One goodbye kiss

For two and a half hours, maybe a lot longer, over three cooling cappuccinos each, I gazed into your eyes. I tried hard not to lower mine, but they were being drawn by that silk scarf you wrap around your neck, the one which trails like two torrents down a hillside, to bracket your cleavage. I tried to ignore the urge to trace the journey of the embroidery along your scoop neckline, and the rounded contours of you shoulders, your three-quarters-bare arms. And that mane of autumn russet that you shook at me while you spoke with energy and animation.

As if your eyes were insufficient narcotic, as if I wasn’t wholly drunk from looking into them, as if you had not mesmerised me, I had to stop myself also from reaching out to take your hands, which were so close to mine. The table was small, and its narrowness meant that static shocks coursed between our fingertips. Or so it seemed to me!

We talked – oh how we talked! – as though we hadn’t met for years, and were catching up on a whole lifetime of separation. And in a way that was almost true, because this was our first real get-together, our first decent conversation since I came out to you. You as straight as a Roman road, but still, if I am brutally honest with myself, the one – THE one – out of all my close friends whom I have always secretly adored. Yes, and lusted after shamelessly, dreaming night after night that you too were secretly gay and harboured a desire for me! Such are dream women – only dreams, only fantasies. But here you were, as large as life and twice as beautiful, gorgeous, straight as a plumb-line, so close.

We talked, and as we talked I almost prayed that my eyes would not stray to your lips. If they did, how would I have been able to stop myself from seizing you, from kissing you, from eating your adorable face in public and damn the consequences to our friendship? I would have counted the cost afterwards! But I was a good girl on the outside, only being a hopeless, shameless slut on the inside.

I can only recall one time that I was not locked onto your eyes. That was when you looked over my shoulder, then whispered to me.

“That woman has a gorgeous arse!”

I sneaked a look over my shoulder. She had. She was about our age, and had a figure to kill for. Her backside fitted snugly into a pair of jeans. We faced each other again, I almost fainting at the thought that you had just admired a woman; but then you are an artist, with an artist’s eye, and not above saying something is beautiful, or someone. And not above expressing envy either, for we moved our foreheads closer and hissed, low and conspiratorial, “Bitch!” Then we were in fits of giggles, and I don’t think I have giggled since I was a schoolgirl! I tasted your breath on the air, and it took mine away! I do not think I ever lusted for you – even loved you – so much before or since!

When it was time for us to go, you swept loudly from the place. Your clothes, ethnic and hippyish, swirling like clouds around a skerry! People looked at you, took in your merriness, your sexiness, your vivacity, and took in me beside you. And I felt like a princess! I felt like saying “Yes, she’s mine, she’s my lover!” and laughing it off as a stunt.

We stood in the car park, reluctant to part, and chatted on and on until you had to go. We grinned at each other. The one subject we had never touched upon was the fact that I was out. You are the most impulsive friend I have, but one who never does anything she does not want to do. Your last act before jumping into your car was to step up to me and kiss me. Beautiful, straight you, my best ever friend. You had never kissed me before that moment, but now you kissed gay me, frankly, in public, and without an inhibition.

I waved to you as you drove off. I have lived in that moment ever since, grinning and laughing. It was perhaps the happiest moment of my life. In a few days time people are going to question the smuts on my cheek and the tidemark around my neck, but I don’t care. I will be damned if I am going to wash!