I bring myself back into present-day, trying to listen to the words but getting caught up in the confident yet gentle timbre of his voice, so strong, yet so comforting. I force myself to focus.
“...and most of you know the story of how they met...” he continues. “but what you may not know is that Anna was running late for a blind date when she met Chris on the street that day. When Chris told me this story a few days after their meeting, I had a whole new respect for him. They talked for just a few minutes, and when she declined his invitation for coffee because she had a date, he wouldn’t let her go. He did everything short of begging–”
“No, he begged!” Anna said.
“Okay, yes, he begged her to go out with him instead. Chris was so sure about her... that he wasn’t about to let her walk away from him. There was no way he would let Anna walk out of his life.”
Jack looks at me, serious and intense, and speaks his last line.
“He knew exactly what he wanted, and he wasn’t about to let another day go by without getting it.” His eyes shift briefly to the guests of honor, but then return to mine. “To Chris and Anna...” he raises his glass and drinks. I get chills and break away from his gaze, averting my eyes to the empty plate in front of me. How can he be so sure about me? Can he really even know me? There are days when I don’t feel like I even know myself!
Dinner is eventually served, and I remain quiet through most of the meal, not speaking unless spoken to. I have way too much going on in my mind to really keep up with any conversations. When the waiters come to clear the tables, and people start to stand to say their farewells, Jack leans to me and asks, “Is everything alright?”
I nod my head, but I’m unsure. “That was, um, impassioned... your toast...” He senses my discomfort. He looks into his wine glass and finishes it off, then pours more into the goblet. I look for him to say something, but he restrains and has another drink, his gaze fixed across the room, away from me.
“Can you excuse me for a minute?” he asks, standing up abruptly. I fold up my napkin and place it on the table, sighing, feeling as if the conversation between Jack and I needs to happen sooner rather than later. Chris and Anna get up to say goodbye to their guests, and to one another. I watch Jack talking to Russell at the bar. Russell speaks to the bartender, who pours something into two shot glasses. He pushes one to Jack as his friend takes the other. They drink quickly, and Russell pats Jack on the back before walking away.
“The limo’s here,” my sister tells me. “I think we’re all about ready to go.”
“Okay.”
“I’m just going to say goodnight to Mom and Clara... see you out there?”
“Yeah, I just need to wrap something up. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
Jack waits for my sister to leave before coming back to the table I’m sitting at. I pick up my bag, getting ready to leave.
“Can I walk you out?” he asks as we watch all the other friends and family members file out the door.
“Of course.” We both take slow, deliberate steps, each presumably waiting for the other to say something. “So promise me Chris won’t be hung over tomorrow.”
“I’ll do my best, but I make no guarantees,” he half-heartedly laughs. “What I can do is deliver a very eager groom to the altar tomorrow to marry the woman he loves. Will that work?”
“I think so. And I’ll make sure his bride is the most radiant woman in the room, waiting anxiously to marry him.”
“Second most...” he corrects me.
“Jack...” I begin as we exit the restaurant, the last ones to leave. I feel the heat rise to my cheeks. Jack checks the time, and I realize that he’s wearing the watch I had given him for his birthday. I pick up his wrist and pull it toward me to take a closer look. I raise my eyes, full of uncertainty, to meet his.
“I’m waiting, Emi.” I nod, and as he drops his arm, he takes my hand. We continue to slowly walk toward the white limo where the rest of the women are waiting. I feel my pulse quicken, my heart beating faster. A part of me wishes we could have a few hours alone to talk about things, but we both have people relying on us tonight. When we reach the limo, instead of helping me into the car, Jack closes the door that had been left open for me.
I turn to face him, my back pressed against the car. He leans in closer, his lips so close to my ear I can feel his breath on my neck.
“I’m waiting,” he repeats, soft, ardent. “But I want to remind you of something.”
“Yes?” I whisper, breathless. Is he going to kiss me?
