I couldn't get the kiss out of my mind and everytime I looked at Paul, I felt... guilty.

He'd started behaving differently around me. Not a bad kind of different, just not like it was before.

I had a deep, gnawing feeling that he knew. I was convinced that he'd figured out that what was supposed to be a silly game, for me meant so much more.

Yet he said nothing.

Not to our classmates and most definitely not to me. It was driving me crazy that I didn't know what he was thinking. I hated that I considered his opinion of me so important.

At least he wasn't spreading rumors and I decided that he must be a decent guy. Someone else could easily have made this very difficult, maybe even intolerable.

Could we still be just friends?

One rainy afternoon, Paul and I were paired off to do an improvisation exercise. He took me to a far corner of the room and said, "We need to talk."

"Ok," I breathed.

"I've been thinking about how to approach this, but I guess I'll just say it."

Crap!

"Did we make you do something against your will the other night?" he asked.

"What?! No, ofcourse not."

He breathed a sigh of relief and said, "Ok, good. Because all this time, I've been worried that it might've been your first time."

"It was," I said without thinking.

"Holy fuck! I stole your first kiss?!" Paul said in shocked panic.

I couldn't bear for him to think that he'd done anything wrong, so I blurted out, "It's OK... I wanted to kiss you."

Fuck! Did I really just say that out loud?!

"Does Vanessa know that you're...?" he asked calmly.

"No!" I said strongly. "No one knows. I'm not even quite sure... I mean..."

"Listen," Paul said. "You don't owe anyone an explanation until you figure things out. Even then its none of their business."

"How are you so cool about this?" I asked, honestly curious.

Paul didn't have a chance to answer, as Mr. Keane asked us to present our piece.