Bright New Day-2 (PMB)

But I did go back, a little bit later.

I found my friend quickly, even with the large crowd, and sure enough he did have a female guest next to him already.

"Well hello there, whereyabeen?" He smiled at me the way he used to a long time ago when he and I had tried to date.

"Yep, he likes me better than her..." I thought. "So, I just wanted to come over and see what happened to ya and..." I trailed off because blonde girl next to him was whispering something in his ear.

"Oh hey man," (back to calling me in friend terms) "I got us a booth over here if ya wanna sit?"

"Aw, that's ok, I'm gonna go over and talk to those guys over there for a bit...unless you want me to stay?."

"Nah, that's ok...I'm just gonna sit here for a bit."

"...unless ya wanna come over there with me?" I asked already knowing what his answer would be.

"Maybe a little later. You go have fun."

I knew what he was thinking...he wanted to try his hand at finding more company for himself for the evening. So I left him to it. Besides, wanting to be the good friend, I figured his chances were better without me cluttering up his space. I also saw what he saw: that there was a pretty brunette eyeing him from the bar. As the blonde was walking away, I did also. I didn't want to stomp on his fun for the evening by appearing to be his girlfriend.

And that's the real reason I went back over to talk to Boy. When I originally walked away, I wasn't sure if I wanted to go back over and talk with him or not. Again, because I wasn't looking for anything new, and didn't want to waste the time of talking to and getting to know somebody that wasn't going to amount to much in my life.

"What are you doing here?!?" he smiled as I approached. The surprised way he said it made it sound like the cutest thing I'd ever heard.

"Well you said you wanted me to come back over later, so I have."

"I know, but I didn't expect you to actually do it...I mean, what about your friend?"

I pointed--it was enough. He looked over and saw my friend with his arm over the brunette at the bar's shoulder. The girl was giggling and covering her mouth demurely. We both smiled. After that, he stopped being worried about what my friend's reaction to him might be.

...That first night with him went down a very unexpected path. It was moving along perfectly normal on a straight stretch that clearly showed the road in the distance but, as the night progressed, all that changed. The path of our night suddenly turned a corner and went down a path I never expected it to travel. The turns and twists in the road came sporadically throughout the evening and into the next morning until, waking up in his arms, I couldn't figure out how we'd gotten there...

We chatted for a while, practically screaming over the music, just about basic stuff. We kept up "basic normal acquaintance conversation" until my occasional hints and whining about wanting a New Year's hat prompted him to go and get two from a table in the back that I hadn't seen. He brought back a black fedora style hat and a tiara. Naturally, as my close friends might have guessed, I took the black hat: it went better with my outfit. Little bit of deviance on my part as well, since I knew that he brought the tiara for me.

But then he did something that made me smile bigger than I had in several months: he put on the tiara, and wore it for a good while. I like a man who can just open up and show his goofy side. I'm quite silly myself at times, and when someone can just relax and laugh with me, it makes them decidedly more interesting. It's very comforting even.

Finally, realizing that this act definitely made him worth a second look, I decided to make him feel more at ease. So, I went to the back to the party supply table and got him a black hat to match mine which he, gratefully, put on instead of the tiara. He smiled at my thoughtfulness towards him. I saw the look and started to blush slightly and looked away quickly to hide the blush from his prying eyes.

Then it was midnight, just that quick. We had hardly gotten to the super-flirting stage yet, and so it was a bit awkward with the music stopped and everybody around us kissing. But he looked at me, and I knew he wanted it...

He leaned in towards my face, and I turned my cheek to him. He hesitated for a moment and then kissed my cheek. I was a bit thrown by it, but didn't stop him.

"I'm sorry, I'm very superstitious and I always have horrible luck if I get a kiss at midnight. I don't do it anymore."

"Uh? Well ok then, I just didn't want you to not get a kiss at midnight if you wanted one." The awkward look surfaced and he wondered what I was going to do about it. Then I thought about what he said for a while.

"Was it really him who really wanted a kiss at midnight?" I asked myself. I looked up from my fidgeting hands, and his eyes were still focused on mine, wondering if I was gonna return the favor; practically begging for me to return the favor..."I don't know if I'm brave enough: I don't know if I can," to myself.

..."We-ll, uh, th thanks," I finally managed to stammer. "...And it's not that I'm saying we might not actually kiss later but..."

He looked away--I was losing his interest....so I leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. Surprised and smiling very big when he turned back to look at me, he gazed into my eyes very deeply. "Thank you," he whispered.

"Well, I just didn't want you to not get a kiss at midnight if you really wanted one," I smiled and raised one eyebrow, trying to coyly repeat what he had just said to me. Then the quiet of thought overtook us both, drowning out the loud drunken merry-makers and horns and the sound of fireworks outside and our eyes locked.

And for what seemed like forever, we just remained like that: gazing into each other's eyes, both seeing much more than just a random acquaintance in the other's eyes. In that moment, I could see so much of him; I felt him exploring around inside me, as I was seeing into his soul. The look was so familiar and so comforting to me: I knew him! Somewhere deep inside me, I already knew him and somehow, I knew that he already knew me too.

