It takes four days for the kiss to progress from ideation to reality.

It first takes root as a distant possibility. Our eyes, accustomed to the theatre’s darkness, adjust to summer sun as he offers to walk me home. Still strangers, we learn more about each other in the next thirty minutes than we had in weeks of texting. Revelations that feel impossible to share face to face are more easily offered when walking side by side. Even the heaviest truths he shoulders with grace and understanding. His responses are built of words I didn’t know I’ve been longing to hear. They bring relief to guilt I thought I let go of, heal wounds I thought had scarred over.

The date started as a chance, hesitantly extended, but as we reach my block I find myself wishing for more time. Lingering on my front step, even after he’s hugged me goodbye, the possibility of that kiss is too far out of reach to make real, yet still near enough to hold us there in an extended goodbye.

I’ve never taken well to these in-between moments, I tend to pierce through their potential to ease my discomfort. Today, I wriggle my body. He laughs. He asks what I’m doing.

“It’s my hug dance,” I say, no choice but to lean into the scene I’ve started. “You don’t have a hug dance?”

Of course he doesn’t. No one does. It’s only something one might do when they think their date should have kissed them but don’t know how to tell him. It’s not a hug dance at all, it’s Idon’tknowwhattodowithmybody and Ilikeyou and goodbyepleasedon’tleaveyet. Those aren’t things to be said aloud. Instead I say, “Show me yours next time.”

People probably don’t think about their last kiss when they’re about to have their first, but the first will haunt the last. I don’t spare a thought for you, in the lead up to the first kiss, but you’ll be there at the end, lying beside him for the last time, thinking of me.

I’m balanced on a stone in the middle of the creek. He’s perched on a stone of his own, showing me his hug dance. It’s just a little wiggle, bottom lip pushed out in an expression you’ll know well. Self conscious smiles stretch into laughter. I hop the stones between us and he catches me. I feel him looking down on me. I know what will happen when I raise my head. This is the beginning.

You’ll have seen all that’s to follow. It’ll play as a montage dusted in grey. You’ll be resting your head on his stomach, memorizing the pace of his breathing. It won’t be quite right, stuttering as he holds back tears. He always thought he’d mess it up, but you both did, in so many imperceptible ways. All of the things unsaid, accusations made, incremental damage you each caused the other.

You’ll kiss him many times at the end, unwilling to let each one be the last. But each one is a goodbye, and no matter how many times you try, you’ll never kiss him like you used to, like I do today.

As for this first kiss, it’s about to take shape, here in our favourite place. We’ll think of it, you and I, every time we walk this path, even after the end. But for now, here, awkward beginnings transform into everything falling into place.

And, after, all I can think to say is, “Your beard smells weird.” Safer than this feels big, safer than, kiss me for the rest of my life. And it could be this is the beginning of the end. Sometimes you’ll blame me, wonder if I reset your course. Did my words echo eternal? Give him pause each time he thought to lean in? It could be my fault, that he never kissed you as much as you wanted. You will be better than me, at telling him how you feel, at showing your love. But my comment is there, buried along with the others, years of perceived shortcomings, beliefs that love cannot ease.

You see that, at the end, and you wonder which misstep was one too many. How did you get from here to there? To him telling you he feels like you wish he was someone else. You wondering if there’s any truth to that. You’ll never know.

You’ll see him to the door, and he’ll return your key. And you’ll start crying all over again, because somehow this is more final than the decision to break up. You’ll watch him walk down the hall, your building’s single elevator in no rush to relieve you of this agony. This break up’s already been a week in the making, weeks in the making, months, years, what’s a few minutes more? But with only seconds left in your resolve, you won’t be able to bear this moment. You’ll call him back, and he’ll embrace you like he was only waiting for permission.

You’ll suspect what you’ll miss most is this, you’re head against his chest. Years will pass and you’ll still remember how safe you feel there, even as everything ends. In a more distant future, perhaps we’ve forgotten this feeling. Perhaps it’s been supplanted by something new. I hope, as I’m sure you will, that we will not long for the love gathered between these arms, the steadiness of this breath, this heartbeat, the tenderness of a chin resting upon our head.

You feel his tears and shuddering breath. You’ll wonder, not for the first time, and not for the last, if it would have been better to hold on until you drowned. And when you tilt your head up to him and your lips meet one last time, the kiss will break around a laugh. How impossible this all is. Look at all the love you couldn’t use properly.

One day, even later, we will write together. You, with the wisdom that follows a last kiss, I with the hope that follows a first, with as much detachment as one can have towards love lost. Smile at the potential and the failure and all the great and terrible that came in between. Heal wounds we thought had scarred over, ease a guilt it’s time to let go of.

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