He pushes my hair back, tucking strands behind both ears, his fingers lingering around my jawline.
“Emi, I know what I want,” he says intently, his look reminiscent of the one he gave me as he toasted my brother and Anna. My heart jumps. He is going to kiss me! He draws his face closer, cautiously, his eyes measuring my reaction along the way, until the very last second, when he closes his eyes and lightly brushes his mouth against mine. A memory flashes quickly in my mind, so quickly I barely catch it. The way his lips tease mine leaves me wanting more, a certain longing I’ve felt before, and as we pull each other closer, a distant but familiar wave washes over my entire body.
In that instant, everything in my world changes.
I have kissed this man before. I have been in search of these lips, this kiss, this touch, this feeling, for over ten years. At the frat party in college, we kissed. I didn’t remember kissing him– how could I not?!– but I’ve always remembered this feeling. The details of that evening have been a blur since the night it happened. My unclear memory led me to believe that I had kissed Nate, although he and I had never talked much about it, but I now realize that it wasn’t him. Now that I’ve experienced this sensation once again, I remember exactly what happened that night... remember exactly who I kissed by the picnic table that night. It was Jack. Holy shit.
I’m clutching his jacket tightly for support when he begins to pull away, holding my face in his hands. My eyes open and meet his once more. I draw him into me again, kiss him deeper, feeling his tongue with my own. I feel numb, and I cannot breathe. When he pulls back a second time, I stare at him, my mouth agape, completely dumbfounded.
The horn of the black limo honks wildly as the guys inside of it start to holler at us. No matter how much noise they make, I am entranced with him... with his kiss.
He stares at me inquisitively, but confident in what he has just done. He does not seem shaken at all, one corner of his lips curling into a knowing smile... like he expected this all along.
“What’s that look?” he asks.
I smile broadly at him. “Oh, my god.” Those are the only words I can use to express my shock.
“What is it?” he laughs.
I quickly stand on the tips of my feet and close my eyes, hoping he will kiss me again. He lightly touches his lips to mine, but doesn’t linger. I open my eyes and he smiles, brushing my hair aside once more to kiss my forehead. He pulls my body toward his, embracing me, as he opens the car door for me. I hold on to the door to steady myself, and as he slowly backs away, I am sure he can hear the faint squeals coming from the girls in the limo.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Emi,” he smiles. He takes a few more steps backwards before turning around to walk toward the noisy car that awaits him. Still blown away, knees weak, I can’t move; but if I could, I would be running toward him to reacquaint myself with that feeling once more. He opens the door and turns to face me one more time, a huge smile on his face, before getting in and closing the door.
The girls pull me into our limo, jolting me out of my daze.
“He kissed you, didn’t he, Emi? Did he kiss you?” Anna asks, and I realize that, from their vantage point in the car, my friends couldn’t see what was going on. I touch my lips, and eventually answer simply by nodding my head. I’m still in awe and can’t contain the feeling.
“What?” Jen says. “Really, Emi?”
I continue to nod.
“I’
m guessing it was good,” she comments. She watches me for a response.
“Good?” I ask aloud. “It was better than good. It was...” I struggle to find the word, but finally do, mumbling it quietly, “transcendent.”
My heart still pounding, head spinning, I begin to think about what just happened... and what happened in college.
Holy shit. It wasn’t Nate that I kissed in college that brought about those feelings in me. This new realization clears up a question I’d had ever since that night. I wondered why his kiss was always different from the first one we’d shared. I’d wondered what had changed. And for years, I’d wondered why he wouldn’t discuss that night with me.
Transcendent. The word reverberates in my head as I think back to that night in college. I had first kissed Jack outside, by a picnic table. Later on that night, in my drunken stupor, I remember kissing Nate in my apartment. I remember being confused at the emotions it evoked in me– or rather, didn’t evoke. I remember our kiss feeling platonic in nature. I remember wanting to feel the butterflies in my stomach, to feel my racing pulse as his soft lips brushed against mine. It never happened with Nate, though.
