Forgotten Kisses.

My parents divorced when I was eight. As young as I had been at the time, I can still remember the way my parents would constantly fight. It was as if the minute they were in the same room, fighting had to ensue. I had grown used to it, even at such a young age, but of course, it still came as a shock to me once they finally did divorce. My dad moved away soon after, halfway across the world, to England.

I had begun visiting my father every summer break since the time I was ten. I would spend two months of every year in a foreign country, where I found everyone to talk oddly. I never bothered to make friends, there was no point. I’d only be there for the summer, so they would never be my real friends. I’d tell myself.

Except for one boy. One boy that no matter how hard I tried to keep him away from me, he continued to knock on my door each day, and convince me to come out and play outside. I eventually warmed up to him, and soon found myself realizing that he was my best friend. Even more so my number one than Allison, my best friend from back home. He’d take me swimming, he’d take me to the park, we’d go out to the movies, then have some ice cream in the small parlor afterward. We’d spend every day together, and that was our routine each summer. I met Josh Franceschi when I was eleven.

I swore to myself even when I was merely eleven that I was in love with Josh. He was the first boy who showed interest in me, in being my friend. All my friends back home were girls, so being friends with Josh was a whole new experience. After watching countless romantic movies, and seeing as the main characters would profess their undying love for one another, I wondered to myself if that was what I felt for Josh.

When I was thirteen, I asked my step mother what love was. A petite gorgeous woman who wore red lipstick wherever she went, always looking her best even when simply going out to fetch the mail, I assumed she must’ve known what love was. She let out her soft laugh, and found myself wondering how a person could make a laugh sound beautiful, and later that night I sat in my room, quietly attempting to mimic her laugh. She told me that love wasn’t necessarily finding a boy who looked the best, or the boy that everyone liked or wanted you to be with. Rather, love was the person who was always there for you, always caring about your well-being. Love was the feeling of a tingling sensation when they looked at you, or when they merely entered the same room as you.

Josh was never the best looking boy I’d ever seen. He would never be an Abercrombie and Fitch model. Once, when I had shown a photo of him to my mother, I recalled her simply turning her head away, mumbling that “the boy was quite pudgy.” I, however only believed that he wasn’t stick straight like everyone else. Although he wasn’t the best looking of the bunch, it was his heart that I was attracted to. He always was looking out for me. When I was fourteen and scraped my knee while we were out walking through town, he insisted that I let him carry me. I protested, but in the end, he carried me all the way back home, placed a bag of ice on my knee, and afterward, cleaned it and bandaged it up. He was always on the lookout. Like a big brother, minus the fact that I was desperately in love with him, even at fourteen.

I came to believe that naturally, when the time came, we would begin to date. We wouldn’t be the perfect couple that I’d seen in all of those romantic movies, because I knew full well that relationships like that didn’t exist, and Josh was really not the most romantic of guys, but it would still be nice. I imagined dates that entailed, holding hands as we walked along the sidewalk, peering into the little shops, we’d continue going to the movies and get ice cream afterward, but now it would hold a sense of intimacy.

But years came and went, and Josh never asked me out. Each summer, we’d spend every day together, we’d do all of the summer traditions we always did, but he never asked me out. When my sixteenth birthday came around, I assured myself that this would be the year, it had to be. But nothing happened. I told myself the same thing on my seventeenth, even eighteenth birthday, but alas in the end, nothing happened. I forced myself to then understand that Josh had no interest in me whatsoever. But I continued coming every summer nonetheless. Even when I had graduated high school, I continued to come.

When I turned twenty, however, I stopped coming. Josh called a couple of times at first, but that was it. I had met a guy. Alex. He was handsome, quite possibly the most handsome guy I’d ever met. Sandy blonde hair, and light green eyes. And he, took interest in me. I no longer needed to torture my pathetic heart with summers filled with a boy who would never see me as anything other than a friend.

I was now on a flight to England. In the few hours since I’d been aboard, i’d had three cups of Coke and almost five bags of peanuts. To say I was nervous was an understatement. I stuck my headphones into my ear, hoping that Ryan Adams would be my melodic savior and calm me down before I gave myself a panic attack.

I reached into my purse that was sitting at my feet and pulled out the small envelope that I had carefully slid into my bag before I had set off for England. My fingers were attached tightly to the dainty envelope and I found myself merely staring at the envelope for a good few minutes.

I was going back to England for one reason.

I was personally handing my father an invitation.

It was no mystery once you looked down at the envelope to what the invitation was for.

I was getting married.