WE ACTUALLY KISSED

When he turns around to face me, the luminous light from both the moon and the blanket of stars twinkling like diamonds in the night sky colours the shock staining his face.

My heart immediately starts thundering in my chest and I swallow a gulp down my throat. He definitely was not expecting me to say that. I wasn't expecting me to say that either. I don't know if I even thought about those words. They just escaped me unwittingly. I'm not going to take them back though. I meant them, I realise. I have never been as worried as I am right now.

I have confessed my feelings multiple times, that's a different story. I just asked to kiss him. Still, he has not said anything. He just stares at me stunned.

With a sudden burst of courage, I lean into him in a laboured manner and my lips slightly brush against his.

A gasp leaves his parted lips and I cautiously peek up at him through my eyelashes, to make sure… I don't know what to make sure of.

He does not instantly wretch away from me nor does he push me away which encourages me to close the tiny distance between us. Slowly, my eyes flutter shut and I firmly press my mouth onto his. He remains dead still. I do not move my lips just yet either. It still gets my heart palpitations through the roof and the butterflies in my stomach vigorously fly around.

After a couple of seconds of neither one of us taking the kiss any further, I anxiously draw away from him and my eyes shoot open to nervously gauge his reaction.

His are still closed and I stare at him. His eyebrows twitch a bit and I wonder what he is thinking right at this moment. When he finally opens his eyes, his glimmering heterochromatic eyes connect with mine. Our eyes lock in a silent exchange of emotions and I get lost in the fervency in his stare.

He does not say anything.

My anxiety spikes.

Maybe I shouldn't have…

I don't expect it, because of how quick his movements are, but when he leans back into me, I quickly balance myself with my hand on the rough bark of the log.

Wantonly, his lips crash back against mine and this time my eyes remain open as I'm the one slightly caught off guard.

Not for long.

I don't see his hand coming up when my eyes flutter shut, but I do feel his soft palm gently cupping my cheek as he angles my face up to deepen the kiss. My heart races with a mixture of excitement and trepidation but I manage to relax the deeper into him I allow myself to fall. His lips parting prompts me to do the same and he tastes sweet, like marshmallows. I wonder what he tastes on my lips. Probably the cider I was drinking.

The softness of his lips against my own and the warmth of our breath mingling as one sends a surge of electricity courses through my body. The kiss is sweet and gentle yet it speaks volumes without a single word spoken.

My fingers twitch and anxiously, I palm my hands when a thought so loud enters my mind. I want to touch him, I realise. Except I can feel how irritably sticky my palms are from the s'mores.

Instead of his skin, my hands move up to grip his shirt. His cologne fills my senses and I almost drown in his masculine scent, a moan sounding in the back of my throat. My hands tighten on him and I desperately draw him closer to me, my lips moving against his passionately as I try to get as much out of this moment as I possibly can. He tilts his head to the side and his lips against mine fill me with a warm feeling.

Is this that Autumn warmth he was talking about?

The sounds of crickets and other animals moving in the brush get drowned out and all I can hear is my beating heart.

When I start growing breathless, I softly pull away to inhale some oxygen into my lungs. Still, his lips are featherily brushing against my swollen ones. He sounds just as breathless as I do and when our eyes meet, all I can focus on is the feeling of his soft lips against mine. My eyes then flutter up to find him looking at me with a mixture of adoration and vulnerability, and with a tender smile, he reaches out to hold my hand.

And I can't help thinking I might be falling for Kai Singh.

The noises all around us ring loud. Everything seemingly gets louder during the night. Perhaps because the rest of the world has fallen asleep.

The stones crunch beneath every single step we take, the crickets hiding somewhere in every brush crick as loud as possible, like the sort of attention-hogging insects they are and even the wind is whispering lowly every time it whooshes past us. Even with all these noises filling my senses, nothing sounds louder than my heart beating hard against my ribcage.

I peek down at my hand warmly engulfed within his hand, our fingers intertwined, and I can't contain the dopey smile that kisses my lips. Then I bring my free hand and lightly brush my fingers against my bottom lip, their slight swollenness serving as a reminder about what just happened a couple of minutes ago.

We actually kissed.

When his head turns to glance at me, I hurriedly put my hand down and try to feign callousness by glancing around casually.

An amused chuckle leaves his mouth.

We come to an immediate stop when we are somewhere in between both of our cabins. This is where we have to unfortunately part. Our hands don't let go of each other. As always, my skin is freezing in comparison to his. I have this theory that I might just be a reptile.

