Trees: First kiss.

It's been five years now. Five years since the life I knew had changed into something more. It was a simple day of being with him under the tree we had always met beneath. The sun was bright with just enough clouds to dull the light to keep the air slightly algid. He was tall, slender and his gray fur shimmered in the sunlight like ash floating in the cracks of light. 

The order of events have become hazy, but with what had transpired it could only be expected. I was backed into the tree, laughing at a joke that he or I had told.  It must have been a great one because I know we laughed until our sides started to ache. It wasn’t shortly after though that everything changed in a second. A second that seemed to last longer than any other that preceded it. He looked at me with his golden brown eyes in a way that he never has before. As he looked into my eyes it seemed like time had slowed to a crawl, but when he gripped the underside of my chin with his paw, time almost stopped. My heart began to race. I could feel every beat in perfect rhythm as I never had before. 

By the time I thought about what was happening I could feel his lips against mine. In that instant everything froze. The gentle fall breeze vanished, the sounds of the bird in the distant faded away, the feeling of my heartbeat was gone and time just stopped. It had felt like my stomach had dropped to the ground and all I could do was stand there paralyzed wondering what was happening. By the time my mind caught up to what was happening he was slowly backing off. I could feel his lips slowly separating from mine. This was a feeling that I have never felt before. It scared me, but at the same time it didn’t. One thing that I did know was that I didn’t want this feeling to stop. He took a step back before slowly running his paw down my chin as he let go.

I stood there for what felt like an eternity before he lightly whispered a single word that would change my life forever. A simple word like the simple day it started out as. “Sorry” . . . Sorry was all he whispered before he started to drop his head down. That’s when I knew what this feeling was and how I could keep it forever. In that instant I took one step forward, grabbed his cheeks with my paws and brought my lips to his. When his arms began to wrap around me I knew that this feeling would never leave and this would be the start of a life that I had only dreamed of many times over again.