An irritatingly forceful fluttering pulses in my chest. Like wild horses, I think, and I picture them running powerfully across a dry, dusty terrain, kicking up clouds of dirt behind them.
She's always been there; a friend, a best friend even. But never have I seen her in this light. Her edges soften like the feathered pages of old books. Her hazel eyes possess pools of history and hope for the future, stories and questions, and yet still they hold the answers to so very many burning questions I'd pondered all my life. The many hues and shapes and emotions swell and swirl around and around. Amongst the perfect confusion, there is one truth: she is beautiful.
I'm retracing the steps of how I got to this point in my mind. Her words and mine trail around each other, like lines on a map. And then, in one ideal moment, they coincide seamlessly.
I love you.
Vicious rumors spread through school throughout the next week, like spilled punch crawling up the fibers of a napkin. I'm more disconcerted than I show, but she just stays cool and calm, holding my hand through it all and beaming, like I'm some kind of trophy and the bitter remarks are made by jealous losers.
It's pitch-black in the basement with the lights turned off. The only source of illumination is the softly glowing full moon sending evanescent rays through the small window near the ceiling. We're laying side-by-side contently on the extra bed. The night is sweet, nearly unqualified. But something is missing. Something substantially important.
She starts to say something, a nervous twitching of the vocal cords, but stops. There's nothing but silence.
And then she takes me by surprise with sudden movement. She's leaning over me. I can feel her hot breath on my face. And faster than the ticking of the little red hand on a clock, soft, warm, slightly sticky lips meet mine, and part from them again. It's only a second, maybe two, a tiny fragment of a moment of my life; but it's enough. Enough so that this is something I'll never forget.
