You can't love anyone that way more than once in a lifetime. It's too hard and it hurts too much when it ends. The first is always the hardest to get over. That's just the way the world works.
Cappie had his first kiss when he was seven years old. Her name was Sandra, and she was a tiny little spitfire of a thing. All bouncing curls and jittering fingers, a tense red mouth pressed against his own. She tasted like organic apple juice and sweet cinnamon oatmeal and she laughed afterwards.
He held her hand all day from the sandbox to the swing set to the dock of the lake, but when she asked him to marry her and forked over a woven ring of grass and weeds, something felt out of place. Okay, he was seven and had lots of trees to climb and walls to jump off of, but he wasn't ready yet. So he did what any normal seven year old boy does when he isn't in charge: takes one palm, places it firmly on her little chest, and pushes.
Sandra went toppling into the lake and Cappie went to dig a moat around their castle. As far as he was concerned, he was going to be the knight in shining armor. Mom and Dad advocated feminism and all other kinds of great theories, but Cap really really wanted to be the hero.
Cappie had his thirty second kiss when he was thirteen years old. Her name was Regina and she was the hottest girl at Camp Kitchiwawa. Regina was blonde haired and blue eyed and had BOOBS. They were miraculous as far as a thirteen year old girls' boobs are. They kissed all summer long, held hands, and snuck out of the cabin after Patrick Chambers thought they were sleeping.
One night in August, a week or two before camp was over, she let him go under her shirt AND her bra. He told a wide eyed Evan about it at breakfast the next day, all smug and superior munching on a bowl of Fruit Loops. Bragging rights aside, Cap had rounded second base and he was a god in the boys' cabin.
Cappie had his fifty first kiss when he was sixteen years old. Her name was Natalie and she had no idea what she was doing. A fellow counselor with him and Evan, she was a cute girl with a ski-jump nose and pink toenails. She was so proper and reserved that a bet was strung up to see who could kiss her first. Evan had tried and failed, a pattern that he would never grow out of, not that he knew it yet. Patrick was called a "sleeze bucket" and ignored, but Cappie, Cappie was something else.
He took her on picnic lunches in the woods and make macramé necklaces, leaving them on her windowsill for surprises. And after many weeks of wooing and deliberating she kissed him very politely on the mouth.
Point Cap. Pay up, Chambers.
Cappie had his seventy fifth kiss the first night he went to college. He had no idea what her name was since she ambushed him in the backyard of the Kappa Tau Gamma house. All he knew was that she was hot. And that he felt a little bit ill from the liquor.
Cappie had his seventy sixth kiss the second month he was at Cyprus Rhodes. Her name was Casey and she was perfect. He had kissed girls with blonde hair or green eyes or silk skin or flawless smiles, but Casey. She was different.
Hair like golden locks lazily tumbling in waves on her collarbone. Eyes were cat green, teasing and lucid, seeing through every part of him, even the parts he never meant for anyone else, besides him, to see. Her mouth was sculpted to Greek goddess perfection, coral colored, softly framing a genteelly genuine cat ate the canary grin. Skin that smelled of brown sugar and felt like silk.
And after their eighteenth date, he kissed her.
It felt like gravity.
Cappie had his one hundred and twentieth kiss when he meets the enemy of the love of his life. Rebecca Logan is biting and bitter, yet oh so inviting with her pomegranate mouth. She is such a bitch and it makes Cappie laugh when he covers his mouth over hers in the hallway of the second story in the KT house.
She is fierce and hungry, and Cap is willing to oblige to her wishes, running a hand over the gorgeous raven hair and toned backside. And then it happens.
Rebecca Logan maybe drop dead blindingly beautiful, but, she is kiss number one hundred and twenty and therefore, she really doesn't fucking matter.
Kiss number seventy six ruined every single kiss for Cappie until his one hundred and sixth kiss with Casey again.
In his bedroom with the door shut, his hands locked around the familiar grooves in her hips and neck, fingering sweet tendrils of golden hair and tasting coral lips. Like a man dying of thirst he drank her in, pulling closer, more, more, more.
