[Ah. The first kiss from that person who rocked your world for the first time and is sorta forever hard to get over. We all have one of these. Or at least I do. Lily from Lily Speak is sharing here with you a story of her first kiss, first love, first crazy butterflies and memories that are forever imprinted... I just started reading Lily's blog, which I highly recommend. She's a very wise, strong and introspective woman - my favorite kind. Oh, and she seems pretty freakin fun too. I'd grab a beer with her in a red hot minute if she weren't in Minneapolis. We could talk a bit about heartbreak, a bit about how COLOR is so much better than black, a bit about hippie yoga stuff, and then clink glasses and shout "I am WOMAN, here me ROAR." And on that note, I bring you Lily...]

I can’t believe how many details from that night I can actually remember. Or for that matter, the should-be bigger ones that I can’t. For instance, I know we were juniors, but I can’t pinpoint the season other than I know it was before prom, and I think it was after Christmas. So I guess that means it was late winter or early spring, but I really don’t remember.

It’s no wonder really that I remember the most minute and random little details about that night. I clearly remember the first time I ever even saw him.

Honors Chem, 11th grade, he was wearing the long-sleeved cross country team t-shirt with his last name on the back. I watched him from behind chemistry experiments and periodic tables until finally we were assigned to a group project together, and I actually had an excuse to talk to him and call him “about the homework” (instead of pretending that’s why I was calling).

Anyway, we became class-friends and our friendly and outgoing personalities led the way to some version of new-friend flirting. Eventually, we were hanging out sometimes. One night, a friend of his was performing in her high school’s One-Act plays, and we made the trek across the Twin Cities metro to see the performance with two other of our friends in tow.

Remember how in high school when you went to the movies with the boy or girl you liked, how you’d keep inching towards each other in your seats, in the dark, testing your limits to see if they’d lean in too or instead shift the opposite direction? Yeah, during the performance, we kept shifting towards each other, bumping elbows on the fighting for space until finally, as both our arms were crossed across our chests so as not to seem too obvious, his right hand found my left hand, sneakily, timidly, above the shared armrest. I remember the rush of feeling his fingers on mine. Of course, I’d held other guys’ hands before, but never ONCE had it made my stomach do flip flops like that. A perma-smile was now plastered across my face.

We exchanged silly, goofy puppy dog looks at each other after the show as the four of us walked through the school and back out to the car. It was a long ride home from ‘Tonka to the southeast suburbs, and I remember sharing the front bench-seat of his bright teal Pontiac Grand Prix. “She’s So High,” came on the radio, at which point he reached over and squeezed my thigh, then grabbed my hand again and held it the rest of the long way home. (You better believe this song STILL reminds me of that exact moment, as does driving at night heading east on I-494 between Highway 100 and France Ave, since that’s EXACTLY where we were at this second).

I can not believe I remember that.

Ok, actually I can.

Anyway, none of us wanted to call it a night at this point, so we decided to head back to his house to watch a movie. We stopped and rented “The Mod Squad,” and parked it in his parent’s basement.

The flirting continued.

We sat on the couch, him on the end by the table, me in the middle and kind of leaning his direction. As the movie went on, I’d inched closer and closer, leaning in a little further every couple of minutes. Too nervous to outright make a move, but too strongly attracted to everything about him to be able to stop myself.

At one point, our friends went upstairs to make popcorn and get sodas. The butterflies in my stomach started doing backflips as my fluttery heart anticipated what my head knew what was happening. I felt his eyes on me. I peeked over my shoulder, too nervous to fully turn and face him. I think he sensed this because he then started playfully tickling me (what an obvious and classic move, right?), and of course I then was twisting and squirming. Eventually, I found myself facing him, his arms around me, on the couch in his parents’ basement, with my pulse just absolutely racing.

I knew it was going to happen. He leaned closer. My pulse raced faster. Is this for real? Our eyes seemed to ask each other. He leaned closer again, his arms wrapped tighter, and finally it happened.

He kissed me. The kind of sweet, innocent kiss that stays with you because up until that moment in your life you’d never been kissed like that before.

And almost a decade later I still remember exactly how every single thing about this moment felt. How I couldn’t catch my breath, how his lips felt, how his eyes watched mine when we pulled back, the way he looked at me and smiled, how he held me even closer for the rest of the movie (like I was really watching at this point), and how he kissed me again as I left his house an hour or so later.

This wasn’t my first kiss, and I’ve kissed plenty of guys since. Too many guys, probably. But even in the actual relationships I’ve had since, the first kisses are sometimes fuzzy and no where near as memorable as this one was. Maybe because as I got older relationships started differently?

But this kiss? Is etched permanently in my mind, as are so many other moments with him over the years. If you’re curious, this very night started a short and very sweet thing between us, we went to our junior prom together, and then we got together and dated for real starting a couple of months into our freshman year of college. We fell head over heels in first love puppy love, dated for a couple of years, then as things go, we grew up and apart and have stayed very close friends ever since.

He was my first love in every thing that means: first kiss, first sex, first love, first heartbreak. And this moment on the couch with a crappy movie that we barely watched playing in the background, this is where it started.