KISSES ON A PAPER AIRPLANE
by
Sarah Vance-Tompkins
DELETED SCENE
NOTTING HILL
LONDON, ENGLAND
"Do you remember your first kiss?"
Hannah’s question stopped Julia dead in her tracks. “My first kiss? No.” Hells no. Deflecting the question with a flip of her wrist, she fell flat on her face.
It wasn’t her best friend’s question. Julia’s kitten heel was stuck in one of the rough cobblestones in the middle of the street. She stumbled forward as her foot came completely out of her shoe. Hannah quickly snatched up her shoe from the rough road, and with a firm hand beneath Julia’s elbow, helped her reach the sidewalk before the light changed and traffic surged all around them.
Hopping like a flamingo on the corner, Julia held onto Hannah’s arm for balance as she slipped her foot back into her perfect pink slipper. “I can’t remember.”
She turned her head in the direction of traffic, watching a double-decker bus speed past, so she could ignore the fact that Hannah was pressing her lips tightly together in silent judgement.
Why couldn’t Julia remember her first kiss? On more than one occasion she’d tried to remember. And once again she scoured the darkest cobweb-filled corners of her brain.
Nope. No memories. Nothing stood out.
Her first kiss had already happened quite a few years ago.
Obviously.
She had very little to go on about the date place or time, but she was certain it had to have taken place while she was at boarding school. Winter Formal? After field hockey practice?
Tarquin? Aiden? Arabella?
She’d crushed on them all. And it could’ve been any of them, but when she closed her eyes, she didn’t remember a particular face. No one had ever straight up asked Julia about her first kiss. She didn’t know it was something she should remember.
The truth was she’d been kissed many times. And none of the kisses had made her heart flutter the way Hannah thought a first kiss should. The last thing she wanted to admit to anyone, most especially her best friend. If she had known there was going to be a quiz about her kissing history later in life, if she had known she would’ve written some stuff down in her journal.
Her journals were filled with lists. Songs. Poems. Quotes. Things she wanted to do. Things she needed to do. Things she thought about doing, but knew she never would. Things she had done that she regretted.
"Do you remember how it made you feel?" Hannah prompted.
“Feel?” Not only was she supposed to remember the person, time and place of her first kiss, she supposed to have feelings about it too?
Julia had purposefully kept her journals free of her feelings. She was happy to keep her journals free of any talk of feelings for the rest of her life. Emotions were messy. They couldn’t be controlled. They just popped up like a jack in the box. At least not her emotions. They were not something Julia could anticipate. And they tended to make life messy. Julia didn’t like messy. She liked everything in her world to be neat and orderly.
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