It Started With a Kiss
Short love story
It started with a kiss.
Not with two right swipes and a match notification.
Not with an awkward stop-and-start conversation.
Not with a half hug at the entrance of the bar.
It’s not that those things didn’t happen. It’s just not how it started.
Stories are strange things. Immaterial, but they stick to things. Shapeless but easy to shape. Like a piece of string, you can straighten out and follow from end to end, a linear telling from start to finish. You can knot it and unknot it. You can jumble it up or make it dance. You decide where it starts and where it ends, and this love story starts with a kiss.
They go to the bar like actors playing a rehearsed part. The questions and answers are all echoes of questions and answers they’ve uttered before. It’s not that they aren’t genuine, it’s that they’ve been here: one time, two times, too many to count.
How many “how was your day?” and “do you have any siblings?” and “what are your favorite books, foods, things?” have they exchanged over the years? Sharing the same pieces of themselves with strangers that remain strangers, or become friends, lovers, or regrettable exes, but ultimately don’t save them from being here, again.
They go into the bar like model trains on fixed tracks. They can see the trees by the line, the stoplight ahead, and the faraway fork.
Her hand on his hand, a casual foot graze that is now an echo, a ripple, an unconscious attempt to recreate the first one. The one that had mattered, where a less cynical her noticed every accidental touch and subtle point of contact.
They go into the bar like a moon in orbit: drawn and driven by an unseen force. Dancing a dance they’ve danced many times before.
He signals the bill, and she offers to split it. He shakes his head and insists. She thanks him and stands up to leave. He walks behind, watching the way her dress moves. She looks at him over her shoulder. Their eyes meet for a second. A smile shared like a secret.
And they’re standing outside.
He has one hand in his pocket and the other fidgets with his car keys.
She tugs at the strap of her purse, looks down, looks at the bar, and looks everywhere but at him.
The words trickle out like the last grains of sand in an hourglass. They half-turn away from each other and still. “What if” is a string pulled taut between them. Slowly, they turn to face each other and lean into the kiss. His lips brush hers, and then he pulls back a little. Her hand tugs at his shirt, pulling him back.
Soft and teasing. Unhurried but unyielding. The kiss is a seed, a bud, a thing that blooms between them.
He still has his car keys in his hand, the cold metal a jolt on her neck, her back, her waist. Her hands travel too, climbing his chest, getting lost in his hair.
He thinks she tastes like wine and smells like gardenias.
She thinks he tastes like malbec, and for a moment, she can taste everything the label said: vanilla, blackberry, and plums.
And then they don’t think anything else, they kiss, and kiss, and kiss.
A kiss that floods the carbon copy with color.
It scraps the movie script.
It stops the train at a new station.
It launches the moon in a new direction.
