Do You Remember

There aren’t many people that we stayed in contact with after school finished.
We pretty much wanted to start our lives afresh, which meant leaving high school friends and enemies behind us.
However, Charlotte is one of the few we still remain in contact with to this day, and, as I’m sure you remember very clearly, she was the first person to find out about our relationship.

It was not long after we slept together for the first time.
Since then, we hadn’t done anything other than the occasional make out, which was fine with me.
I didn’t want our relationship to become all about sex, which is what happened to a lot of our friends’ high school relationships.

We had become more daring, though, since that night.

Before, we would never have kissed at school, even if it was just a quick peck on the lips, for fear of getting caught by someone who clearly would not approve of two guys together.

But after?
Ha, after we became much more adventurous.

You would grab my hand at random times during the school day and haul me around a corner where no-one would look and attack me with your mouth, pressing yourself into me and kissing me until neither of us could breathe.

During lunch breaks we spent a lot of time in the disabled toilets (luckily there weren’t any people who needed to use those toilets at that time) with you standing in between my legs and holding in moans as I sucked and bit on your neck.

In the classes we shared, we would always sit next to each other, my hand would be in your lap and you would bite you lip until it bled to hold in any erotic noises that threatened to spill.
Then our roles would swap when we entered a different class.
Eventually, it became a competition; seeing who could hold in the most noise and who received the fewest weird looks.

But anyway, once again I got distracted.
Those competitions and our new-found adventurousness with our relationship was not the point of this.
The point was about Charlotte finding out about us… but I guess it did have something to do with it… Ugh, anyway!

So, it was a few weeks since we gave ourselves up to each other, and we couldn’t’ve be happier (well, I couldn’t’ve be happier, anyway, I don’t know about you, but I hope to God you were as happy as me).

As I said before, we’d become much more adventurous and that included much more hand-holding and you sitting on my lap more often.
We’d always been very touchy-feely when we were amongst our friends, so no one really noticed any change, but as you know, Char was always very perceptive.

You were sitting on my lap, leaning back into my chest.
I was playing with your hands that were resting in your lap as you were arguing tiredly with Adam over whether or not blondes or brunettes have more fun and which make the best ‘girlfriends’.
Remember, Adam was going out with Christie – the girl with the blondest hair and the biggest boobs known to humanity – at the time?
He was defending the shit out of her, telling you that she was really actually very fun to be with and not just some ditz who only cared about make-up and hair products.
You were lazily throwing counter-arguments at Adam; including the quote that everyone knows from ‘Mean Girls’ – “she asked me how to spell ‘orange’” – making everyone in our group crack up laughing, except Charlotte, who was staring at us with her head to one side.

I was beginning to feel a bit awkward with a pair of eyes constantly on us, so I decided to ask Char what the hell was going on.
“I want to talk to you and Ad… alone,” she told me seriously and I gently pushed you off my lap and grabbed your hand as we followed her away from our friends’ curious looks.
She suddenly stopped when she was sure we were out of hearing and viewing range of everyone, and turned to face us.

“Okay, you two. You’ve been acting way different lately. You keep disappearing off places together. You spend a huge amount of time in the bathrooms; only god knows what you’re doing in there. Come on, you two; spill,” Charlotte demanded, and I choked on my own saliva. She pointed at our interconnected hands, “What’s going on there?”

When I finally stopped coughing up a lung, I glanced at you.
You were watching me with a scared look on your face. “Josh?” you whispered; your eyes wide. “Um, I um… don’t mind…”

I nodded once, before a grin came to my face.
There was no-one around, so why not?
I dropped your hand, and grabbed your face.

With a sly glance at Charlotte, I kissed you roughly.
You gasped and your fingers found their way into my hair, pulling gently as the kiss became deeper.

Eventually we had to break apart for lack of air and we stood there with our bodies pressed together, breathing heavily.
It was only after hearing a small cough that I remembered Char’s presence, and we turned simultaneously to her.
Her mouth was wide open, and her eyes bugged out of her head.

“Um… oh my god? Are you two…like dating?” We nodded and she continued, “For how long? Just recently right? Cause I mean… you were never this…flirty.”
“Nope, we’ve been together for… nearly a year now?” I said, turning to you, and you nodded, “The reason we’re more ‘flirty’ is because a few nights ago we-”

“Josh! Shut up,” you cried, clapping a hand to my mouth. “God, you talk way too much…”
“You’re only just discovering this now?” I asked incredulously, once you removed your hand and you shook your head with a smile.
Char was still staring at us in awe.

“Charlotte?” I asked, suddenly worried.
I hadn’t imagined that we would receive a reaction like the one we were receiving then.
I’d never really thought about how anyone would react when they found out about our relationship, so Char’s reaction scared me a bit. I didn’t really think there were any homophobes in our group, but then again, we’d never really discussed homosexuality before… it looked like we would’ve had to discuss it then. “Char, are you okay? You’re not too...”

“What?” she replied, “No, I’m fine, it’s just a kind of shock. Does anyone else know?”
“NO!” you suddenly shouted, making me jump and clutch at my heart. You calmed down slightly and tried again. “No. No-one knows. We – well, I at least – would prefer it if you didn’t say anything either…”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “I think we’d prefer to tell people in our own time…”

“Okay,” Char said, as if she was going to faint, and you and I laughed, before I grabbed your face once more and kissed you gently on the mouth. Char let out a little gasp and a slight laugh, “I’m going to have to get used to that, aren’t I?”

“Yes!” we replied at the same time, and I took hold of your hand and pulled you back to the rest of our friends, leaving Charlotte staring after us, shaking her head.

But she did get used to us eventually.
At first, when it was just the three of us hanging out and you and I did anything couple-y, Char was a bit weirded out, but now she’s totally used to it.

You know, she’s told me on countless occasions recently how much she wishes she could be at our wedding.

What she doesn’t know, is how much I wish I could be at our wedding, how much I wish we could get married at all and how much I wish we could’ve lived a long and happy life together, like we always planned…