Our eyes meet and he has this large grin on his face. It creates those small craters in his cheeks and even though I can barely see the beautiful jade-brown colours of his eyes, his intense stare still has me on the verge of breathlessness.

Bashfully, I avert my gaze, gnawing down on the inside of my lip when my face starts burning up. He takes a step closer to me which causes my eyes to quickly bounce up to meet his again. I can feel the warmth emitting from his body. That is how close he is.

Slowly, his eyes flutter shut and he starts leaning into me. My fingers nervously tighten around his and my eyes drink him in before I close my eyes too. His lips softly brush against mine.

"Seong Jin."

I spring out of my skin when that all too familiar, monotonous voice breaks through the cloudy haze that entrapped me in its welcoming hands.

Turning around, I catch sight of Dominic standing a few metres away from us and looking at us in confusion.

Now my heart, which was once fluttering within its cavern delightfully, has been replaced with fear being its reason to pound hard against my chest. His gaze travels down and he narrows his eyes at our intertwined hands, and I hurriedly drop his hand to nervously tangle them in front of me. From the corner of my eye, I don't miss the look of hurt on his face from my actions.

Everything between the three of us grows awkwardly silent.

"I've been looking for you everywhere," Dominic is the first to break the silence with his blandly spoken words and he questions, "Where have you been?"

"Uh… why have you been looking for me? I said I was going to hang out for a bit. Do you remember I said that to you before you went back to the cabin? I was on my way back though."

His eyes flicker all over my face enquiringly and I swallow a gulp down my throat. Hopefully, he does not dissect my peculiar behaviour. He does know that I tend to stammer out a bunch of incoherent nonsense whenever I get confronted.

"I was looking for you so I could tell you that I'm leaving."

My eyebrows flick up in shock. "What? Why?"

"I just got a call from my mum. My brother is in the hospital, so I need to hurry back home."

"Oh, is he okay?"

"I don't know."

Again, we get swallowed by another round of silence and the crickets around us grow unusually louder.

My eyes flicker around.

If his brother is currently in the hospital, then why exactly was he looking for me? He didn't need to do that. He could have just written me a note or sent me a text to explain his disappearance. The note could have been sloppily written and the text could have had incorrectly spelled words and I still would have understood.

"You didn't have to come and tell me that," I say, reiterating my train of thought to him. "You could have just left. I would've understood."

"Yeah, but I was hoping you would come with me."

My eyes widen in shock. "Oh."

"You don't have to if you don't want to."

"No, it's just… uh," I stutter out and then my eyes find the taller boy who has been quietly standing beside me, just widely watching us interact with each other.

"You should go," he says to me quietly, nodding adamantly.

For a while, I keep looking at him to try and see if he really is okay with me leaving with Dominic especially after the moment we shared a couple of minutes ago and I surprisingly do not see any semblance of objection in his eyes. He stands there, as open as he always is with his facial expressions.

When he smiles at me reassuringly, I am immediately filled with this feeling of assurance.

This might be another reason why I like him.

He genuinely is a good guy.

I regret dropping his hand like that. It seemed like it hurt him. It seemed like I hurt him.

"Alright," I respond with a whisper.

"By the way, what should I tell the others when they ask me about it?" he courteously asks, glancing over at Dominic.

"Just tell them a family member is in the hospital," he says to him dismissively.

"Okay."

Before following after Dominic, I jokingly say to Kai, "Don't drown."

A smile breaks out over his face and he laughs before bobbing his head up and down, muttering under his breath bashfully that he will keep that in mind.

When he spins around on his heels and strolls away in the opposite direction, for a couple of seconds, I keep staring at his retreating form until Dominic clears his throat and the questioning look he gives me has me gnawing on the inside of my bottom lip. Fortunately, he disregards his suspicion and tells me that we should hurry. Then together we make our way to the car park to get in his car.

Once seated in the passenger seat with Dominic in the driver seat, for a while he doesn't move. Curiously, I glance over at him and I don't miss the shadow that colours the side of his face.

"Do you want me to drive?"

"Do I want to die?" he muses rhetorically.

"Alright, there's no need for that," I mutter with an amused grin painting my lips and I turn around to reach for my seatbelt before he can remind me to. For the fun of it, I say to him laughingly, "Put your seatbelt on."

And, fortunately, a lopsided grin tugs onto his lips.