Ross and I had always had chemistry. From the moment we met in year eight, I knew I fancied him. His short blonde hair and wide, owl-like baby blue eyes always had me feel like he could see straight through my spaghetti-strap tops to the skin underneath. Just thinking about it made the hairs on my neck stand on end, and gave me that cold, dizzying feeling in the stomach.
Nothing happened until year nine, when we made out at a school disco. We danced together all night. I remember rubbing myself against him, his hands on the insides of my thighs, or my ribs right below my breasts. I wondered sometimes if those accidental brushes against my more intimate parts had been on purpose or not. I led him out to the lobby of the nightclub and we held each other very close, until our foreheads and nose-tips touched, and we kissed. I'd never forget how that kiss made me feel. I'd strained to achieve it with a million men and women since, but nothing had ever compared. The heat round my collar, at my fingertips and between my legs gently throbbing, pulsing like my passion was alive.
But it wasn't until the upper sixth that we finally authenticated our feelings for each other. I was twenty, he was just nineteen... He'd been in a two-year relationship with a girl called Charlotte – a small, skinny girl with a huge nose and ridiculous afro cum bird nest hairdo. They'd had a pretty public sex-life, which she had said was amazing, and he had never said much of. It irritated me how she wound her arms around his neck like a snake, strangling him. He rarely enjoyed her company, and had lost many friends because of her, and I decided then and there to end it. She gave any girl a dirty look if she simply said hello to him, but as one of his oldest friends, I could go the extra mile. I flirted and cuddled him in front of her, and it began to drive her mad. Eventually, after two years, she dumped him for 'cheating on her'. One of their many petty squabbles. It was a good, if difficult, time for Ross, and of course, for me.
One night, some time later, we'd been watching films on a night in with some friends; James, Lawrence, Elisha and Pipa, before we all went our separate ways to university and such like. James -gay- and Pipa had both retired to my bedroom, and Lawrence had fallen asleep on the couch, and Elisha was upstairs on the phone to her girlfriend Chloe, so Ross and I went all the way to the top floor living room to watch some more films without disturbing them. It was the usual story – tucked up in bed watching a film, gradually edging closer, touching but not admitting it, eventually linking hands... and then the film ends. Awkward? Yeah. But surprisingly cosy with him, I got up and switched off the telly, climbed into the futon and sunk into the sheets. It was too dark to see each other, so I kept my eyes open, looking into the blank space where he was. Listening to the sound of his slow, peaceful breathing, I wasn't expecting much, and turned over.
