The first girl I kissed tasted like caramel.

(Not the sugary kind.)

She wasn't beautiful—all hard angles, with a stupid low laugh at the wrong jokes that nobody would laugh at.

I didn't remember her name, but I remembered I kissed her, and she kissed me back with more enthusiasm than I needed and didn't seem to hesitate when I tugged her closer, didn't seem to care if my kisses were sloppy and my hands fumbled as fingers slipped under the hem of her shirt. Her moans against my neck was wet, her dark skin warm under my palms, and the world narrowed to the sensations of her lips pressing against mine, nothing was more important than my lighter frame pushing her heavier body down into the mattress. The winter afternoon light filtered through the window, a bare ghost of sunlight lingered on my eyelids.

(She reminded me of the little candy squares I used to steal from the convenience store. Hard and smooth, the sweet slid across my tongue, the bitter aftertaste of coffee hit the back of my throat whenever I swallowed. Dad used to forbid me to eat those.

Kissing her was like eating one of those candies behind his back,

I couldn't say whether I loved it because it was amazing or I loved it because I did it and I got away with it.

Only that I wanted to do it again, and again, and again, just to experience the fleeting euphoria. Rushed through it, to catch the high.

It was a powerful feeling—having something you weren't supposed to want, to have.

Perhaps this was Eve felt as she sank her teeth into the crisp flesh of the forbidden fruit. I was addicted to the feeling, to the implications and the consequences. I couldn't stop if I wanted, too.)

We kissed once, twice. Maybe more from there. I don't really know.

All I knew was that it didn't stop at that one study day. It continued. Snowballing. Snowballing. Snowballing until it burst open in a spray of dust and particles.

We were both pushing too far at the wrong time, then yells ensued and it just became draining to keep up. The sweet turned acrid, 

I guessed I could see how it went down from miles away, though somehow at the moment when I hung up on her and blocked her number, everything between us felt momentous and there was a gaping hole in my head where the shallow dopamine would have filled. A numb sensation, where reality didn't quite registered.

(Like a sugar-crash, after the candy had melted.)