The Kiss

I remember it clearly. Vivid and in full color. The room I shared with two other girl friends was in a chaotic after-party condition.

I remember a stock of unwashed dishes cluttered in the kitchen sink. It was not many, but it was not tidy. I remember spotting a shot glass and an empty bottle of tall rum on top of our plastic, and only, table. They stood there idly among the pile of study materials, somewhat out-of-place. We haven't swept the floor because my roommates and I woke up late that morning and we all had to rush to our classes with no breakfast and terrible headaches.

To my unnecessary defense, I had just changed my sheets that time, though they didn't look new because they got crumpled inside my jungle of a closet. So no, our room was not always the "girls' room" type but who cares? I have had some of the best memories of my early years in college kept safe inside the four corners of that room. One in particular, was my first kiss.

I remember it clearly. Vivid and in full color. The room I shared with two other girl friends was in a chaotic after-party condition.

But no disorder could break through the bittersweet melancholic calmness that wrapped around the two souls who were left alone in the room. There was a radiating feeling of hope and violated expectations... of love and of heartbreak. I stood inches away from him, feet rooted on the ground and head bowed down in helpless sobbing. He stood inches away from me, feet rooted on the ground and head raised up to keep the tears from flowing. It must have been the dead air that gave him the courage to take a step closer...and then another until we were only a breath away. It must have been the way he felt about the poor look on my face that made him pull my chin up so that I meet his stare. That moment, I was not sure about anything. My vision was too misty for sight.

But I can say for certain that it was my heart that made me close my eyes when I felt his lips on mine. Even more sure that it was my hopeless-romanticism that made me ask for one more after we pulled apart.

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