So what do you do when you befriend someone in yearbook class? You don’t know much about him except he helped lift the high school basketball team to a championship win the year before? You take a mutual interest and find out he has his own struggles despite the fame and the girls that want him.

 

So all you do is listen when he gets suspended for sneaking alcohol even though it’s completely legal in Germany. Then he wants to keep you close and you’re like same. So you start having breakfast before school. You start sleeping over, even sharing the same bed. It’s all completely platonically brotherly chill.  

 

We’re both happy with the bond we have. But we don’t express how we truly feel. Despite the vacations because this was Europe. and then the letters and notes of gratitude we’d text every morning. We’d carry each other by the shoulders trying to get home while drunk, because again the drinking age is legal in high school. 

 

But when my family gets orders to move back to the States, the walls fall down. Emotions run higher. It’s more of the same until one night when he’s staying over. We’re watching TV and he asks me to lay on top of him. I oblige. He puts his arms around me. I do the same. Then he asks if I ever been kissed before. I shake my head. Then without a word, he gets up and walks me to my room where finally, he gave me my first kiss. My gosh, it was like fireworks.

 

From that night on turned into an affair including an epic prom night, that ended the day I flew out. How do you ever reel from that?