He's standing in front of you dressed in a half unbuttoned shirt and yesterdays underwear, his hair rumpled from sleep and a face animated with glee as he screams in delight at your breathlessly blurted out polling summary, and you're grinning back at him, so happy that he's happy that you don't realize he's grabbing your neck with both hands to pull you against him.

You don't realize how close your face is to his until suddenly, unexpectedly, he's kissing you. His mouth is warm and soft, and he has morning breath but there's something else mixed with it and it's not until you pull away and grin somewhat nervously at him, do you realize exactly what it is.

You've just kissed Josh. It doesn't matter that it was from the excitement of your campaign tying in the polls, or from the exhilaration of being so close to your goal, or from the joy of success... you and Josh have just kissed.

Everything is suddenly, unexpectedly, different.

Because his face has changed, and he's looking at you with those eyes, those amazingly expressive eyes, and you can see in them years of everything. And you're staring back at him, knowing that your face is saying exactly the same. And everything around you is quiet and still, with neither of you breathing, and time is suspended, and you think maybe you can see forever. And you know what's coming because of the way he looks.

He's looked at you like this so many times, but never while touching you like this, never with his hands on your neck, fingers pressing so very lightly on your skin that, if it were not for the slight tremble of them, you wouldn't even know they were there.

And you can hear your heart roaring in your ears, and you can hear his as well, and you're two people hovering together on the edge of something magnificent and you want this moment to go on forever, want to live right here in this second of time, the anticipation burning through your body like wildfire, every nerve ending poised for an explosion.

It's a few tiny little ticks of a clock, a few seconds in the meridian of your life, and yet it's the beginning of your life and every moment with him from now on will be because of this kiss. And in his eyes you can see your future, can see years and years of both of you together as one.

And you're both right there, at the same place, at the same time, both of you ready to crash into each other. Both of you aware of what this will mean, and both of you still wanting it nevertheless.

Silence, apart from the sound of your heart. You're not even breathing now, you're just... waiting. Your gaze flicks to his mouth, lips slightly parted, and then back to his eyes, and mimicking you, his eyes soften as they stare down at your own mouth, and he swallows, and you're just... ready.

And then... you can't even hear your heart anymore because it's stopped. You no longer exist in the world because in this moment nothing is moving and nothing is happening. This moment is a nature documentary where the camera is slowed to almost stopping, and you're the droplet of water falling from the leaf, stretching towards the earth, slimmer and slimmer until you hang for the merest microsecond of time before you let go of the safety of familiarity and reach out for the unknown.

You rise on the balls of your feet, leaning forward as his hands pull you close. And his mouth is on yours again and it's... it's...

Silence fades into sound. Roaring, heaving, rushing noise in your ears, crashing through your body, and the room is spinning around, lazily at first, but escalating in speed, matching the spinning in your head and the throbbing of your skin where he's touching you. Your eyes are half closed as your reality shifts and twists as the world swims around you, you and Josh are floating, still and silent within it. There is nothing but the touch of his hands, the taste of his mouth.

His fingers brush along your jaw, sending tingles of lust down your spine, and the hair is raised on your arms and you can feel your nipples tightening as his teeth scrape against your lower lip. His tongue touches yours, gently and tentatively, and a shudder rips through your body and you push yourself forward to keep from slithering to the floor in a puddle of desire.

His body, warm and supple, is pressed against yours top to toe and there's no space between you both because you want to be a part of him, want to feel every single atom of his being within yours, and want to feel his hands, his mouth, and his flesh firm against yours.

His hands leave trails of fire as they move along your jaw, down your neck, across your cheeks... they're everywhere and nowhere. Your skin is a living entity demanding to be touched and whimpering when abandoned. His fingers are feather light, and your face is tingling, your body screaming out for his touch, and you really believe you know what it must be like to be burnt alive.

Your hands lift to stroke his throat, fingers slipping over his skin because you want to make him feel the way you feel, want him to yearn for you as you yearn for him. Your palm caresses his neck, thumb against the curve of his ear, as the world whirls in ever increasing circles and your bodies melt into each other in a desperate attempt to never stop this kiss.

His mouth settles on yours once again, and your arms slide further around his neck, and your head is angled just... so. And his hand is dancing along your jaw, fingers fluttering on your skin and you can't tell where you end and he begins. You're drifting into something exciting and unexplored, but you're drifting together.

And a memory stirs deep within you; a youthful dream hidden away.

You are fourteen, the tallest girl in the class, upset because no one has asked you to a school dance but you go anyway, dateless and dressed in a denim miniskirt and multicolored leg warmers because this is the eighties and style has temporarily gone on vacation. And you hover by the wall while each of your friends are dragged onto the dance floor until you are left alone because the boys' heads only reach your shoulder and they refuse to be seen with you.

