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She didn't look like herself, although she guessed that there was a first time for everything. And sometimes that first time became every time.
Not that she expected that to happen in this instance.
No, today was the first - and probably last - time for her to be standing in a waterlogged shed on the beach, the floor covered in a fine dusting of sand, so ubiquitous that it was even on her the stool she stood on, coarse and sun-warmed against her skin; she was standing on a stool because today was also the first time for her to wear black and silver jeweled barefoot sandals with a high-low off shoulder wedding dress and a subdued birdcage veil that was partially obscuring her purple smokey eye, and all of those first times were because she, for the first time, was getting married.
So no, she did not look like herself, but there was a first time for everything and that time was today.
She was getting married! She should be extravagant and beautiful and otherworldly, and she was extravagant and beautiful!
But . . .
“What's wrong?” Momo asked, her stalwart maid of honor always right by her side. She was doing up Kyouka's dress, her careful hands looping threads over buttons and tying them tight, but she paused and looked over Kyouka's shoulder, her eyes looking for Kyouka's in the mirror.
“It's just not what I expected, I guess.”
“This isn't the fabulous beach wedding you always dreamed of?” Momo asked, her hand slipping from Kyouka's back to her shoulder, fingers warm and long. Kyouka reached up to lay her hand over Momo's.
“No, the wedding is perfect! I just always thought. . .”
“You'd be marrying me?” Momo asked, raising a perfectly arched eyebrow at her in the mirror.
“That'd I'd be marrying someone I loved!” Kyouka giggled, leaning back against Momo. The taller girl's arms slipped around her waist, holding her tight and safe. Kyouka smiled warmly, and acquiesced with “I guess that'd be the same as marrying you, though.”
Momo pressed a soft kiss to Kyouka's cheek, leaving the faintest imprint of red lipstick in her perfect foundation. Part of her wanted to fix it, following the unstated but widespread rule of not getting married with your girlfriend's lipstick smeared on your face, but a greater part of her wanted to keep it as it was, her heart protesting her perfectly logically but loveless marriage.
Kyouka allowed herself this moment, this one calm moment of her and Momo and no one else, of the warm sand at her feet and her lover's warm body against her back. She didn't know when she'd get this again - for the very least, not anymore today.
Momo searched for her eyes in the mirror, a sudden seriousness to them.
“You look gorgeous,” she murmured, and Kyouka felt her face flush.
“With this much makeup, anyone would look gorgeous,” she claimed.
“You'd look gorgeous without it - especially in this dress,” Momo argued, and she pulled away from Kyouka. Before Kyouka could be upset about the lost of contact, Momo had grabbed her and spun her around so that they were face to face. Momo slung her arms about Kyouka's waist again, her hands resting on the small of her back.
“At our wedding, you'll have to wear a burlap sack so that you don't look prettier than me,” Momo said, startling a bark of laughter out of Kyouka.
“You'd have to wear a paper bag over your face for me to be prettier than you!” She said, and Momo had the nerve to look offended.
“But if I covered my face, how would I stare at you adoringly?” She asked, and Kyouka continued to laugh - giggle, really.
“How about we get married in the dark while wearing smocks over our clothes?” She offered, and Momo sniffed haughtily.
“Only if they're designer smocks,” she said, making Kyouka giggle more.
“Obviously - I simply wouldn't have it any other way.” Kyouka tried to copy the inflection of some of Momo's more elitist family, and the comparison must have been close because that was what finally broke Momo.
They giggled like schoolgirls, wrapped up in each other and their love, basking in its warmth and comfort. The next few years may not be easy for their relationship - not when Kyouka was technically married to someone else - but if nothing else, they'd have this. This moment in a water logged shack, with her in a wedding dress and Momo in her bridesmaid dress and them intertwined in a giggling embrace.
All of Kyouka's melancholy had fled her, replaced with laughter and the most intense love she had ever felt. They looked into each other's eyes as their giggling died down, saying both nothing and million things at once.
“I love you,” she whispered. Momo smiled.
“I love you, too,” she whispered, her eyes a little watery, and Kyouka leaned forward to kiss her.
It wasn't their first kiss - that had been back in Japan, only a few weeks after they had met. But it almost felt like the first; she still felt her heart soar as soon as their lips met, want and infatuation boiling up and over, her love for Momo spilling out of her body. Her arms went to hold the taller woman, holding her close but wanting her closer, closer than physically possible. Her too expensive and too fancy lipstick was probably smudging, and she certainly her gotten some of Momo's strawberry chapstick all over her face, but she didn't care in that moment, didn't care how she'd explain away the indiscretion. All she cared about right then was Momo, and the way her lips felt on hers, and how much she loved her, and the sand she felt at her feet.
When they pulled away, they were breathless, both by the immensity of the love they shared that always threatened to knock Kyouka off her feet, and from the sheer length if their kissing. Momo was now wearing smudged lipstick the same color as Kyouka, and the thought of that they must look like threatened to start another giggle fit.
“Wow,” Momo said, her voice approaching something like awe. But there was something sad about her eyes. “I don't know how I'm going to watch you kiss him like that at the altar.”
“I definitely won't be kissing him like that -”
“Oh?”
“- and anyway, I am going to be thinking of you the entire time.”
“What will be doing in those thoughts?” Momo asked, reaching up to brush back a piece of Kyouka's hair that had fallen loose of her perfect hair style.
“This,” she said, leaning forward to peck Momo on the lips.
‘And this, and this, and this, and this” she just kept repeating, kissing Momo between each one until her girlfriend was a giggling mess in her arms.
Just as she was leaning in to kiss Momo deeply again, there was a loud sound outside of the shed, which gave them just enough time to jump away from each other before Kyouka's cousin came barreling in.
The moment was gone, lost forever, but she knew that whatever happened, she'd still have the memory of it.