For seven years, they had known each other. They had seen each other a thousand times at various competitions and Contests, but never once had he thought he would be saying this to her.
"May," he began. "We've known each other for seven years."
She frowned slightly, a frown above her blue eyes. "What do you mean?"
He had asked her aside at her birthday party. Her father, being a gym leader, had invited practically every celebrity in all of Hoenn, and the house and garden swarmed with guests. It had taken some work to find a private corner where no one - not even that irritating Max - would hear them.
"I've given you so many roses so many times. You know how I said they're for Beautifly?"
Every inch of him wanted to simply blurt it out, frankly and honestly, but he was afraid. Of all people, he was afraid.
"They weren't. They were for you."
She laughed. He hadn't expected her to laugh.
"Well, I kind of guessed that once you gave me the tenth one or so," she admitted. "But I wasn't sure if it meant anything. I mean, I'm still not sure."
"Do you want to be sure?" he heard himself say, leaning closer, feeling his eyes bore into hers.
She was afraid. And he was, too, if he wanted to admit it.
"Drew," she said, "yes."
And of course he kissed her. He couldn't not kiss her; after all, he had just about admitted everything to her in the most un-Drew-like way, backing her into a corner and asking her for a sign, any sign that she wanted him too. So now he kissed her and tried oh so hard to make it last, make it all better for her - for the two of them.
He could hear her gasp a little and begin to push away from him but he had backed her to the wall now, and his mouth was moving over her skin and he pinned her wrists to the wall beside her head, pressed his lips to hers.
"Drew," she said again.
"May," he responded, pausing for a moment to breathe.
When she kissed him back, he didn't have time to think that he was happy.