“Like—you never get over the person you kissed?”
Ashley nodded. “Pretty much.”
My mother and Ashley both turned to study me, like this felt promising.
“Whowasyour first kiss?” Ashley asked then.
I shrugged, likeDuh. “Finn Turner.”
“What!” Ashley shrieked.
“Our Finn?” my mom asked, pointing in the direction of the Turner house down the street.
“Yeah,” I said. “It was a neighborhood kids’ game of truth or dare. He had to kiss me—blindfolded—out behind the sports shed at school.”
“He was blindfolded?” Grandma Dodie asked.
“Iwas blindfolded,” I said.
“How old were you?”
“Ten.”
“And he was—”
“Thirteen, I guess.”
“Bit of an age difference,” Ashley said.
But I wasn’t having it. “Harrison Ford hastwenty-twoyears on his wife, and they’re doing fine.”
Ashley was already pulling out a yellow legal pad to take notes. “Was it a good kiss?”
“It was.”
“Good enough to imprint on?”
I shrugged. “Good enough to spark a massive crush that lasted six years.”
“That’show that crush of yours started?” Grandma Dodie asked.
“Yep. It started with that kiss, and it didn’t fade until after he went off to college. Even that took a year.”
Totally unrequited, by the way.
“Oh, my god,” Ashley said. “Why didn’t you tell us this sooner?”
I lifted my shoulders. “Because I didn’t know it was relevant?”
“It’s notrelevant,” Ashley said. “It’severything!”
The rest of us took that in. Then I said, “It is?”
And Ashley said, “Yes. Because we just solved all your problems.”
“Allof them?” I challenged—just as my mom, delighted, said, “We did?”
“Yes,” Ashley answered us both. Then she tapped on the stack of RSVP cards she’d been sorting and said, “Because that very same Finn—that very samenewly divorcedFinn—just RSVPedyesto the wedding.”
