Lilah Tov (NaNoWriMo)

thirteen

Love this chapter, and here's your backstory, @RoseTangle.

thirteen

We were just sitting on the Greens’ dock. The two of us. Our feet were in the water, and the sun had almost set. All that could be heard were the faint sounds of crickets and cicadas and the rather intrusive noise of Charlie Brooks’ Fourth of July Playlist (currently, it was stuck on Eminem’s White America). There were easily fifty—probably more—people enjoying a party at my summer home just a few yards to our left, though they felt light-years away. Just like that one night—or, like, morning that she spontaneously took me into town, everything immediately around us seemed to be contained in a metaphysical snow globe. Time had stopped and nothing moved. It was just Lilah Tov and I.

           I leaned in closer to her, and she leaned in closer to me. Our faces were inches apart. I grabbed her waist with one hand and rested my other on her cheek. She wrapped her arms around my neck. We continued to slowly creep towards each other, though it was like there was an infinite stretch of space in those inches, as we never connected—we just kept getting closer and closer. Her lips parted and mine instinctively did the same. We were so freaking close. It was going to happen. I was going to kiss her or she was going to kiss me. I wanted to kiss her, and she wanted me to kiss her. Though, it was unclear who would ultimately cave in first.

           By kissing Lilah first, that was giving in. It was what society wanted. The guy was always supposed to lean in and make the move. It was also what Lilah wanted. She wanted me to kiss her—she didn’t want to kiss me. It was probably because we were both stubborn, but as our faces neared, it was like an unspoken stalemate, waiting patiently for a verdict. My eyes were glued to her lips, and her eyes were on my mouth. We were both thinking the same thing, which was probably the problem. We shouldn’t have been thinking. We should’ve been doing.

           “Kiss me,” she dared in an intonation.

           As she said the two words, her lips practically brushed across mine. And that was when I lost it. I made the move. My face closed the gap between us, and then my lips were on her lips, and her lips were on my lips. There was nothing separating us. All the tension had evaporated into an unrelenting magnetism. I couldn’t pull away from Lilah, even if I wanted to—which I didn’t. We were meshed together, and though at first it felt like I lost and gave up, as I tasted her fruity lip balm, it was clear that this was no loss. If anything, it was a victory to put all other triumphs to shame.

           Every other girl that I had ever kissed no longer mattered or compared. Now, they had all been moved to my joint list of Bad Kissers and Irrelevant. Because right now, I was kissing Lilah Tov, and after this, I knew that there was no way I could go back.

           The kiss started off simple. We were just getting a taste of each other. Our mouths moved on their our accord, locking and moving and kissing. I wrapped my entire arm around Lilah’s waist, bringing her flush up against me. She ran her hands through my hair. Then our tongues came into play, and they decided to go on explorations in each other’s mouths. My eyes were shut tight, and I assumed that Lilah’s were, too. Kisses weren’t the types of things that one enjoyed with the sense of sight. Everything was better sans the vision, because it was just more instinctual. Every nerve was heightened, and it was a better kept secret, because you couldn’t see it—you could only feel.

           Soon, our upright position didn’t work. So we backed up farther onto the dock, so that our feet weren’t in the water. Then I climbed on top of Lilah, making sure not to squish her, and continued to kiss her as I held her waist. Even with our bodies so together, it still felt like there was too much space.