o Alicia Danielle Voss-Guillén, author of Price World Publishing's Tori Series for middle grade readers, as well a previous short story ("One Winter Moment") for Short Story Press, returns with another poignant tale of the difficulties and dilemmas imposed by impossible loves.
o "A Final Kiss" relates the wedding day of Natalie St. John, an educated young woman from a wealthy New England family who must come to terms with the fact that she's made a life altering mistake.
o As an idealistic seventeen-year-old, Natalie meets and falls in love with Joey Renetti, a charming young waiter at a local Italian café. From the very beginning, it is evident to Natalie that the two are a match made in heaven. But Natalie's uppity parents are far from being in agreement with their daughter.
o Natalie's mother insists that a life with a lower-class restaurant worker is not any kind of a future for a girl of Natalie's breeding and social standing. She insists that her daughter meet and mingle with other young men. At first, Natalie is defensive of her relationship with Joey and goes to all lengths to protect it, even after she leaves home to attend a prestigious university.
o But slowly and steadily time works it wiles, and Natalie's parents succeed in driving a wedge between their daughter and the young man she truly loves. They are ecstatic when Natalie meets Adam Pennington, a well-to-do businessman and New England socialite who can provide their daughter with the finer things in life. Resigned to a future without Joey, Natalie embarks on a relationship with Adam, and the two soon become engaged. A mere month after Natalie's graduation from university, the wedding will take place. But as the big day draws close, Natalie finds herself experiencing niggling doubts about Adam, and try as she might, she is unable to put Joey Renetti out of her mind. Even so, she goes through with the ceremony, assuring herself that everything will be all right. After all, Adam is kind, loving, and caring. Natalie has no doubt that he will make a good husband.
o But when Natalie unexpectedly runs into Joey Renetti at her wedding reception, all her old longings resurface, and she must confront the reality of the life-changing mistake she made once and must live with for the rest of her days....
o Told through an alternating series of present-day happenings and flashbacks to Natalie's eighteenth year, A Final Kiss explores the consequences we bring about ourselves when we close our hearts to their inmost desires.
o Alicia Voss-Guillén was inspired to write A Final Kiss as she pondered the possibility of such a life-altering regret as Natalie faces in the story. "The concept of a bride meeting up with her one and only true love on the day she is married to a different man was just too good to pass up," she says. The author infuses her character with the human emotion that she believes would be inherent in a similar scenario, and she hopes that none of her readers will ever have to deal with Natalie St. John Pennington's level of regret.
Short Story Press publishes short stories written by everyday writers.
