My first kiss was Justin Hatcher. It was on the playground in third grade. He'd gone through the necessary motions in securing a girlfriend. Starting by pushing me in the mud, ruining my favorite dress stitched with two kittens playing with a ball of yarn around the hem. Then he sat by me at lunch and told me he liked me better than my twin brother. Making him the first, and last, male to think so. After recess one day he slipped a note on my desk, asking if I'd be his girlfriend.

The second I accepted, he planted a wet one on my lips before immediately running away. I think technically we're still going out, since he never officially broke up with me. Or talked to me again until seventh grade when we were paired together in biology. He'd said, "So, Nicky, would you prefer to measure or write?" and I responded with, "You kissed me and asked me out and never spoke to me again." And then he really avoided talking to me. But I digress.

My best friend, however, insists that Jake Thompson was my first real kiss. That was during a game of spin-the-bottle during Lauryn's 14th birthday party. It was a much less romantic tale than my tryst with Justin Hatcher in third grade, but at least Jake and I still speak.

I lost my virginity to Mike Machek after senior prom. I know, how terribly cliché.

And the first time I knew I was in love?

That was junior year of college.

It was made all the more complicated because he annoyed me incessantly. And all the more complicated because he just so happened to be a cocky jerkface who'd never had a real girlfriend in all of his twenty-one years. However, that wasn't even the worst part.

I should never have approached him, I should never have convinced him to help me break up a perfectly happy couple, and I should never, ever have flirted with the idea of being with my brother's best friend.

But I did. And we had. And it was too late.