First Kiss

The wonderful Amanda Brice is a friend from over at Romance Divas. She’s a lovely lady, a talented writer, Golden Heart alumnae, and just plain fun (she’ll never live down a certain spin-turn-oops in a San Fran Thai resturant. Not only did she write a fun blog about her own first kisses (and who doesn’t love to hear those stories???) but if you go to the bottom, make sure to check out her book trailer for

Do you remember your first kiss?

I so totally do.  Both my first-ever kiss and my first kiss with my husband. Not sure why, but I seem to get urged by others to have that all-important first kiss.

I was 12-going-on-13 when I had my first kiss. I’d been “going out with” Matt (and I put that word in parentheses, because we didn’t really go anywhere) since the junior high Valentine’s Day dance. Mostly we just talked on the phone and sat next to each other at lunch or on the school bus.

Oh, and held hands. I can’t forget that.

Anyway, about a month or so into being boyfriend and girlfriend, our friend John poked his head over the top of the seat on the school bus to ask why he’d never seen us kiss. Of course, a better response than immediately turning a deeper scarlet than the dress I’m wearing today would have been for me to ask why he’d been watching. But that didn’t occur to me at the time.

Instead, my boyfriend Matt said, “We kiss. All the time.” Um, we do?

John said, “Oh yeah?”

So I guess Matt felt the need to live up to his claim, and leaned over and kissed me. Right then and there in front of an entire bus full of 7^th and 8^th graders.

I wish I could say it was magical, that it left me reeling and I saw hearts and flowers or fireworks or all the clichés. But that would be a lie. To be honest, I don’t remember what I felt. I think I was just so surprised at the time.

Fast forward 12 years. I’d been flirting with Mr. Brice for a few months at that point, after inadvertently spitting red wine on him the very first time I met him (at the Student Bar Association party during law school orientation). We were study buddies for first semester exams, and, well, let’s just say that had we flirted a little less we both probably would’ve had much better grades first semester. (Oops!)

Anyway, I went home to visit my parents over Christmas break, but returned before New Year’s because my old roommate Amy came to visit me. We went to Sedona and the Grand Canyon and all the cool touristy places in Arizona, but on New Year’s Eve we went to the Fiesta Bowl Tostito’s Block Party at Tempe Town Lake to watch the fireworks and enjoy the free Bryan Adams concert.

Yes, I said Bryan Adams.

Anyway, I went with my friend who was visiting, plus one of my law school friends, Alyssa. Oh, and Mr. Brice tagged along. Just before midnight, just after Bryan Adams finished singing “Everything I Do (I Do It For You)”, Alyssa started encouraging Mr. Brice to kiss me.

“Kiss her, kiss her, kiss her,” she chanted.

I rolled my eyes. “We’re just friends.

I guess we weren’t really just friends, however, because Mr. Brice listened to Alyssa. And we went on our first official date (a day trip down to Tucson, ending up later that night with yet another kiss – this time in the hot tub) a week later.

We got married two years later.

So both of my most important “first kisses” happened as a result of someone else’s prompting. Weird, huh? Maybe I ought to work that into my books….

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Amanda Brice leads a double life. By day, she’s an intellectual property attorney for a large federal government agency in the Washington, DC area. In her spare time (when she’s not wrangling an 8-month-old and a terrorist – I mean a two-year-old), she writes young adult fiction. A two-time Golden Heart finalist, Barnes & Noble called her newest release, Pointe of No Return, a “compelling read from an author you need to know.”