Excerpt: In Order to Remember the Unforgettable

We weren’t talking much, just walking along the edge of the water. Occassionally we would shift out of the way as other couples passed us going the other way, or groups of teens passed us. I was just thinking about the fact that I had just thought of us as a couple while a group of teen girls passed us by. Raven suddenly elbowed me in the ribs.

“Did you see that?”

“What?”

“Oh, come on. You’re going to tell me you didn’t notice the way those girls were checking you out?”

I couldn’t recall a time ever in my life that anyone had ever “checked me out.”
“No way. Nobody was checking me out.”

“Oh, they were definitely checking you out. Two of them even turned to look at your but as they walked past.”

I flushed red, embarrassed by the attention and the possibility.

“Really?”

“Have you looked at yourself lately?”

I looked down at my bare chest. I guess I had gotten pretty tan over the summer. And Raven and I had been eating a lot of McDonald’s and ice cream lately, so I didn’t look so scrawny. I looked as if I had gained a few pounds. In fact, I thought that I looked maybe just a hair more…solid. And speaking of hair, I noticed a couple of small, curly black hairs wisping around my nipples. I had hair on my chest.

“Don’t look to long!” Raven poked me again. “You might fall in love with yourself.”

“Huh…I guess I’m just not used to being checked out.”

Raven flushed a bit this time and said, “I was checking you out.”

“You?” I was surprised in a very pleasant way.

“Yes. I think I like you, Jherrith. I mean, I think I like you, like you.”

Wow. This was definitely a first. A girl who wasn’t my mom just told me that she liked me, liked me. Did I just think of my mom? I need to stop that.

“I…think I like you, too,” I said.

She smiled up at me and then took my hand. We had held hands a few times over the past couple of days, but this felt somehow different. The way her fingers intertwined with mined and her thumb absent mindedly traced circles around the back of my hand was intense. I suddenly became very aware of all the people that were around us.
I wished then that everyone would just go away from here. I wanted to be alone on the beach with Raven, just the two of us. I honestly didn’t know what I would do if I got her alone, but I was dealing with feelings I had no experience with. There was an inherent irrationality to my thoughts that also made everything seem maddeningly possible. Even though I was a long way from every going “all the way” with a girl, that seemed entirely possible at this moment.

While I had been wrestling with these thoughts, we had made it to the end of the beach proper and had wandered into some light dune grass. The sand rose in small hills at this edge of the beach, and in just a moment we had descended one side of a small hill barely the size of the mound in the clearing. Suddenly we were alone.

Raven stopped and sat down in the sand abruptly. She squinted up at me, shielding her eyes from the sun with one hand and patting the sand next to her with the other. In the direct sunlight her eyes were virtually ablaze with green. I sat down next to her, knowing in my heart what I wanted to do next, but suddenly paralyzed by the fear in that same heart. Raven was apparently just as nervous. She bit her lower lip in a way that just confused my emotions even more.

I took a deep breath and resolved to do that which I wanted to do more than anything else. I quickly inventoried my mental data base of every kissing scene I had ever seen in movies searching for one that would perhaps inform me as to how to proceed. I decided on the spot to combine a few moves I had seen.

I started slowly leaning in toward her. As I did I turned slightly toward her and placed my right hand on her thigh. I instantly felt her tense up and I froze. I lifted my hand and repositioned it about six inches lower, closer to her knee and she relaxed a minute fraction. I resumed leaning in toward her and she turned her face slightly toward me. With my other hand I reached out and to take her face gently in my hand. She shifted forward at the same moment.

“Ouch!” she cried out and pulled her head back and lifted her hand up to her eye. I pulled my hand back and lifted my other from her knee.

“You just poked me in the eye.”

“Oh…my…God…I’m so sorry…I was just…I’m so stupid.”

“No you’re not. You’re just clumsy. Come here.”

Before I even knew what was happening, she had taken my face in both of her hands and pressed her lips against mine. Her lips were dry slightly chapped, but very warm. She moved her lips slightly against mine and then both of our lips parted slightly. In that moment I became distinctly aware of the fact that I was kissing a girl, and that she was kissing me. For that instant all of my energy was focused in my lips and I was my lips and we were our kiss. All of eternity and everything I had ever known was in that kiss and I never wanted it to end and I never wanted it to go any further. I had never experienced such complex emotions before, but a part of me knew that this went beyond emotion and was almost purely instinct. Our breaths had mingled were our lips connected and that tiny space in between our worlds was were the two of us were joined. I swear that in that instant I felt a shock of pure energy in our lips. Raven must have felt it too, because she suddenly broke the kiss and moved one hand tentatively to her mouth.

“Oh,” she gasped softly.

“Oh…yeah,” was my reply.