You leave early, and come home in floods of tears and lock yourself in your room until your Nonna tempts you to unlock the door with the offer of Tiramisu. She enters your bedroom bearing half a slab of the sickly sweet dessert and two spoons, and perches on your bed and you eat as she regales you with stories of home - home being in the arch of the boot of the 'old country' - and the odd collection of characters who live in her tiny village, even though her tiny village is a city with an international airport and a McDonalds, until you have finished eating and are both flopped on your bed trying not to fall into diabetic comas.

The tears, by this time, have dried on your face, and the cream and sugar has lulled you into a dreamlike state. Nonna is gazing speculatively at you, her brown eyes big and trustworthy, and yet sneaky as all get out - the sneakiness you inherited, the brown eyes, you did not - and you know where she is headed when she asks, as innocently as a little Italian woman can, what is upsetting you.

And she's smiling at you so encouragingly that you tell her, the fears spilling out of you faster than the tears ever could. You cry that you hate how tall you are, how awkward and gangly and freaky you feel around boys - boys who you've just started to notice as possibly becoming something slightly more interesting than only just friends. How you have no idea what to say to someone cute because the words become entangled in your tongue, and with typical teenage anxiety, how you're afraid that no one will ever kiss you and no one will ever love you.

Nonna smiles at you, and tells you not to worry, that you are young and there are thousands of boys out there just waiting to dance with you, waiting to talk to you, waiting to kiss you, boys who would one day be lining up to love you. And all you have to do is find the right one.

She strokes your hair as you lie back against the pillows on your bed and tells you about the man who you will one day find, the man with whom it won't matter how tall you are, or how awkward or self-conscious you feel because when you find him, everything will just... fit.

He'll be the man who you can say anything and everything to, who understands what you're feeling without you having to say it, who finishes your sentences and in who, when you finally kiss him, you can see your future. A man who'll take your hand and open your eyes and instead of just showing you the world, will give you the world as well.

You're fourteen, and a romantic, and you tuck the dream away into your imagination, holding onto it for a few years until life takes you by the shoulders and tells you that you're being silly, and there is no such thing as that man. And you forget for awhile how it should be.

But this morning the dream is reawakening and is whispering in your ear that this man might just be the one your Nonna, in her lyrical, soothing voice, was telling you about. This man who is kissing you in the way you've always longed to be kissed.

In this kiss, you finally understand what she meant by fitting. When two pieces, missing from each other, meet again, and interlock with each other, and become one. When you don't know where one ends and the other begins, and you don't want to know because together is so much better than apart.

When you're a piece of a jigsaw puzzle and you're desperately searching for the other piece to fit into your nooks and crannies, your bumps and lumps, and you're searching through life for it and then one day... it's there. You see it, and reach for it, and meld it to yourself and you finally, finally fit.

You become one within this kiss, for just a brief moment in time.

In these few seconds, with his mouth on yours and your noses caressing, his hand slides off your neck and down your arm, and your body shifts unconsciously, allowing his fingers to gently trail across your breast.

And you let him touch you, his thumb tracing circles around one of your nipples, and there's hardness against you that can only be one thing because of where it's located, but through the heat and the dreamy haze of the feelings roiling inside and around you, you're vaguely aware that you have to stop.

Because in another few seconds, you'll push him backwards onto the bed, and you've just remembered who, exactly, you're kissing. The man whose tongue is in your mouth, and whose burgeoning, morning erection is pressed firmly into your belly.

Josh. The man you know you love even though, depending on what time of the day it is, you sometimes hate. And pushing him onto the bed, no matter how much your body is screaming at you to do so, isn't what you need right now.

You need this kiss, and you know he needs it too because of the way he's touching you. The way his mouth is responding to yours and the way you're molding together like liquid, burning each other with emotion.

It's this kiss, this one moment when everything finally fits, and it just... does not surprise you at all that it's Josh changing your world yet again. Finding parts of you that you never knew existed until the touch of his hands coax you into discovery.

But world outside this kiss reasserts itself with voices coming down the hall and you drag your lips from his as you use a hand to push him away although your skin is still begging for his touch, and you stare at him, wanting to say so much, knowing that you have no time, knowing that you'll have to make the time because, unlike every other randomly odd moment in your lives, this kiss cannot be brushed aside and ignored.

And then you hear someone call his name just outside the room, and he makes a tiny, almost indiscernible whimper of frustration, and turns away from you, shoving his hand through his hair as the door is flung open by the Congressman.

Amidst cheering and hugging, and general, excited merriment, the moment fades away. Two kisses, one energized yet accidental, one slow and deliberately intentional, are forever resigned to your memory as you're dragged back to reality.

You're no longer that one single being with him. No more the finished puzzle because you've both been broken up and put back in the box. No longer part of something perfect and complete in a world of confusion.

For the moment.