And just as moments like that always are, our lifetime spent in each other's eyes was brutally cut short and interrupted by his friend talking at the top of his voice about something totally random. Neither of us cared about whatever-it-was, but it broke the spell. We both turned toward his friend to feign interest in what he was blathering on about.

The moment was gone, but I never forgot it. I never forgot that look in his eyes when he saw the me that hides inside, far from the reaches of the rest of the world. Recognition, acceptance, and desire to be placed inside me in my soul's hiding place, were what his eyes told of while he was gazing at me. Even now, I can see those eyes of his, staring right through me; grazing through the secret expanses of my soul.

Whatever else might have happened that night, I knew at that moment that I would never forget him...but that isn't where it ended. We flirted and laughed and the band began playing again. The chatting basically stopped, but he was still watching me and we were still standing close for the rest of the evening. I danced and he giggled at me dancing--practically moshing, if truth be told--he said later that he thought it was cute. "Cute? Thrashing around to hard rock?" I thought. "Well, at least he'll never misunderstand that part of my personality."

Eventually, he and his friends and I and my friend all ended up going to a different place in town to finish out the evening. It was for the best, especially since my friend was trying to get into a fight with the band's lead singer and since I really did want to remain close to Boy for as long as I possibly could.

My friend continued to try to get into fights with other people at the new club, and there's me--5'6", 135lbs--standing in his way saying what I always have to say to him when he gets that drunk: "I told you already, if you're going to fight anybody tonight, it's gonna be me. That's it! That's your choice! Fight me or nobody!" It works. Somehow it's the only thing that works, since I know he won't fight me, and even on the off chance that he did decide to take the offer, he'd probably only hit me once before he realized what he was doing and stopped. And I can handle taking a punch or two to keep a friend out of jail for the night.

Nobody else that night understood why I kept doing that to my friend; they didn't have to: it wasn't their business. Amid dozens of attempts from him to start fights, me and Boy were having a very deep conversation about the future of our possible relationship and all the things that might get in the way. I guess I'm the only one who saw the irony of that: me standing in the way of obstacles involving my friend during a conversation about obstacles to our potential relationship. Eventually, through some very smooth maneuvering, I was able to explain and clearly display that I wasn't the kind of girl to be annoyed by the things he was listing. He was impressed. So was I!

Perhaps amid all the random coincidences that it took to get me to this spot, I had found something real again; something that might go somewhere besides down.

Then we danced! We semi-slow danced, to a bad cover band, on a small wooden strip that is supposed to be a dance floor, in the back bar of a low class bowling alley. Yet somehow, the dance rose above the dirty, dull surroundings, and became the most romantic thing that I could remember having happened in my life. It was sensual and seductive and yet, still casual. We were both still wearing our New Year's hats, only I had put on the tiara instead of the hat.

The dance was beautiful because we were both totally free in that moment. I began the evening free, and he joined me in it later on. Totally free and completely wonderful. I remember that he never stepped on my toes, even though we were often out of step with what the other was trying to do, but still he dipped me and twirled me until the song was over; but we didn't stop dancing, we just kept moving in tune with what must have been music playing in both our heads. Then, as another song began--it was an actual slow song--we kissed.

I leaned in towards his face, my eyes never escaping his gaze. My smile suddenly telling the world how cute I thought he was and his eyes returning the sentiment. Slowly, and more slowly the distance closed, though I can't remember which of us moved...and then, it happened. We kissed out on the dance floor, right there in front of the band and the whole bar. We kissed with everybody watching, but neither of us noticed. Everybody watching us: we were the only ones left on the dance floor.

That kiss belongs in a box, wrapped up in pretty tissue paper next to all the other things around my house that I refuse to throw away. If I've ever had a deeper connection with another person in a first kiss than that night, I'd be hard pressed after that to remember what it was.

His soft lips pressed against mine, gently suggesting that mine should be more open. His hot breath filling my mouth like sweet nectar, his tongue playfully moving across my lips and into my mouth just a little bit. His whole body coursing with energy and desire to keep kissing forever, the energy transferring to me as if through a circuit, filling me up, consuming me. "I think I really could kiss him forever."

My hands finding the back of his neck pulling him more into me. Then, pushing back hard with my lips, the passion sparked. The firmness of our mouths clamped together, and the kissing became almost desperate, each of us trying to get more and more with the intensity growing larger like a wave about to crash...then softly moving out and away with a sensuous squishing together of our lips as they, finally, parted.

Both of us moving as if through a haze: his hands deftly found my waist, then slowly inched their way around and clasped onto the small of my back; my hands released his neck and clung desperately to the backside of his shoulders, closing the very small amount of space that parted our bodies...and we were dancing again, as if nothing had ever stopped us in the first place. Our bodies pressed together in a tender embrace, slowly swaying to the music.

Such intimate contact, such sensual movements of our bodies playing off each other's energy and yet, still moving to the music playing, such intuitiveness, such smiles on both our faces: nobody would have guessed that we had just met that night and, in truth, even I don't believe that. I know what the others thought, because later on that night, when I had lost him for a bit, a total stranger approached me and informed me that my "husband had gone to the bathroom." I didn't bother to correct her. Instead, I just smiled.

**edit later: this story is still not finished, but I figured I had written enough for now...will finish it later on**