Love Flavoured Kisses

by Alessa

She raises up on her toes and draws me closer. She kisses me, and I try hard not to make that face—that scrunched-up face with my nose wrinkled and my mouth in a grimace.

"What?" she asks, with a concerned look in her big eyes.

"Oh, nothing," I say. "It's just that... Do you have to put that stuff on your lips?"

"You mean the lip gloss stuff? What's so bad about it?"

"It's petroleum-based." She gives me a look. "It tastes nasty," I try instead.

"What are you talking about? It has no taste; that's why I like it. Would you rather kiss a girl with chafed lips or a girl with Vaseline lips?" My little sweetheart reasons.

"I wouldn't mind chafed lips; Vaseline's awful." Then I make a joke about having them chafe due to her lips touching mine so often. She smiles.

"Maybe you could borrow your mother's lip gloss or some kind of flavoured stuff?" I ask, hoping her mother won't find out about our kissing games. I think of my first tube of lip gloss. This nasty, sticky, glittery peach stuff that looked pretty if nothing else. I was her age back then.

"I could, but I don't think you'll like it."

"It's worth a shot," I say with a grin.

So we try it. She finds two unopened tubes of her mother's classic lip smackers: strawberry and blue raspberry. I decide to try blue raspberry first.

She puts it on; it doesn't taste too bad, though she's not sure what blue raspberry is. I lean closer to her little face for a lingering kiss, tasting... I make the face.

Trial two, the strawberry. She thinks it's much better than the blue raspberry, and it's sparkly. Always a plus. Another slow-tasting kiss. Still, the face.

She breaks out the nasty peach lip gloss just for fun. She laughs at how my face goes from disgust to astonishment at how anyone would stand to have that sticky mess on their lips.

She finds another tube called Sugar Plum. Her Granny's gift from last Christmas. Apply, kiss, taste—I make the face.

We run to the store. I pick out a wide variety, everything from the type of lip gloss you apply with a little brush to the kind that comes in a tube, to Chapstick, to more flavours of lip smackers.

We stand in awe of all the different varieties of colours, flavours, and brands lip products come in. She finds normal lip-coloured, bright red, rose pink, black, blue, and even green—in both lipstick and lip gloss. Cake pop, vanilla, cotton candy, Starburst, Skittles, and other candy-flavoured and fruit-flavoured lip smackers. Chapstick that tastes like mint, soda, sugar, and even Girl Scout cookies.

We make fun of the themed Chapstick. Who would want a 'My Little Pony'-flavoured lip gloss? She likes the sound of crazy mixed flavours like watermelon-strawberry and even mango-cherry. Banana-orange.

When we get weird looks from other shoppers and from the cashier, we laugh and say it's for our school science project. We're running an experiment. So, with our bags full of every flavour and type of lip product imaginable, we set off back home to find the one I wouldn't turn my nose up at.

And we try them all.

Trial after trial of every sticky, glittery, fruity, pasty, even nasty lip gloss, lip smacker, and chapstick. Apply, kiss, taste... I make the face. Try again.

Finally, we reach the end of our romantic endeavour. Lips red but very moisturised, taste buds fried, and about a hundred freshly opened tubes of lip stuff later, no success. Apply, kiss, taste... I make a face for every single one. Not one passed the face test.

She wipes her mouth on the back of her sleeve, takes a sip of water, and sighs.

"Well, that was a failure," she says, looking at the dejected tubes on the floor.

"No, I wouldn't say a failure," I reckon.

"Pointless, maybe?" she asks.

"No, not quite pointless either."

"Then what would you say this was?"

"An amazing, creative way of spending the past hour kissing the girl I love."

She smiles and leans in to give me a lingering kiss from her little, warm lips. Her smile is wide as I pull back and exclaim, "That's it!"

"What's it?" she laughs.

"My love, that flavour right there! All natural. You flavoured, love-flavoured. You don't have to put on anything to please me." She kisses me again, just for good measure. "I just have to say one thing."

"What's that?" she wonders, her eyes sparkling.

"We'll have to catch up with all the kissing we have missed."

The End