Quinn and Julia are going to have their first kiss today. They’ve planned it out loosely because they are both a bit nervous. They have been dating exclusively for 23 days. Julia has kissed someone before but Quinn has not. Julia is bisexual and Quinn is heterosexual. Julia has only kissed girls before, but she likes Quinn and wants to kiss him. She knows this because she gets the same fluttering in her stomach around Quinn that she had around her last girlfriend. And Quinn definitely wants to kiss Julia, because whenever Julia smiles or when she concentrates really hard on something, her lips part the slightest bit and this makes Quinn feel pinchy in his stomach and makes him have a weird feeling in his crotch area. Julia is 18 and going into her first year of university and Quinn is 17 and going into his junior year of high school.

07:26am

“What are you doing?” Quinn asks, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Julia is already awake and dressed, in jeans, a fitted white t-shirt, her green pendant, and her signature backwards baseball cap. “I’m going on a panty raid,” Julia answers slyly. She holds a pair of Quinn’s boxer-briefs up to the light and studies them intensely. “Yep, they’re real,” she announces. Julia then throws the boxer-briefs to Quinn and states that it is time he gets dressed. Julia and Quinn slept in the same bed last night. They sleep together sometimes, but they don’t have sex. And sometimes they sleep together naked but they still don’t have sex. Quinn tries to hide an embarrassing morning erection, but Julia notices it anyway.

08:01am

“S***,” Quinn says after spilling iced coffee down the front of his shirt. Julia laughs loudly as they wait for her drink at Starbucks. “I can’t do anything right!” Quinn says, laughing. “You must be defective,” Julia notes. Quinn, an incredibly clumsy individual laughs. A strategically placed foot sends Quinn stumbling onto the hardwood floors of Starbucks and causes his iced coffee to stream across the floor. Julia doubles over in laughter, her loud voice reverberating through the room and causing the glass in the windows to shake.

Quinn laughs too, but he is a pile of limbs on the floor, laughing so hard he has tears streaming down his face. He laughs so hard he turns onto his side and accidentally turns over into a puddle of coffee. This causes laughter throughout the entire coffee shop and without missing a beat, Julia says, “Get your s*** together, Captain Sparrow!”

“Barbossa!” Quinn yells back, clutching his now empty coffee cup. Quinn is laughing so hard that he pees himself a little and feels incredibly fortunate that Julia doesn’t notice. Julia helps Quinn stand, surveying the extensive coffee stains on his shirt. “Captain,” Quinn says, quickly becoming stoic. “It seems I need to change.” “I know a ship,” Julia replies, pointing to the green dinosaur on her plastic CVS watch. “And I can fly it.” “Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal,” Quinn declares.

8:52am

Julia’s stomach is churning. She knows they didn’t plan on kissing until later in the day but suddenly she is extremely anxious and wants to kiss Quinn at this very moment. As they walk across the quad of Wyatt University, Julia stops for a moment and watches Quinn walk ahead of her. His lime green shirt looks a bit silly next to the deep green grass but this makes Julia want to kiss Quinn even more. Julia considers Quinn from behind. His messy red hair is tousled in every direction and juxtaposes his pink skin.

He has a small red pimple on the back of his neck which makes Julia think about how young he really is, but how mature he is for his age. Quinn actually has quite a few pimples on his face but Julia think they’re cute and dopey. Quinn is so gangly and tall, he seems like he could play Elastigirl if The Incredibles became a Broadway show featuring terrible dancers. Julia then half runs / half walks up behind Quinn and grabs him by the bottom hem of his shirt. She turns him around and is ready to kiss him, but the tip of her white Vans are too excited and step right up on top of Quinn’s beat up Nike tennis shoes.

“Ow!” Quinn yelps, jumping back. “Aggressive!” “Do you have any glass toes?” Julia asks, stepping onto his foot again and shifting her weight. “No, no, it doesn’t feel like it. But some glass is incredibly strong and even the weight of an average sized girl might not shatter it. Maybe crack, but not shatter. Or your toes could be made of that windshield glass, you know, the kind that doesn’t really shatter. Well it does, but it doesn’t break apart. It just sticks together. Are your toes made from windshield glass?”

“You are precisely strange, you tiny human,” Quinn remarks. “Your sanity, it seems, can be much interchanged.” Julia tosses her head back and laughs out loud, her hand instinctively shooting up to grab her hat, keeping it from falling from her head. “Kiss me, Edgar!” Julia asserts. “Lenore, do you hear something?” Quinn says, looking around. Julia laughs, then smiles, then plants her abnormally large lips onto Quinn’s thin, sort of chapped but still cute lips. Julia’s mouth opens a little bit, and their tongues brush a little. It’s a good kiss, absolutely, but Julia’s butterflies have subsided.

Instead focusing on the above average kiss, Julia’s mind starts to wander. Is anyone staring? Is that the only Firefly comeback that Quinn knew? Will their next few kisses feel like this? Is that a sore on Quinn’s tongue? He’s an alright kisser for it being his first time… Is it really his first time? Quinn, on the other hand is infatuated and high. All he wants to do is consume all of Julia all at once.

He wishes he had a million arms so one arm could be on her signature hat, one hand on the nape of her neck, one hand on the small of her back, one hand in the middle of her shoulder blades, one hand on her hip, one hand resting on her cheek, two arms draped around her neck, one hand cupping one of Julia’s breasts. The right one, ideally. Quinn’s heart is racing, his blood is pumping everywhere. Everywhere. Julia’s stomach has dropped because although she can tell Quinn is enjoying it, it seems someone has watered down these fireworks.