The Truth About My First Kiss... (It Was a Disaster)

The song was ending. I could feel it.

He still hadn’t done it.

I was fourteen, about to turn fifteen, standing in front of a guy who was six foot three while I was barely five feet tall. My eyes landed right around his chest. The slow song was running out, and he wasn’t making a move.

So I grabbed the collar of his shirt.

The Master Plan

It started a few weeks earlier, with a very normal freshman-year problem: all my friends had already had their first kiss. I hadn’t. In my head, that made me a little bit of a loser, and I was determined to fix it before my birthday.

My best friend had an older step-brother — really good-looking, at least back then. She posted a photo of them together, and I DMed her: who is that? She gave me his Instagram. We started talking. Then calling. Then texting enough that he had my number and I had a plan.

There was a school dance coming up, about two weeks before my birthday. I called my best friend and told her to invite her step-brother. She already knew exactly what I meant.

I didn’t know how I was going to do it. I just knew that dance was going to be the night.

The Dance

Everyone was there. We danced, we goofed around, and then the first slow song of the night came on. We started walking toward each other across the floor.

And then a girl asked him to dance. And a guy asked me.

So we danced with other people, side-eyeing each other the entire song.

When it ended, we went back to normal dancing for a while. Then another slow song came on — I genuinely don’t remember the song, I want to say it was Ed Sheeran — and this time nothing got in the way.

He said all the things you’re supposed to say. You’re so pretty. I’m so happy you’re here.

I wasn’t really listening. I was thinking, is he going to kiss me? Get to the point.

He didn’t.

The song kept playing. It kept getting closer to the end. And he still hadn’t done it.

So I grabbed the collar of his shirt, pulled him down, kissed him — and pushed him away.

What Happened Next

I didn’t even look at him. I just thought, I’m done, and started walking off the floor with my head held high.

Everyone else did not let it go that quietly.

My best friend was already screaming. Someone came sprinting across that dance floor like a linebacker going for a touchdown and tackled me the second it was over — though not everyone who was there remembers it exactly the same way.

The guy just stood there. Stunned. Like he could not process that a girl half his height had just grabbed him and kissed him with zero warning.

I was floating for the rest of that night.

After

He texted me later — had a great night. My friends were convinced there was no way that was actually my first kiss, because apparently I was “too good” at it. I just let them believe whatever they wanted.

We started talking after that. I wouldn’t call it dating, exactly — we never actually went on a date — but it went on for about a month, maybe two.

Then one day I was heading to his step-sister’s house, same best friend from the beginning of this whole thing, and I saw him leaving as I walked up.

She pulled me into a hug. “I have something to tell you.”

I said, yeah?

“He has a girlfriend.”

She corrected herself before I could even react. He had a girlfriend. This whole time.

Tall. Blonde. The complete opposite of me in every way. They’d been together for four months — which meant the entire time he’d been texting me, calling me, dancing with me at that school dance, he already had someone else.

I asked what she thought about it.

“She’s not mad,” my friend said. “She’s the one who made him break it off with you.”