I hate New Years celebrations. Not only are they extremely loud, but this New Year we had to celebrate on the couch in my boyfriend’s living room while the rest of our families were in Times Square. Well, everybody except the under-two-year-olds that is. They were currently upstairs sleeping. Will, my boyfriend’s, sister’s daughter Alex was in her crib in the same room as my triplet younger sisters and brother. Which left me sitting on the couch with him, watching the news on the TV.
His broken leg was propped up on the coffee table in front of us, my head leaning sleepily on his shoulder with his arm around my waist. There was still twenty minutes to midnight, so we were both fighting to stay awake. I had already fallen asleep earlier but when Will dozed off and fell over on top of me he woke me up.
I was just falling asleep again when he poked me in my ribs.
“Hey, no falling asleep here,” he said, his speech a bit slurred from exhaustion.
I picked my head up and moved around on the couch until I was in a position uncomfortable enough to keep me from sleeping. My head ended up under Will’s arm with my feet hanging off the back of the couch and my arms crossed in front of me.
“Morgan, what are you doing?” he asked me, amused.
“Not falling asleep,” I replied, though it was muffled by the back of the couch. Then out of the blue I asked, “What’s your New Year’s resolution?”
“Uh…I actually don’t know yet. I haven’t given it much thought,” he told me, waking up more each second.
“I’m going to…I have no idea,” I said hopefully. I was actually going to say something completely different but I stopped myself before I could embarrass myself.
“What? You can tell me.” Agh, no such luck.
“No, it’s stupid,” I insisted.
He didn’t say anything for a minute, so I took the opportunity to sit up again since I wasn’t tired anymore, as weird as that sounded.
“Tell me,” he said simply.
“No. You’re not going to get it out of me that easily.”
“Oh yeah?” he asked with raised eyebrows, sitting up straighter.
The next thing I knew, he was tickling me like there was no tomorrow and I was hysterically laughing on the couch.
“Say you’ll tell me!”
“Never!” I cried.
He just made me laugh harder until I had tears in my eyes.
“Okay, okay! Just let me breathe!”
He thankfully stopped so I could catch my breath and assess the current situation.
On second thought, he could have kept tickling me, ‘cause the current situation was awkward. Very awkward.
Somehow Will ended up lying on the couch and I was straddling him with my hands on his chest for support. I made to get off him, blushing like crazy, but he grabbed my hips and held me there. I could feel my face getting hotter by the second, but strangely enough I didn’t care. All I could concentrate on was that I was sitting on top of him and I could feel every muscle of his chest under my hands.
“Tell me,” he whispered.
“What?” I breathed, getting completely hypnotized by his lime green eyes and forgetting how we got to this moment.
“Your New Year’s resolution, tell me what it is,” he said.
I wracked my brains for my train of thought and what I came up with just made me turn a new shade of red.
“Get my first kiss,” I mumbled reluctantly, only vaguely aware of the people in Times Square starting to count down to the new year from ten.
Will looked surprised. I thought it wasn’t that bad a resolution. After all, I still hadn’t kissed anyone yet. Will was my first non-jerk boyfriend, and, although we had been going out since September, we still hadn’t shared our first kiss.
“What’s yours,” I asked, trying to get off the topic of my resolution.
He held up a finger, signaling that he would tell me in a minute, and pointed to the TV screen, where they were down to three seconds until the New Year.
“TWO! ONE! HAPPY NEW YEAR!” The noise was deafening. Will reached behind him for the remote and pressed the mute button, making the room quiet suddenly.
“Happy New Year,” he said quietly.
“You too,” I whispered. “What’s your resolution?”
“Kiss the gorgeous girl on top of me.”
And just like that I got my first kiss. Just like that Will and I shared our first kiss. Just like that, I had my first kiss of the New Year.
And it was heavenly.
I officially love New Years celebrations. And I needed a new resolution.