(rediscovered to keep the site from getting too stagnant)

first kiss... almost.

It's all very muddled, you see, but the parts that I do remember are clear. Or as clear as I want them to be. There are some things that are just best remembered the way that you think they should have happened, or the way that they might have happened, rather than the way they actually did happen. Makes your memories a lot easier to go through when you're sitting at home on a friday night thinking back on the way your life used to be, and thinking about how the person that you see in the reflection is no longer the person you always thought you would be.

I really didn't know her very well. I knew her by a number of names at the time. This was back in the old days, or at least, old by my standards. Back when I would sit all night in my room, the door closed, the lights out, dialing bbs after bbs. I was in high school, and I felt very young. And I knew this girl. Or rather, I knew Winter. That's the only name of her's that I remember now. Now. In my old age.

It was all arranged for me. We were going to meet, a group of us, just to hang out. And we ended up in the park behind the movie theatre a couple of towns over from me, somewhere between her house and ours. I went with a couple of friends. She went alone. I don't even remember what we were all doing there, but I remember that it was dark and that we had paired off. My two friends were walking together. I was walking with her.

We were not holding hands, but every so often I would brush up against her. And it would feel good. I had never been this close to a girl. We stopped on a bridge, overlooking a small stream between the movie theatre and a parking lot. It was getting cold. The only light was the light being cast over the trees from the parking lot. A sick, orange light. And she told me that she liked me. That she. Liked me. And we walked off the bridge together, and we ended up separated from my friends. Separated from view by a clump of trees. And we got closer and closer to each other and I could see her face and she was taller than I was and older and I could feel her close to me, and she put her arms around me, and I put my arms around her, and I looked in her eyes and she looked in mine.

And we let go.

I'm not exactly sure who let go first, or if we both did. I had never been that close to a girl before. I had never given anyone a hug like that, and I had never gotten one like that. And it felt good. And then we caught up to my friends, and then she had to go home, and then it was just three of us again. Walking back to the car. And they asked me what my first kiss was like, did I feel warm inside, and i told them that i hadn't kissed her. That we had just held each other, and nothing more. And they looked at me. And they looked at each other. And they assured me that there was nothing wrong with that, that it was fine. And in that moment I felt younger than I ever had before. I was being left behind, left out of something very important, that I should have done something when I was with her. But I didn't.

And we drove home.