It was scary, at first. The feeling. The weird tickle I get on my lips when people I love kiss other people. I thought at first it was only romantic. The first time it happened, I was told five minutes later that Tyler had kissed Jesse on the swing set. But that belief faded quickly. For one, my parents were definitely never romantic for me. But my father kissed my mother and there it was. And then my sister kissed her boyfriend, and all the weird fear faded away.

I like knowing people love each other. But my family isn’t the touchy type. A peck here and there, of course, but they show affection in other ways. So the feelings were few and far between.

But there were there. So when my husband, my darling soulmate, the light of my life, apple of my eye, headed off to work and my lips tingled not ten minutes later, I knew to not be nervous. I couldn’t drop my daughter off at school that day, and she demanded kisses from anyone saying goodbye.