The Days Until You Loved Me Back

"I love looking out of this window"

"Yeah"

"Everything's so… beautiful… peaceful."

"Mmhmm"

"Only when the sun is out though... Naoms?"

"What?"

"I said, only when the sun is out. You can't see anything at night because it's too dark"

"Oh… I think its best when it's dark. That when the stars come out"

"Yeah I suppose"

"And the animals"

"What animals?"

"You know, like hedgehogs & foxes"

"I've never seen any animals"

"Em, you just said you didn't like looking out the window at night"

"Oh yeah"

"You should do it tonight"

"Do what tonight?"

"Look out of the window, you'll see the animals then"

"Ohh… yeah okay then, but only if you stay and look out with me"

"…'kay."

"Cool."

...

That's when I first realised I was falling in love with her. The first time I found that I couldn't say no to those beautiful hazel brown orbs and cheeky grin that made her face glow like a summer morning.

She'd usually take place on the windowsill in her bedroom and look out of the window, whilst I sprawled out on her double bed and read a book or did some coursework. Silences were an often occurrence but we'd known each other long enough for them to not be uncomfortable.

She only had a smallish garden, but it was beyond that, that she liked the look of. A wide expanse of meadows filled with all sorts of different flowers and funny shaped trees. Her favourite tree being the on at the far right of the first meadow, with its branches hunched over and so full of leaves that it appeared to have engulfed the tree trunk. She would never tell me why it was her favourite tree though.

On sunny days, we'd climb over her garden fence and go and sit against the trunk, slightly shadowed away from all the branches of her favourite tree. We'd sit for hours looking at all the different patterns of natural light we could see bouncing off of each other's faces, often laughing so hard that our stomachs began to ache because we caught sight of an extra funny looking pattern.

Only that day, whilst she was looking out of the window, I caught myself fixated on her, instead of what was on the other side of the window. For some unknown reason, I started to really look at her features whilst she was gazing outside. The way her eyes focused and glistened, how her plump rosy lips would curl up slightly into a small subconscious smile, the way her cute button nose would twitch every so often if she had a slight itch & the way her cerise red hair rested neatly on her slender smooth shoulders, partly covered by the blue short sleeved top she was wearing as well as a pair of well fitted black skinny jeans that covered her legs, which were neatly being held against her chest with her soft, toned arms.

It was only when she called my name that I realised that I was staring at her. Luckily she didn't turn around until I asked what she had just said, up until then I had been answering somewhat non-committedly, having being focused on her striking features.

But of course, there was nothing I could do about it she was after all, my best friend.

Nevertheless, I stayed with her that night. Her parents were out of town for business and both her brother and twin sister were at their friends. Just a quick text to my mum and we were both at the window with a blanket and some pillows, waiting for the sun to settle so we could look out into the night.

I remember teaching her all of the different constellations I knew and looking out for different animals in the garden and nearby fields. Two rabbits, a hedgehog, an owl and a fox was what we had spotted that night, just to be precise.

Emily said she liked the fox the most, because it was sly and beautiful, like me.

I knew she meant it as a passing comment between friends, I also knew that she fancied Freddie Mclair from college.

But that didn't stop my heart from racing and the blush that slowly covered my face. I don't think she noticed though.

It wasn't long after that that we fell asleep on her bed, well Emily fell asleep, me on the other hand, I stayed up a couple of hours longer, half uncomfortable about discovering that I'm falling in love with my best friend, half wishing that I could be falling asleep next to her under different circumstances.