It’s just a phase.

That’s all it is, I tell myself firmly. Just a phase. You’ll grow out of it.

So I don’t beat myself up too much when I notice the way he smiles (with his whole face), or the exact color of his eyes (blue with green speckles—very unusual), or how nice-looking his hair is (golden-blond, with some parts streaked white from the sun), or other idiotic things like that.

“What are you staring at?” he asks me suddenly, and I snap out of my reverie. I look quickly over at him, forgetting how the force of his full-on stare makes me kind of forget how to breathe.

“Nothing,” I answer a little too quickly. He probably knows full well I was staring at him.

He gives me a skeptical look, but is there something else there? No. I’m imagining things. “Whatever, weirdo,” he says.

“Sorry, I’m kind of spacing today, I guess,” I say, rubbing the back of my neck with one hand. Crap. I’ve got to stop getting caught.

“Mhm,” he says absentmindedly, concentrating on the video game in front of him. “You’re getting your ass whipped, in case you haven’t noticed. I might actually win this time.”

I snap my attention back to the screen—shit. He’s three laps ahead of me already. I scramble to make up for lost time. I’m the king of Gran Turismo, but I have to hand over the crown this time. He beats me by two laps easy.

“Damn it,” I mutter. He laughs triumphantly.

“C’mon, man,” he says, getting up, and we head into the kitchen. He gets a beer from the fridge. “Want one?” he says, holding it out.

“Nah, I gotta drive home later.”

“Stay the night,” he says. “I get lonely without you here.” he says in a pseudo-feminine voice, grinning at me. Ass.

“Fine,” I grumble, and he hands me one. We sit at the kitchen table, drinking, talking about chicks and cars and our totally crap jobs and stupid professors. Of course we have exams in a few days that we should be studying for. But whatever.

Three beers later, he says, “This is gonna sound weird, but I think I’m going through a phase.”

“Yeah?” I answer, taking another swig of my beer. I’m only barely on my second. He drinks like a fiend, and I can never keep up.

“Yeah,” he says, looking over at me, eyes filled with what I told myself I wasn’t seeing earlier. “I keep...” He pauses, looking down into his bottle, swinging it around slightly, swilling the little bit of beer left in it around the bottom. “I keep feeling like I like you,” he confesses suddenly, looking up at me.

My heart skips a beat, then stutters onward.

“Dude, are you serious?” I choke out a few seconds later, trying with all my willpower to sound surprised rather than elated.

“I’m not going to try anything, I swear,” he says, holding up his hands defensively.

I consider my response very carefully. Has he had enough to be drunk? No, he’s only had three. I’ve seen him go through six or seven before without even being buzzed. Plus, this is cheap, crappy, college-student beer. So he could mean it. Or he could be screwing with me.

“Do what you want,” I mutter, shrugging, looking at anything but him.

A pause ensues.

“What the hell does that mean?” he asks. He doesn’t sound angry, just confused.

“Just what it says,” I reply, not looking up at him. “I think I might be going through the same phase. Do what you want,” I repeat, fully expecting him to call my bluff-that’s-actually-how-I-feel.

But, to my utter astonishment: “You mean that?” he says, and something in his voice causes me to look up into his eyes.

Oh, god.

My heart stops again as he leans closer to me, his gaze never wavering from my eyes. It’s too much—I close my eyes, breathing heavily, every part of me scared to death and yet screaming to be pressed against him. The sound of our breathing, irregular and shaky, seems to fill the room.

Suddenly he rests his hand on mine. And now he’s leaning so close that I can feel his breath on my lips.

“I have to admit I have no idea what I’m doing,” he says softly.

Involuntarily leaning closer, so that my lips are almost brushing his, I whisper, “Neither do I.”

And then his lips are on mine, kissing me softly, the feeling foreign beyond description but also somehow familiar. I have never been comfortable around women—they make me feel like a total idiot. But this...This feels right, I slowly realize as he pulls away.

I open my eyes and he is staring at me, his eyes searching mine, filled with uncertainty. He bites his bottom lip, still not breathing normally, and I can’t help but smile. He breaks into a relieved grin.

