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Aaron

    Two shirtless men embrace, seconds away from kissing. The black-haired man looks down at his lover, one hand holding his face; his thumb just brushing against the smaller man's parted lips. His lover's eyes are closed as he leans towards the other man's chest, his expression longing.

    Dear Author
    For so long I'd dreamed of his touch, how his hands would feel on my skin, how his lips would feel on mine. But never had I believed it would be possible.
    And yet, here I now stood. With him . I couldn't bring myself to open my eyes, fearful I'd find it was all just another fantasy.
    "Please," he spoke.
    This was definitely not a dream
    Sincerely,
    Cheri

    genre: contemporary
    tags: friends-to-lovers; reunited; UK; first love
    word count: 14,127
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    THE REST OF FOREVER
    by Kate Aaron
    Eight a.m. Sunday morning in the middle of February and I'm jogging around my local park. I hate Sunday mornings, and I hate jogging. So why am I here? Because he is: Paul Adams, my best-friend-forever, the guy I'm totally, heartbreakingly, nauseatingly in love with.
    I know, I know, I'm a total cliché. What gay guy doesn't grow up and fall in love with his best friend, right? I've read enough sappy romances in my time to know that I'm not alone. There should be a support group or something. And in all those stories the supposedly straight (they're always straight) best friend suddenly wakes up and realises he feels the same. Cue sunset.
    Except my best friend isn't straight. And, once upon a time, he did feel the same.
    Not so sympathetic now, are you?
    I was named Jackson by my mother in a fit of Gaelic traditionalism, that being her maiden name and her being an only child. I guess she didn't want the line to die completely, and at least my dad stuck round long enough to bestow us with his name– Campbell– saving me from the ignominy of being christened Jackson Jackson. You'd think with ancestry like that I'd be all peaches 'n' cream with a shock of curly red hair, but I'm not. Coal black, my hair is, like soot. So black it shines blue in the light and everyone thinks I must have dyed it. Guys fall over themselves to tell me they love it– black hair, blue eyes, skin pale as marble. Like a Disney prince, they say. They think I'm lucky: I'm not. I live in fear of going grey– at twenty-five, a possibility that gets more likely by the day– because I know when I do I'll look like a fucking badger, and then I'll have to dye it.
    I quite like my eyes though, blue-green like the sea on a hot summer day. I just wish my lashes weren't so damn long, like a girl's, so thick you'd swear I was wearing mascara and kohl. To compensate I keep my stubble rough, not so long I look like one of the great unwashed but just a few mil, the second-shortest setting on my electric razor. I like it when guys stroke it, the soft scratchy sound it makes sliding over their palms. I like to rub my cheek across their chests, watch their nipples tighten.
    A stranger's body holds so many novelties; men react in so many different ways to being touched. I'm a pretty tactile person in bed; I love nothing more than pinning a guy down and finding out exactly what he likes. Nothing beats the feeling you get hearing a new lover's breath hitch when something you've done surprised them in the best possible way. Not that most of the guys I've been with appreciate that. I suppose when you've left the bar at two and you're in work at nine, time for playing is limited. Wham, bam, thank you man; you can't stay I've got to be up early . Club sex is about scratching an itch, that's all. Shame it took me almost ten years to realise that.
    I was a precocious adolescent. Sometimes I sit and look at the old pictures from that time and wonder what the hell I thought I was doing. I suppose everyone thinks like that when confronted with memories of their fifteen year old self. At least I never kept a diary: imagine the melodrama that would have gone into that !