"standin' in that doorway like a dream..."

I stood there staring at her for what had to be half a minute. I had seen Roxanne a few months before, when I had first moved back home, and we had spent a whole evening re-connecting & catching up, and it was very nice...but back then I'd had so far up Kara's ass that I didn't notice much of anyone else. Also, Roxanne's brother, my friend Jerry, had gotten himself mixed up in a fundamentalist religious group while I was in Colorado (which was a whole other crazy story), so we hadn't had a lot of chances to keep in touch lately, but we used to be the best of friends & that bond was still there, and right away she embraced me like she hadn't seen me in years.

I remember she was wearing this pink, flowered dress and looked more beautiful than I had ever seen her...she was 18 now & had grown into a real woman in the past few years. She had been out at a friends house nearby and had just decided out of the blue to stop & see if I was up at one in the morning...as she knew I'd probably be. I thought that was a little out of the ordinary, but I wasn't going to argue; I had never lost my feelings for Roxanne, and if I hadn't figured she was wrapped up in her own college life to want to bother with me, I would have been calling her weeks ago...but now here she was.

She said she had been thinking of me and had missed the way we used to talk, and she had heard what happened with Kara & just wondered how I was doing. I used to come to her window late & night, and she joked about being old enough to return the favor now. So, we sat there & I spilled my guts about what had happened, and listened and consoled me like the sweetheart she is...and I listened as she told me about a couple of guys she had dated that had hurt her at school, and we both just let it all pour out, just like we used to so often a few summers before.

The whole time, she kept snuggling closer to me on the bed, and then she rested her head on my shoulder. I didn't know what to think..here was this girl that I had thought was sent straight from heaven since I was 17 years old, she knew exactly how I felt about her, and now, all of a sudden, she's at my house in the middle of the night, and she's more affectionate with me than she had ever been before...or at least since she had become fully aware of my feelings for her all those years ago.

Now, get your minds out of the gutter; this was no booty call...Roxanne was still a virgin at the time. She had some experience, but had never gone all the way (one more reason to think she hung the moon), but that's beside the point. We had always gotten along fantastically, but I could tell there was something else in her demeanor that night. I couldn't bring myself to believe it, but I actually started to think that maybe, by some stroke of fate, after all these years, Roxanne was finally...flirting with me?

Inside, I started to get giddy as a schoolboy, but I still tried to play it cool. We sat on my bed and talked for a good hour or so, and she told me all about her first semester at college, and the guys she had met, and how none of them seemed to be interested in doing anything but partying with her, and how it really made her miss the times that I, in my fruitless teenage pursuits, would write her letters & would always listen when she needed someone, and no matter what happened, I had always tried to make her feel better, even if I had to listen to her pine about some other guy. She said she knew she had taken my feelings for granted back then, and she regretted doing so.

I told her that she knew she had always been very special to me, and even though the past few years had taken us in different directions, I still thought she was one of the most amazing girls I had ever met in my life, and that I had dreamed a hundred times of sitting here like this, holding her hand, telling her how I felt, but I had always been afraid of what would happen. Then, I remember she asked me if I was afraid right now, and I looked into her eyes, and told her that yes, I was, but I wasn't going to let that stop me this time.

And I kissed her.

After four years of dreaming about it that had seemed like a lifetime, I was actually kissing Roxanne. I remember how soft she felt against me as she put her hands up to my face and leaned in closer. I ran my hand up her spine and through the back of her hair, pressed her tightly against me, and we kissed there for what seemed like forever. Her lips were like electric candy.

I'll never forget it as long as I live; the Prince song "Seven" was playing on the radio, and at the point in the song where it goes "I am yours now, and you are mine", she pulled her lips away from me for long enough to sing that line to me with the sexiest smile on her face I'd ever seen, and then I pulled her down on top of me and we just melted into each others arms, rolled around on the bed, and I know that first the first time in months, Kara was nowhere even in the vicinity of my thoughts...all I wanted to do was just breathe in Roxanne's entire being & become so drunk on it that I'd just overdose & pass out right there in her arms.

After a moment, we looked at each other, and she asked me why it took so long for this to happen, to which I replied that it sure wasn't for lack of trying on my part. She said that she had just been thinking more & more lately, and when she had seen me last time, something had just stuck with her ever since...she said she realized that no one had ever been as crazy about her as I was, and I told her that I still doubted anyone ever would.

Lying there with her, looking into those big, brown eyes that I had been lost in from afar so many times before, I realized just how stupid I had been to let someone like Kara take over all my emotions, when a girl this perfect...this pure and good, was right there in my life all along. I mean sure, back when my crush on her was at its peak, she was too young for me to date, but I still had her as an example that I should have looked at when considering my feelings for Kara. Al that didn't matter anyway; I knew that it was a moot point; I couldn't help that I'd fallen in love with Kara, but it sure hadn't made any of my feelings for Roxanne any less real, and it sure made them look like they had been squandered on the wrong person, in comparison...especially now that it seemed those feelings might at last be mutual.

Still, we didn't waste too much time talking; after we expressed amazement that this was even happening, we were eager to get back to it happening ASAP. I slowly started to kiss her face & neck, while whispering to her about how many times I had dreamed of being able to really show her the way I felt about her in this way. We kissed and explored each other for hours; we never had sex, but she told me that she gave more of herself to me that she'd ever given anyone before, and it was a very special, sensual, and beautiful night for both of us, that will live in my memory forever.

She fell asleep in my arms, wearing my Flash Gordon t-shirt that made her the single hottest girl on the planet at that moment, and I held her as we both drifted off to sleep, happier that I ever thought I would be again after all that had happened recently. I felt something that night for the first time; when I was lying there next to her, smelling her hair and listening to the soft rising & falling of her breath, I felt like I was...home. That was the word that came to mind. I don't know any other way to explain it, but it just felt so, so right....a kind of right I had never felt before. When those moments would happen with Kara, I would feel lucky...not comfortable...not right. Not like this. My mind wanted to race through that and a million different things, but my soul was at a kind of peace, and all I really wanted to was lie there & feel her next to me, so that's what I did. As a stupid teenager, I had laid in bed at night & wondered about what holding her would feel like, and I realized now that my wildest dreams just didn't even begin to compare...

I drifted off to sleep listening to her breathe, and praying that I wasn't already dreaming...