His kiss was not the transcendent one. One transcendent kiss... These words seem familiar, but out of context to me.
No wonder Nate never wanted to talk about it. He must have seen me kiss Jack. We were talking about two entirely different realities– mine a complete fabrication of my drunken mind. I laugh quietly to myself, realizing how different my life would be right now if I had been remotely coherent that night. For a moment, I am almost overcome with thoughts of a life that might have been. I push the thought out of my mind before it cripples me with tears.
It wasn’t that kissing Nate wasn’t great. It was. But ever since I first started to have feelings for him last year– feelings that went beyond the confines of our friendship– I had longed to feel the way I felt that night, when I experienced that kiss at the frat party. When I finally did kiss Nate, and didn’t feel that same sensation, I’d wondered if time and other experiences could change something like that so drastically.
I’d theorized that what set that kiss apart from all the others with Nate was the thrill of doing something “wrong.” Even though I had found him attractive from the first day I met him, we had vowed to remain friends. We had the perfect friendship and I never wanted to mess with what we had. It was scary to do otherwise; dangerous, exciting.
“Em, talk to us!” The sound of Anna’s voice snaps me out of the trance I had fallen into. I look around to see all three of them staring at me in anticipation.
One transcendent kiss... oh, my God. That was how Nate’s haiku began. That poem I couldn’t remember. One transcendent kiss... but how did the rest of it go? And why is this coming back to me now?
“Can I have some of that?” I ask, noticing that they each have a bubbly glass of champagne in hand. Jen hands me hers and I drink it, quickly, wanting to find that happy place I had been mere minutes ago. I want to find that high from the kiss again, but feel guilty using Nate’s words to describe Jack’s kiss. No other word can describe it, though.
“Come on, Emi!” I shake my head, unwanted tears forming in my eyes. I’m unable to hold them back. How dare this sadness creep in when I want nothing more than to feel happy! “No crying!” Jen says. “No, no way.”
“I just need a few minutes. I’ll tell you everything at the hotel.” I sniffle quietly to myself, wiping away the tears as they begin to fall. Anna and Mae begin a conversation between themselves while Jen sidles next to me, arm around my shoulders, sipping on her newly-poured glass of champagne. She rubs my arms quietly and lets me have this moment to myself.
We stop by the hotel lounge to have a few more drinks before heading up to the room. After I have a glass of wine, I start to feel more calm, more like myself.
“So, out with it, Emi,” Anna demands. “What happened? I thought you were just going to be friends... isn’t that what we talked about?” Her smile reveals hope. I knew she had been cheering for Jack all along.
“That was my intention,” I tell her. “I didn’t see this coming... at all...”
“What do you mean?” Mae asks.
“I’ve only been kissed like that one other time in my life. And I thought it was Nate... a long time ago... but I guess it wasn’t.” I swallow hard, coming to terms with an entirely different reality that I’d never known.
Their curious looks encourage me to continue. “I didn’t realize it, but we’ve kissed before,” I reveal to them.
“What?” Jen asks. Anna looks confused.
“In college,” I start. “I kissed Jack.”
“You didn’t know?” Anna says. I shake my head. “I even knew that,” she says, surprised. “How drunk were you?”
“Very,” I admit. “But it was the most incredible kiss. For years I tried to recreate that moment, with all of my boyfriends. When I finally made the decision to go out with Nate last year, I thought there was a possibility that I might feel that again.” My eyes water again and I look into the eyes of my friends. They look sad, almost worried, waiting quietly for me to continue. Jen hands me a tissue.
“It was wonderful with Nate, really, but I wondered why I never had that sensation again.”
“And tonight?” Anna asks.
“Exactly like I had remembered it... and the memories of that night came flooding back. No wonder I could never piece together the details. I was trying to recreate something that never even happened.”
“So did Jack tell you what happened that night? Did he tell you how he felt?”