And then the doorknob turns and Lindsey, his big sister, walks in. Shit.

She stops dead, her mouth hanging open at the sight of us leaning in so closely to each other, our faces not even three inches apart. Quickly, we spring apart, scooting our chairs away from each other, faces brilliantly red, coughing and looking in opposite directions.

Lindsey stares at us, her head slowly moving back and forth between us. Hours pass in seconds and I am dying, agonized with embarrassment.

And then she busts out laughing, clutching the doorframe for support.

I look over at him, wondering what on earth she’s been smoking, and he has his face in his hands, his ears crimson.

“What the hell, Linds?” I ask, and she wipes tears of mirth from her eyes.

“I—so—told—you, Keith,” she manages to get out, sinking down to lean against the door, just laughing as hard as she can. “I knew—” More insane cackling. “I knew he liked you too.”

“Shut up, Lindsey, please,” he mutters, but I can tell he’s smiling behind his hands.

Oh.

“No! I won’t!” she says, her mad laughter gradually beginning to subside. “You know owe me a lifetime supply of ramen noodles, as previously determined. Oh, man, we’ve got to get Melissa over here,” she says, still laughing, pulling out her cell phone and managing to stand up without collapsing in laughter. She grabs a beer out of the fridge and sits down at the table.

“Wait—what—no—” I stutter, desperately wishing she wouldn’t call my sister, who happens to be her best friend, over here as well. I look desperately over at him, and his eyes are wide.

“It’s just a phase,” we blurt out together.

She rolls her eyes, still grinning like the Cheshire Cat. “Yeah,” she chuckles, “and I’m the frickin’ Queen of England. Melissa, get over here,” she says suddenly into the phone. “We will never have to worry about ramen ever again,” she says. I can hear a scream from the phone and Melissa still hasn’t stopped grinning. “Yeah, I know. See you in ten.”

I look at him again, and he shrugs helplessly. “We can’t fight it,” he says, and I sink back into my chair in defeat, knowing he’s right. But I don’t let it get to me. I’m too happy for that, too full of possibility.

So all four of us end up sitting at his kitchen table until four in the morning, talking and drinking. Linds and ‘Lissa laugh and laugh and laugh, talking about how they started noticing it years ago, back before we ourselves even realized anything consciously. The covert glances, one of us moping around when the other one had a date, the way we touched each other so much.

“The wet dreams were the worst,” Lindsey says with a fiendish grin, and Melissa almost spits her mouthful of beer out in sudden laughter, nodding her head furiously. “‘Oh god...Murray...yessss...’” Lindsey moans breathily in Keith’s voice, and Melissa chimes in, imitating me: “‘Keith...please...oh...’”

I make a despairing noise and rest my forehead on the table, humiliated. “I didn’t know I said that out loud,” I moan miserably.

He is holding my hand boldly on top of the table, and he squeezes it comfortingly.

“Don’t beat yourself up too much, Murray,” Lindsey says, grinning wickedly. “Keith practically screamed your name when he came. Made breakfast with my parents in the morning especially awkward—everyone could hear him.”

“Shut up!” he groans, slumping backward into his chair, his head lolling backward in apathy. I’m still beating my forehead into the Formica. But we’re still holding hands.

And later, after Lindsey and Melissa leave, it doesn’t matter that we’ve been totally revealed and humiliated, because when I crawl into bed next to him, there is a moment of silence where I am scared to death he’s going to take it all back and leave me crushed. But he turns his head over and meets my gaze. He licks his lips slowly, then moves over and rests the upper half of his body on mine, draping his arm across my abdomen, his head on my chest. He smiles adorably up at me, and I can’t help but grin back at him.

“So what happens now?” he asks quietly.

“We sleep,” I say, hugging him tight.

“Okay,” he whispers. And he does. His breathing grows deep and even, comforting me, and I kiss the top of his blond head softly before falling asleep myself, finally at peace.

And he isn’t just a phase.

---

a/n: edited 2/24/08