This Kiss

The first time I lost all memory of Tucker, we had just met.

 

We were seventeen, stuck in the disco room of the children's hospital, both of our heads covered in electrodes wrapped in gauze.

 

Not exactly attractive.

Except we were-attracted, that is.

 

I never got to meet boys my age back then. Or any boys. Mother made sure of that.

 

There was no point, she said. I would forget them the next time I had a seizure.

 

That's right. I didn't mention that. I have epilepsy. It started in kindergarten. Spacing out. My eyes clocking back and forth. Then the whole enchilada. On the ground, shaking all over.

 

Not all my seizures erase my memory. But some do. Every year or two I go down, and bam, that's it. My entire history evaporates like water on a skillet.

 

But on that first magical day, Tucker yelled, "Come here often?" over the mechanical thrashing of a song I'd never heard, at least not since my last memory reset.

 

"Never! Do you?" I yelled back.

 

That was all we got. The disco lights switched to strobes, the kind designed to cause a seizure. That's why I was there. For the wires on my head to collect data. To show the doctors what was going on inside my brain.

 

And hopefully, to help me.

 

I took one more look at him as my legs gave way, and the sizzle in my head turned my vision black.

 

Tucker.

 

I had no idea then that I had just met the love of my life.

 

In a few seconds, I wouldn't remember him at all.

___

This Kiss is an extraordinary romance between two people with epilepsy who fall in love in the toughest of circumstances. As Tucker unfailingly convinces Ava to return to him over and over again, he teaches her that even when memory fails, the heart remembers.