It was just about twenty minutes after I stepped off the plane that I had my first kiss with another woman. It was Samantha that made the first move and I was absolutely not expecting it, not expecting it at all. I was sitting there in the back seat. She was sitting in the passenger side in front while Tori drove the car. While I sat there, Samantha just leaned forward toward me. I didn’t know what she was doing at first. I thought maybe, she was trying to look at my necklace. I thought maybe, she was jealous of it. In some of our phone conversations, Tori had explained that her roommate was always the type to get really excited about jewelry. I’d just met Samantha when they met me at the gate to take me to their place for my weeklong visit to my best friend in the world. Maybe my necklace was the most interesting thing about me. So that was my first thought, that she was just looking at my jewelry but she kept leaning forward. So then I assumed that maybe she was looking at my earrings and not at the necklace because she got really close to my face. That was wrong, too. Samantha’s lips met mine. It was utterly unexpected, utterly. I’d been friends with Tori for years and this was the first time we’d seen each other since we’d both gone to separate colleges. I’d flown in just to see her and now her roommate, a girl I just met, was leaning over the front seat and putting her mouth on me. I immediately pulled away and slapped her face as hard as I could.No. That wasn’t what I did at all. That was just what I thought I should do. That was just what I would have told anyone who asked what I would do in those circumstances. I didn’t do that at all. Instead, I kissed her back. It was such a strange thing. I think really, the reason I didn’t react with anger and the reason I didn’t try to pull away was that it was just so different than kissing a man. I’d never experienced anything like it. There was all of the same passion as kissing a man, all of the same sexiness and all of the same urgency, but her tongue moved differently. It was as though her kiss was not taking me but giving to me. I felt her hand running over the side of my face and then her hands moved around to the back of my head. She held me close and held me tightly. Impossibly, I found my own hands reaching up to hold her close as well. It was the strangest and most awkward situation I’d ever experienced in my life; and as for Tori, she seemed to be chuckling a little bit. While Samantha kissed me, I felt the car slowing down and then it stopped; and that was when Samantha finally pulled her mouth off of me.