I won't lie.
The first time we kissed caught me completely off guard.
A few days after I recovered from a triple shift that left me with hallucinations of her and an empty bottle of scotch, I knew.
I thought she resented me. She had every right to. I had made her the victim of my insecurities for the better half of a decade.
She had put her feelings on the line, and got nothing but lock-jaw from me.
I felt like an ass. An ass with my nose so far down a microscope…well, use your own imagination to visualize a giant ass named Grissom with a nose stuck down a microscope.
I pushed and pushed and just for the hell of it, pushed some more until…until I snapped. I couldn't fight it anymore. I couldn't fight…her…anymore.
I confronted her in the hall by asking her to breakfast. At first, I thought it was completely casual, but the deer in the headlights look and gap toothed "wha?" threw me for one hell of a loop. After insisting, eating eggs and toast over tongue-tied silence and six weeks of her still in disbelief of what was happening, she finally just assumed we go out for breakfast after shift. 30 minutes of awkward work topics, to almost two hours of casual conversation about…little nothings.
She had me lusting for her from the first time I saw that ponytail and gap tooth smile years ago, but now it was deeper than that. I was in love. I'd never been in love before, but if this is what it felt like… what the hell took me so long?
One particular morning…or should I say, this particular morning, we spent two hours laughing. Laughing over stupid jokes, my crooked smile and how I never show that crooked smile, how she begged her parents for braces to fix her teeth; over my bowed legs and her lo-o-ong legs that caused her to tower over 80 percent of her high school graduation class…just…again, little nothings. Only this time add belly-aching laughs.
We parked next to each other this particular morning. I remember every detail as if it were yesterday. We were still laughing off the ending of one of her jokes that had something to do with a drunken ventriloquist. Catching myself on her silver Prius, begging her to stop making me laugh so hard, we ended up practically nose to nose.
The smiles quickly faded into deep eye reading. She stepped just an inch closer, and peeled off my sunglasses. Those brown orbs pierced right through mine, as if she was reading my soul. Reaching up and tugging at the collar of my blue polo shirt, she bit her lower lip, just a little, with a hint of a grin across her face.
The noise of the city just seemed to fade. Time slowed, little things started to become more apparent, such as the little gold flecks in her eyes. I get this way sometimes when I process a crime scene, but this is the first time I've ever zoned out on another person.
What am I doin' here
Starin' at you through these
Empty eyes
Our faces were mere centimeters from each other. I could feel her hands on the collar of my shirt around my neck, her nose brushing against mine, her breathing faster, the smell of her shampoo tickling my nose as it had done so many times before.
When did I disappear
How did I lose this
Piece of time
The stare down broke when her lips brushed against mine. My eyes closed as I pursed my lips just a little and pressed forward. Everything vanished. Time stopped.
I remember your lips
Pressed against mine
All of a sudden
I was lost…
Those lips…my God. If I thought "what the hell took me so long?" when we first started going to breakfast was bad, I needed her to kick me in the ass really hard for waiting so long…making her wait so long for this moment. I was truly lost…
Lost in a kiss
I could feel my mind drift
Off the edge of forever
My heart slips away
To a beautiful place
That I can't resist
I was lost in a kiss
I really don't know how long we stood there like that. Maybe it was just a few seconds. Maybe it was three minutes, three hours, three days… but after those few... moments, I knew I could die happy.
She backed away just a little further, showed me a smile, a full smile that she tried suppressing with a grin, but failed when I had to return that smile.
Eventually we got into our own cars and parted. I went home, but couldn't sleep. I kept thinking to myself "did that really happen?"
My suspicions were confirmed when I answered the knock at my door, and there she stood. She initially tried to brush off the blush on her cheeks when she asked "did that really happen today?"
After inviting her in, and exchanging a few more of those little kisses on my couch, she curled up next to me and fell asleep while we were in the middle of watching "A Bug's Life".
Again. The first time we kissed really caught me off guard. But I had never, and have never, been so glad to be caught off guard in my entire life.
[song: Mark Wills Lost in a Kiss
