At some point during this night, still intertwined with him, I started to feel thirsty. Carefully, so to not wake him up I started to straighten up and fetch the water bottle at the other corner of our tent.

"Hmm, I need to pee"

Damn it, I woke him. I bit my lip and slowly turned around. "Go then", I half whispered, half laughed. He crawled out of the tent to leave me alone with my thoughts. Whenever I am alone my head starts interpreting every little detail and just thinking too much. Well, we actually have a word for that, overthinking. Anyhow, there was this thought that hit me.

What if this all was a dream?

I am normally perfectly capable of differentiating between the dream world and real life, but in this case, I just wasn't entirely sure anymore. I pinched myself, tried to read the label on the bottle and did some other stuff so I could convince myself I was fully awake.

When Nolan came back, with him came uncertainty.

"Maybe we should try to sleep a bit", he whispered and laid down, with no attempt to touch me.

"yeah, sure"

Of course, I was disappointed. On one hand, I was really tired and needed the sleep, on the other I simply wanted to be in his arms again.

The birds were already chirping outside when we fell asleep.

                                                       * * *

The next morning was awkward. Really, really awkward. If it would have been just that day, but the whole next week was so damn awkward.

I don't know if it was me or him or the combination, but I didn't dare mention that night and he avoided me. Or we avoided each other.

Once, when I saw him at school I complimented his new haircut, in an attempt to break the ice, (yeah, I am aware, it was a bad attempt) but it just made everything more uncomfortable.

That was the moment I cursed my fucking absent self confidence. With its help I could have just confronted him with my urge to know what has happened between us and if he had turned me down I would have been able to just live on, happily.

Where has it gone? It was always there for me during my whole childhood and suddenly disappeared at an unknown point of time. I am in search for that point. Maybe when I find that, I can figure out a way to get it back.