming and throwing things. He looked pissed beyond belief as he waved goodbye, muttering something under his breath.
A few hours later, my friend’s name flashed on my phone. I picked up and before I could say anything, “He said that he was glad his first kiss was with you. He said it was worth the wait.”
