Our Lips Never Met

I feel the curve of her lips with the tip of my finger; soft, delicate, pink, lush, how they taper at the end, how they form a low M. I caress them slowly occasionally pausing for a few beats and then running the tip of my finger along the edges. She is nervous and her lips quiver in between. She parts them to talk, and I place a finger on her lips. Sshhh….And then I rub my thumb along the contours of her lips, on the chin, held her up and then again back to her lovely lips coated with a red lip-gloss.

Words will destroy this moment. We should soak the moment – the moment of anticipation of being kissed, that moment you know you are so close to being kissed, and every cell and nerve in your body is jumping up and down with anxiety. I whistle a sweet tune, she closes her eyes, and her lips part a bit. I move closer to her so that she can feel my breath on her and I can feel her breath on me. I lower my head to kiss her lips. She still has her eyes closed. With my fingers under her chin, I raise her head to kiss her. I stop whistling unable to control myself. Almost there, my lips almost on her lips, and then I pull myself back.

I pat her softly on her cheek and say goodnight. I turn and walk into the street leaving her bewildered and shocked. She is yet to recover from the what-just-happened stage. I whistle and disappear into the night carrying a faint smile and twisted happiness in my mind. Push and pull games are sweet and toxic at the same time. She must be angry, but then my pull at the last minute will push her into my arms and keep the flame going.

The next time when we met, we were returning from a late night movie. We had taken an off-road and switched off the car lights. I was reading her a joke and showing her the funny memes on my mobile. In the mobile’s light, she looked very pretty, melting my heart. She was leaning over me, her right breast rubbing against my shoulder and provoking my imagination of all the nice things I could do to her, and how she would part her lips in pleasure.

She kissed my cheek, my ears, all over my face, just around the corner where my lips ended. She even kissed my Adam’s apple, but not there, on my lips. Revenge huh? Let me break these rules of the push and pull games. It was too much to bear. Let me just kiss her and tell her how much I liked her.

I was like an old champagne waiting to burst open. And just when I held her face in my hands about to kiss her on her lips she said, let us go home. I let her go and reluctantly started the car engine. She carried a now-we-are-even look. I could see a sparkle in her eyes. But at the same time, she twitched her lips expressing how badly she missed being kissed. I dropped her at her house, the same place where I was feeling her lips with the tips of my fingers. I hugged her and said goodbye patting lightly on her head.

The next time when I met her, she was lying on the bed, her lips parted – they looked as if she was smiling, her eyes were closed. I stared at her for a very long time expecting her to kiss on my forehead, to laugh at my jokes. But she was silent. I stroked her forehead gently, controlling my tears. I had this urge to kiss her dead lips, before she was burnt, to know how her lips felt, how they tasted? But I did not. Instead, I kissed her forehead.

My date of two evenings was dead, killed in an accident, due to rash driving by her friend while returning from a party. There were no survivors, all four members including the driver had died. She could have become the love of my life, the way we liked each other, it was pretty obvious. But she was not meant to be mine. I was never meant to kiss her lips, and so in the end too, I did not. Our lips never met, and I let it be like that, the feeling of how badly I wanted to kiss her.

And that is how I wanted to remember her all my life.