"Your hair is straight," I heard Craig say while I envied the perfect brown hair on the homeowner's daughters lavish head. In truth, we looked similar, except my hair had golden streaks of blonde. I wanted her hair for no rational reasons I could understand.

Then, I closed my eyes, because all of a sudden, I felt Craig fingers thrust and then comb, along the roads of my hair, and his touch massaged my temper out of existence. "Craig," I said, eyes closed, when I felt him only lightly touch a minute strand of my body, and curl it gently around his bad fingers. My breathing was audible, and like I was in a yoga session, eyes closed, heavy breathing, the stress exiting me as though for the first time in my life I found the ability to feel in new regions of my body, I heard the calm yoga instructor Craig say--

"There is nothing I would change about you."

I opened my eyes and found him smiling down at me, so close, I could feel the warmth of our collective breaths mixing into a swirling ball in the invisible air. He lightly played with a strand of my hair, and I knew I would never need to try again, to get him to want me.

On the subject of changing myself, I said, with devilishly false humility, "I would change a few things." Of course, I was just begging for compliments.

Craig just smiled and shook his head. What are you thinking Craig? I asked telepathically. Come on, handsome man, tell me what you're really thinking. Tell me how much you like me. Tell me what you want to do to me really. Let me know how much you want me so I can leave with my ego and make love with my boyfriend Jack to the thought of you like I've done in the past. Come on, Craig, lay it on me. Finally, however, Craig said, dimples appearing, blushes bloomed on his cheeks, a steamy look in his eyes like I'd just unraveled a funny secret in the wrapped present of his mind, he said, he said, he said, "Zara I wish I knew what words to say." And as though a sudden storm cloud rushed over his perfect face, and left a shadow of perhaps, guilt, he dropped his hands from my hair, and I no longer felt the orgasmic pull of them stringing me along, strumming and pulling at the tender follicles of my dopaminergic guitar. (And if you know what dopaminergic means, then you already know more than I do in this emotionally confusing time. Because the moment the sparkle exited his burning eyes, and they lowered from me, his gaze raining to the floor in perturbed admiration, I suddenly wished I was single. . . single enough to do whatever I wanted to that face that was falling, and it show Craig how much I admired him for all the right and all the wrong reasons.

I wanted to tell Craig, Craig, put your hands back on my head or else. . . But of course, I hadn't the guts to do that. The whole house was asleep, and it was the most private hour of the night, yet I still had some wall, standing so thinly between us—I just had to make the decision I'd never dared to make all the time I'd been alive. Craig and I were lifelong friends, and I wasn't catching feelings for him now, because I'd already had them all along.

I wanted to tell Craig, right now, I hope you know how much I adore you. . . But that would never happen, not as long as I was chained to the responsibility to stay loyal and true to the boy whose promise I'd matched to preserve each other, and not let anyone else in, or risk an open relationship of meaningless blood and carnal trades. But Craig wasn't the boy I knew from the playground, the lover of handball and Call of Duty with whom I once played freeze tag under the jungle gym. He was a man whose eyes knew the world and all its glory or pain. And he felt it deeply as though he were the one filter purifying the world of all its sins. I wished could show him how much he was valued behind the complex devastations on which his parents' divorce plagued his self-worth.

When it seemed he was about to turn his back on me, I lunged forward and of a sudden and grabbed his hand—it was warm, and my whole body grew hot all of a sudden, before he turned around to face me, and studied my hand with an intensity I'd never seen from him before. His eyes tickled up my fingers, up my arm, my naked shoulder, neck, lips, nose eyes, and in that moment, he seemed stunned too.

And when both our breaths became audible, and fell into heaving sync, I knew I wasn't the only one in the room anymore. . . who was hungry.