All of our little demonstrations of affect that night and on the following days didn't go unnoticed by Brooke, who made sure to try to talk some sense into me as soon as we got some time alone. After my birthday, Sam and I had become a little more touchy than usual, with random kisses on the cheek and lingering hands here and there, but I tried reassuring my friend that it was completely platonic as we both understood things couldn't go any further.
Which was complete bullshit.
From my birthday's night onwards, I had realised that my crave for Sam wasn't just completely physical as I had thought so. I started to pay attention to all the little details, his attentiveness and chivalry whenever it came to me, without losing the all the teasing manners and jokes that drove me crazy. And I then understood that I really wanted him, not just for his good looks and body, which was perfect to my eyes. I wanted something more. Something that I couldn't have but was still at the tip of my fingers, tempting me 24/7. I really didn't know what was going on in Sam's head, but I could tell he was having a little bit of a struggle too, as his eyes showed me both desire and frustration every time they met mine, while his hands didn't hesitate to graze over my skin whenever they could. The sexual tension was palpable a hundred miles away from us, and I knew Brooke hadn't bought any of the shit I had been telling to reassure her, but I still couldn't bring myself to confront the situation. I knew that if I dared to finally bring it up and try to talk with Sam about it, the prospects wouldn't favour my wishes even if he felt the same way.
That Friday, Danny had the brilliant idea of going to the movies all together. It had been a pretty lame day for taking into consideration we were college students. We were all hanging out in our apartment, as always, doing the uttermost nothing instead of going out or doing something fun. We were just laying down in the living room with some shitty show on the TV none of us was actually paying attention to. Danny, Brooke and I were all squished on the couch while Sam was sitting on a pile of cushions on the floor to the side of the coffee table; the four of us never fitted into our beloved piece of furniture altogether. He wasn't even sitting close to me, but I couldn't ignore his presence, as his eyes were fixed on my face ever since we had sat down. Even though there was no way on Earth to hide it and both Danny and Brooke knew what was going on, we had never been too blatantly obvious about our attraction when they were around. All our little subtle moments always took place mostly when we were alone, as we knew that even if in reality they were just trying to protect us and would always support us, our best friends didn't exactly approve of us getting sexually involved again if we pretended to keep on living together. But given the fact that Brooke was literally napping and Danny was too focused on texting Mackenzie to my side, Sam's eyes couldn't prevent staring at me in silence, biting his lip in thought every now and then with a look I couldn't decipher, analysing every single one of my features while unintendedly sending chills all over my body. He had never stared at me like that before, as all of our teasing consisted of being a bit touchier but never doing anything too direct that would clearly demonstrate that we were indeed carving for the other. So, his piercing eyes easily made me nervous, not knowing what the meaning behind of them was.
When Daniel gave up on texting his girlfriend and suddenly suggested we did something about our shitty afternoon, I quickly agreed, feeling kind of bored and not being able to deal with Sam's stare anymore without jumping and kissing his plump lips passionately. Danny was pretty excited for this new movie that had come out the previous week and he still hadn't watched, so after checking showtimes on his phone and finding it was being shown in half an hour, he decided we would definitely go to the movies. At first Brooke opposed to the idea, waking up to the sudden conversation and claiming she was pretty tired, but eventually agreed as we were all going and she didn't feel like dragging herself back to her apartment and dealing with her "noisy" sister yet.