Then after she accepted Evan Rachel Wooden's lavaliere, he went back to kissing anything in a skirt, and number one hundred and twenty happened to be Rebecca Logan. The difference with kissing Rebecca Logan as opposed to Casey or any other girl was that Rebecca knew what Cappie was thinking about amidst said kissing.
You're still not over her.
Shell shocked and sitting in a cupcake bathrobe after kiss number one hundred and fifty three with Rebecca, he can't nod or grimace or react to the words out of this siren's mouth.
He was ruined after kiss number seventy six.
Around kiss one hundred and eighty one, Cap doesn't know what the point of learning the girl's name is anymore or considering what she looks like. All he can see is silk skin and golden hair and cat green eyes and a coral mouth. All he knows is kiss number seventy six.
Something always brings me back to you. It never takes too long.
He would like to say that he is kind of stunned when he gets kiss two hundred and three. From Casey. In the side closet under the stairs where they…yeah, well. He is stunned. And all he can think right now is how subtle she is being: you know like a freaking shotgun. It is so hot that she accosted him under the staircase, but the only thing he notes is this: I wanna be with you.
Though kiss two hundred and three is all he has been waiting for since the day she ran into Evan's arms, the only thing he can do is say the one word he knows she never expects to hear. As soon as he says it, images shoot into him with the impact of bullets:
I know where I wanna be in ten years, do you?
I wanna be with you.
[Now it's the end of the world and if it's the end I want to be at the beginning with you.]
It's not going to be enough this time. Not enough. Not enough.
But when she turns and bolts from the closet into the steely gaze of Maxipad, Cap drinks all the liquor he can get his hands on.
Kiss number two hundred and twelve is from the hot cater waitress that Cappie dates. She has raven hair and eyes like Rebecca Logan had and is farther from Casey that Rebecca Logan ever was. Irony is a bitch.
He never could last long without golden hair and cat green eyes and silk skin and a coral mouth. He gave up on that one hundred and thirty six kisses ago.
He didn't care if she was heartless, vicious, and vulgar, stupid and grasping. He loved her. He would rather have misery with one than happiness with the other.
The two hundredth and thirteenth kiss is from Casey on the staircase of the ZBZ house. It makes that bloody stupid wire that Rusty is talking about look like a piece of bullshit machinery. For the first time since he was eighteen, Cappie believes in a happily ever after.
His heart jumps in approval.
The three hundredth and fortieth kiss is in the exact same spot that kiss number seventy six took place.
It is still just as perfect, if not more.
This is where I realized that I first loved you and I have loved you every day since.
He loses track after three hundred and sixty four.
[He figures he doesn't have to keep a record anymore. It's a love story, not just a boy and girl story.]
He buys a lavaliere for the second time, but intends to give it to her for the first time on her twenty second birthday during the craziness of spring break.
The morning of her twenty second birthday they share kiss number four hundred and something. He doesn't know that he will only get about a dozen more before the end comes.
I'd do anything for you.
He wonders when they became a boy and girl story the moment that he pitches the last KT lavaliere into the wake of the Atlantic. For the first time in a long time, his ethereal blue orbs are cloudy with crocodile tears. His chest aches from the incessant pounding of why, why, why. He has done this before and knows the pain. It is more unbearable than original sin, ruined, biting and cursing to the heavens. He wants to beg to the gods for their happily ever after like a silly child.
A sacred hallelujah. A shattered prosecution.
Between sheets of wind and blurred promises of please and don't and can't and won't and stop, he fails to see what's staring him right in front of his face.
The way you move ain't fair, you know.
She is always going to be the apple. You are always going to be Eve.
Itis not a boy and girl story. It's much more epic than that.
It takes sixteen hours and eight minutes but he finds the lavaliere. He puts it in his pocket and just waits. He figures he can wait, he did it for one hundred and thirty six kisses. Maybe he wasn't ready for Sandra at seven or Rebecca at twenty one, but he has been ready for Casey since kiss number seventy six and in the end, that's really all that matters.