Memory Lane

Part 11: Day and Night

The first time you kissed me, I thought it was an accident. You were crying again and like all the other times you sobbed into my shoulder, you refused to tell me what made you so distressed.

I held you and rubbed your back because I didn't know what else to do. You were heartbreakingly beautiful. Your lashes were slick with tears; your nose and cheeks were pink with the effort of weeping. Even in your despair, I was hopelessly attracted to you.

My heart was in my throat as guilt and fear swirled around in my chest. There was a time and place for my feelings and I couldn't think of a less appropriate time for them aside from a funeral.

So you can imagine my surprise when your lips crashed into mine. It was a hard kiss, all teeth and resistance because you caught me off guard. You couldn't have meant it because of the way it hurt both of us, but we stayed like that for a while as your kiss slowly softened.

I allowed you to devour me in my bed beneath the warm glow of the old lamp on my bedside table. I was consumed by the taste of your strawberry lip gloss and the smell of your vanilla perfume. Overwhelmed, I closed my eyes and thought only of you.

Of course, that was when you decided to pull away. You looked at me as if you were seeing me for the first time, a long stare that would have been uncomfortable from anyone else. But the blue of your eyes and the gold of your hair were more familiar to me than the lines on my palms. You were etched into my very being and it seemed that you realized something that I had known ever since I met you.

We belonged together. It didn't matter how, whether as friends or lovers. At that moment, there was no other place in the universe more meant for you than my bed.

And it felt so wrong. I saw the panic in your eyes as you remembered that you had a boyfriend even though you just kissed your best friend.

It was a fluke. At least that was what your face told me. Sometimes friends accidentally kiss. I chalked it up to you experimenting with your body and closed my lamp, letting you snuggle in my arms as neither of us dared to breathe a word about what just happened.

I accepted the fact that you couldn't care for me the same way I cared for you. I told myself that my mind was playing tricks on me. The way you held my hand and lingered in my touch were figments of my imagination. And the way you kissed me, especially the way your lips moved against mine ...

Suffice to say, I had trouble sleeping that night. You slept better than you had in ages, but I was plagued with new demons.

Because now I knew I definitely liked girls. There was no question about my feelings. Before, I could pretend that I was eventually going to start liking boys and that my eyes would stop wandering to the wrong gender. But our kiss had dashed all hopes of that happening.

I loved you and I was certain that these weren't the kinds of feelings that friends had for each other.

But there was no way you were going to return those feelings. During the day, you ignored me and spent every second with your boyfriend. I should have given you the cold shoulder in return, and yet I couldn't bring myself to do something as simple as that.

As I sat with Evan and fiddled with the bracelet he gave me, I stared at you shamelessly. I looked at your skimpy top and the shorts that barely covered your ass, an outfit that would have easily given your mother a heart attack. I thought about your body, pondering over it thoroughly and ruminating about your curves.

I was going insane. If I couldn't have you, then my mind schemed to find some other way to covet a part of you. And my brain, being the brilliant thing that it was, chose your body.