The Shippers(18)

A first kiss that every single kiss that followed had competed against—and lost.

The title of the study Ashley read was “Can Humans Imprint on a First Kiss?” But did we need a scientific study for this? All we had to do was look at my interminable crush. Six formative years!

Now that was the longest relationship of my life.

Ashley had known all about that crush. My mom, too. Everybody in my house knew—even Pete. It was inescapable. I’d cut out Finn’s yearbook photo and taped it to the mirror in my bedroom. I doodled his initials in little 3D lettering. I gazed mooningly at his house from our living room window for countless hours.

And now Finn was single. And coming on the cruise. We’d be trapped on the MS Enchantment together for eight potential-filled days.

And nights.

Ashley was on this. She flipped the legal pad to a fresh page.

“What do you remember about that moment?” she asked, leaning in like we were on 60 Minutes.

I went with it. “Mostly sounds and sensations,” I said. “Because I was blindfolded.”

“And why were you blindfolded?” she asked.

“All the dares were blindfolded that day.” I listed neighborhood kids. “Evan had to climb a tree blindfolded. Sean had to go down the slide blindfolded. Cooper had to hang from the monkey bars blindfolded.”

“And you had to get kissed?”

“We were running out of ideas.”

Ashley wrote something down but didn’t say what. “And what do you remember about the kiss?”

“I remember waiting a long time—so long that I worried Finn wouldn’t show up. Which would’ve been so embarrassing, right? Getting stood up for your first kiss?”

“And then he finally made it?”

“He finally made it, yeah,” I said. “I heard his feet crunch on the gravel, and I was like, Here we go.”

“And?”

“And…” I thought back. “And he came close. And he put his hands on my shoulders. And then he stepped closer. And then he leaned in and kissed me.”

“Just a peck?”

“Mostly,” I said. “But there was a bit of a linger.”

Ashley wrote down peck and then circled it. “Define linger.”

“You know, it wasn’t like how you’d kiss your grandparents. It was … softer. And, you know, kind of on the longer side. Duration-wise. As far as pecks go.”

Ashley studied her notes.

“That was it?”

“Yeah.”

Ashley sighed.

“What?”

“It’s just: Aside from the whole ‘blindfolded’ thing, this kiss doesn’t sound very special.”

“I beg your pardon,” I said. “It was massively special!”

Ashley studied her notes like she couldn’t make the numbers add up. “Was it?”

“Very,” I insisted again. “It had a kind of … tenderness to it.” Yes. That word was right. I committed to it: “An epic kind of tenderness.”

“Okay,” Ashley said, like that might be promising.

I pushed on. “Maybe the mechanics of it, from the outside, don’t seem like much. But on the inside?” I paused and pressed my palm to my chest—not sure of the right words.

“On the inside, what?”

“On the inside, it felt like an avalanche.”

“Ooooh,” Ashley said, like that was helping.

“I’ve never felt anything like it again. And the memory of that feeling has kept me company in sad times ever since.”

Ashley and my mom glanced at each other like maybe that was a bit much.

“For example,” I went on, trying to make my case, “on that very same afternoon, Dad was supposed to pick me up from school.”

Grandma Dodie corrected: “Your dad never picked you up from school.”

But my mom remembered.

I nodded. “It was the day Pete broke his ankle. Mom had gone to the ER, and my bike chain was broken, so I couldn’t ride home with everybody else, and Dad was supposed to get me. But he didn’t show up.”

“He never showed up?” Grandma Dodie asked.

“I almost killed him. I really almost murdered him.”

I went on. “When it started getting dark, I decided to walk home.”

Our school was an okay bike-riding distance, but it was a bit far for walking. Plus, you had to go under a freeway bridge that had, as Grandma Dodie always put it, “no shortage of shady characters.”

“You walked home?” Ashley said.

“I did. And just before the overpass, it started to rain. And it was cold out, and I’d forgotten my sweater, and it got dark fast—and more than one car splashed me with puddle water. I got drenched. At one point, I slipped and scraped up my knees. And even when I finally made it home, no one was there. The house key was missing from the hide-a-key rock, and so I just sat on the front steps, in the rain, with my knees and hands stinging, wet and shivering, waiting for Dad to show up.”

So far, this felt like fodder for the absentee father theory.

But then I gave it a twist and said, “And that whole time, do you want to know why I didn’t cry?”

I gave such a long, dramatic pause that by the time I finally said it, my mom and Ashley said it with me: “Because of that kiss.”