“No,” I answer. “I couldn’t speak after he did it.”
Her smile hides something. “Well? What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. Try to stick to the original plan? And see if that works?”
“You should follow your heart,” Anna says.
“Yeah,” Mae agrees.
“I think he cares about you a lot,” Jen adds. “I melted when I saw how he looked at you when he got into the limo.”
“Yeah, I did, too,” I tell them. “I think it’s just too soo–”
“Stop, Emi,” Anna interrupts. “You think too much.”
We order another round of drinks before going upstairs to the suite. Unfortunately, my brain keeps working overtime, trying to digest what happened, and to figure out what I should do. The bittersweet memory of Nate remains in my mind, but something seems altered. The relationship didn’t change, my feelings for him haven’t changed, I still love him... but the perception of what we were is somehow different.
The kiss I had experienced in college was surreal. It was what I measured all future intimate moments against. Over the years, after trying and failing to recreate that feeling, I attached to it a special designation. The person I shared it with was whom I was meant to be with. I had believed it for some time. I had believed that person to be Nate. My inability to find it with anyone else was one of the things that eventually convinced me to go to him, to be with him.
When I couldn’t recreate it with Nate, either, it didn’t affect how I felt about him. Our love for one another was stronger than some fleeting sensation I felt one drunken night in college. That was my rationalization, and it was true. If Nate was still here, I had no doubt we would be together for the rest of our lives.
But Nate wasn’t here anymore. And this kiss... this one transcendent kiss... it changes everything.
~ * ~
I can’t believe it’s already nine o’clock in the morning. I’ve been watching the clock most of the night, unable to sleep. Anna was on an adrenaline high until about three, until we all convinced her to lie down and try to sleep. With the help of some relaxation music, she finally dozed off. Jen and Mae fell asleep soon after, but my mind wouldn’t rest.
I don’t know what I’m going to do about Jack. My stomach still flutters every time I think about him kissing me last night. I want to allow myself to feel this for him, but I’m still ca
rrying around so many other emotions at this point that it just seems... well, complicated.
After taking a shower, I awaken the other girls and encourage them to get ready for our spa appointments. We’ll start with massages, then come back to our room for lunch and a little rest. I have a feeling Anna will be a bundle of nerves and energy today. At two, we’ll go to the salon to get our hair and makeup done, with plenty of time to mentally prepare for the ceremony at six.
The massage is just what I need. An hour of time devoted solely to me. I indulge myself in the possibilities of the day, sifting through my options and hoping to gain a little direction on which one is right for me.
I could succumb to my heart’s desires and commit to a relationship with Jack.
I could agree to start dating him, knowing in my heart what I want but allowing myself time to get used to the idea.
I could request that he give me some time and space to sort through things.
I could let myself sink further in despair over the loss I’ve experienced this year. A part of me feels I owe it to Nate, but I don’t give this option a second thought. I’ve devoted so much time to my grief and sadness. I need hope. I need the possibility of happiness again, or I may never find myself again.
I know for a fact that I want to feel that sensation again... and I know that I will. It will just be a matter of time. This, how much time, is what I need to decide. By the time the treatment is over, I feel a little clearer of my options.
We all meet back in our room and order room service.
“I can’t wait to see Chris,” Anna says, excited. “We agreed to not talk today... but I’m dying to know how he’s doing.”
“Let me worry about that,” I tell her. “Just relax and I’ll check in with him.”
“Thanks, Emi.”
I pull out my phone to send Jack a text message. “Do you have a few minutes to meet me in the lobby?” As I wait for his response, I try to do something with my messy hair, but give up when I sense there’s no hope.
About five minutes later, he responds, “I’m on my way.” I didn’t anticipate him being ready right away... but anxious to see him, I decide to just put some powder and lip gloss on. Au natural. My yoga pants and tank top complete the look. He’s got to accept me for who I am... and this is pretty much it!