FIRST KISS

I keep reliving, and catch my breath when I do, that one moment—what his mouth felt like, that it was larger and more enveloping than I thought it could be when it was on mine. It was dark in the car, except for the lights that darted by as we sped along the highway. I was snuggled in Steve’s lap in the back seat, my face near his neck. That’s what a kiss is like, I thought—I didn’t know. His mouth covered all of mine and I felt his teeth. I didn’t even have time to respond, it happened so suddenly, and I felt momentarily so helpless and overwhelmed. Then his lips were gone and he was telling me, ”I’ve been wanting to do that all evening—to kiss you, just to kiss you.”

The whole evening had been crazy—the awkwardness between us when his friend drove us from the lab to his house and when we were alone before his roommates got there with their dates. We chatted pleasantly, said all the right things, but we were so far away from each other. I didn’t touch him, and he didn’t touch me. I felt strained and straining—even the smile on my face I fixed or unfixed there, and my hands were suddenly appendages unrelated to the rest of me—I didn’t know what to do with them. Every stance I tried to relax into seemed unfamiliar, so I would try another one.

Finally Baxter and Claire arrived. Claire was diminutive, with even little teeth, bobbed hair, and tiny pearls in her ears. She moved her hands with affected grace, as though she were doing some exotic dance while she talked. When she came through the door, she made a rush for Steve and tucked a camellia into his buttonhole. From then on he seemed more her date than mine, in spite of Baxter. When Steve blew smoke rings she would reach for them with a look of childlike enchantment and those artistic hands. She was delighted with the living room, the fireplace, everything. And when she discovered the large green El Camino Real road sign that one of the roommates had absconded with, she decided they should make a table top out of it. Everyone got caught up in her enthusiasm as they tried to figure out how it could be made.

At dinner she and Steve talked about the East, where he had gone to Exeter. They discovered they had many common acquaintances. Steve ate heartily, drank, talked with his cheek full of food, was expansive. In the long intervals between his glances, I felt myself getting more and more lost.