This Is My Brain in Love - I. W. Gregorio Page 0,45
Screw fear.
“Can we just kiss now?” I ask.
Despite the fact that my voice sounds like I’ve lost a war with about a billion tons of pollen, Will doesn’t laugh.
“Yes, please,” he says fervently, and he leans in. I tilt my head slightly to the right the way I’ve seen on screens big and small, digital and projected. And because Will is suddenly overwhelmingly close, impossibly real, I close my eyes to protect my brain from exploding from sensory overload as my mouth finds its target.
Will’s lips remind me of the flour-covered mochi rice cakes my mom sometimes brings home as treats from her Chinatown runs. They’re soft but firm, and warm in a way that makes my whole body sigh, that makes me want more, and suddenly it makes sense to me why books always use food metaphors when they describe kissing, and desire, and love. All of a sudden I’m ravenous for Will, and this is just with a chaste touch of the lips that would almost certainly still qualify a movie for a PG rating by the Motion Picture Association of America.
When it all gets to be too much—I haven’t really gotten the knack of kissing and breathing at the same time yet—I break away and finally open my eyes. Will’s looking at me wide-eyed, and I’m surprised to realize that I know him well enough by now to guess what he’s thinking. So I know what I can say to help him relax.
“I had to catch my breath,” I explain. “That was almost too amazing.” Then I lick my lips, and his eyes get heavy lidded as he stares at my mouth, and I can hear his breath hitch as I move in for round two.
I’m not sure where to put my hands, so at first I just keep my left in his, and my right on my leg. But as my hunger deepens, as we try our damnedest to actually meld the atoms in our faces together into a single molecule, my hand creeps up to touch Will’s thigh. His very well-toned thigh. He groans, and as his mouth opens, I do the thing. The French kiss thing that I always told Priya sounded gross as hell, because spit.
In reality, French kissing is actually not too bad, which may explain its popularity.
Will is certainly a fan. And if I thought that lips were incredible, tongue is mind-blowing. It’s like, you’ve had this body part your entire life, and it’s a nice enough organ, one that allows you to experience both wasabi peas and chocolate peanut butter ice cream. You use it every day, and maybe you start taking it for granted a bit. I mean, it’s not as if the tongue is something you need to pay attention to, or maintain, like your fingernails or hair or God forbid your bladder or bowels.
But for the first time I’m realizing the tongue is a muscle. It can move. And no one ever talks about how much it can feel.
Using tongue is some next-level shit, and all I can think about is the YouTube video I once saw on how Hollywood special effects people use accelerants to turn ordinary fires (which are perfectly great for roasting marshmallows and boiling water) into spectacular conflagrations that make Tom Cruise/Vin Diesel/any actor named Chris look like total badasses.
Tongue is totally an accelerant, and not only for my heart rate. All of a sudden, Will’s hand is feverishly clutching at my waist, and when his thumb brushes a sliver of bare skin I feel a heavy, twisty sensation in what my mother calls my womanly areas, and seriously, why am I thinking of my mom right now?
WILL
Kissing Jocelyn is a little bit like jumping off a cliff and a little bit like sliding a puzzle piece into place. I don’t know if it’s possible to feel completely unmoored and completely grounded at the same time, but that’s the only way I can describe it.
Thank God she had the nerve to make the first move. I was sitting there like a complete doofus wondering if it was too soon to lean in for a kiss, trying to figure out whether it was still cool to ask a girl for permission to kiss her, or whether it’d make me look like I was trying too hard.
I’d just decided that consent is always sexy, when Jocelyn bulldozed through all my doubts. She planted her flag. And I, obviously, had no problems with being claimed.