Thought of the day: Sometimes I feel like I'm not really living up to this. I love my idea but is this story really working?

I'm sorry for the waiting. Enjoy~

[I miss you Joe]

.

"Zack… Why are you calling me?" I whispered, tightening my grip around the receiver.

I listened to nothing but silence for a while longer, his breath fainting at the distance. Part of me wanted to play it safe, bring an end to the conversation as soon as possible and ignore it even happened. It sounded so simple in my mind, and yet I couldn't keep away. I couldn't force myself to shut him out.

I didn't want to hurt him, but I didn't want it to hurt either.

"It's late…" I said. I hated his silence.

"I miss you…" a whisper.

"Yeah, we haven't talked in a while."

"Can I see you?" he asked, his tone suddenly higher. I nodded nearly without thinking.

"You mean right now?" I asked back.

I couldn't hear his answer. He laughed for a while, sounded completely out of himself. I asked him where he was and he said he was waiting for me. I tried to laugh with little success. I hated him like this, like that, but I too wanted to see him. And so I left.

From the gate to his porch I couldn't see a living thing, but I did hear the TV blurting out a noisy commercial. I didn't want to intrude so I crossed his yard in silence, through the dark, and came to sit outside the window I knew to be his room. We've done that before. We even had a signal that warned him I was waiting outside. I no longer remember what it was…

It was a cold night, mid September. I recalled Grandma Grace that morning, saying something about days becoming shorter. She made a joke about it, said she was getting shorter too and by the minute.

Lately she often wondered where her youth had gone to, her days of a rising star on stage. Had a wonderful career ahead of her, she said - until she fell in love with the wrong person. Edea would always come and say her father was a beautiful specimen who loved too much and at the same time. The world was not ready for someone like that, I always thought.

I never asked Joanna about her father. I never asked her about mine either.

"He died in war" I would always say to my teachers at school. A lie.

"How long have you been there?" asked a voice from above, near whispering.

I looked up at him, barely telling him out of the darkness. He helped me inside.

"Well, I certainly wasn't expecting you would really come…" he said, laughing and rubbing an eye with the heel of his hand. I shrugged.

"Thought you wanted me to…" I muttered back, sitting on the end of his bed.

He laughed and hid in the back of his room. The light-blue lava lamp didn't reach him but I could almost perceive what he was doing. I could almost taste the porcelain-white powder myself, perfectly lined up on his desk. Strangely enough, it didn't feel uncomfortable anymore…

He sniffed out loud, coming back to me. "Are you ok?" he asked.

"This feels a little weird… you and me not talking." I said, tapping my feet on the floor.

"Yeah" he smiled, "I guess I'm not helping either."

I didn't look at him. "I really don't know how to be a better friend to you, Zack."

He laughed, and it was his genuine laugher - "You're a great friend, Cloud. You're here at 4 in the morning, watching me kill myself. And it doesn't even bother you."

I squinted. "That's a terrible thing to say."

He shrugged, crisscrossing his legs on the bed beside me. I asked him why he was doing this.

"I was fed up of being perfect all the time." he said, matter-of-factly.

"You were never perfect." I said.

"True. But you always liked me, didn't you?"

A chuckle. "After all this years, you still manage to confuse me. It's like I'm ten all over again."

He tried to laugh but his voice stumbled on a cough. He sniffed to his open palm again. I could only imagine how red his aqua-blue eyes were in that moment. He was looking at me, of course, so intensely it nearly burned.

"Can I kiss your lips?" he asked, very quietly. Naturally.

I sat up straight and squinted at him. "That's an odd way to ask that sort of thing…"

He chuckled. "I guess. I swear it's not the powder talking, though…"

I couldn't laugh. Instead I nodded, very sternly, my cheeks feeling heavy and stiff. I tried not to move as I felt his cold lips nearing mine, the scent of his peppermint gum making my eyes dizzy, watery.

It was not the first time we kissed, even though it could have been. Silent. Wet. Different. I closed my eyes out of embarrassment when his hands reached for my wrists. I wasn't used to it anymore – the selfishness of his touch. And our tongues were kissing in a language I didn't know.

After that, we did keep things to our rhythm. We would kiss more often when we were alone, in a manner that was neither cold nor reckless like it had been before. He would still grow frustrated sometimes though, and we would break it off – move on. He knew what he was doing way better than me, a detail that would always make me wonder where he had learnt to do that kind of thing.

Then, with the cowardliness of a lion, it would hit me. It was probably the girls…

I had a girl too: Aerith, of course. But we never did anything of that sort. She was too polite and much of a romantic to ask me for a kiss the way Zack bluntly did. She did kiss me on the forehead once, when I got my first A+ at Medieval History. It was a great accomplishment for both of us, since she had been tutoring me for quite a while.

Looking at her across the room, scribbling and taking notes as fast her gentle fingers were to permit her, I did ask myself sometimes what it would be like if I had felt for her what I felt for him. Yes. I'm sure it would have spared me a lot of sleepless nights and punches on the stomach, would I have loved her.

I later came to understand Joanna actually thought we were dating for as long as she could remember.

"Not at all, ma'am. I just like to keep an eye on him." Aerith politely answered, with a smile.

Joanna stopped her glass of wine in the air, halfway from meeting her lips.

"Oh, I'm sorry. I really thought… you know…" she stuttered – "It's just natural for a mother to assume these things, I suppose…" she apologised. Edea nudged her, amused.

Aerith nodded – "Yes, of course. And it's very important for parents to engage actively in their children's lives." she said, concerned.

There was an uncomfortable moment of silence around that table. Edea tried not to laugh, covering her smile with the napkin. She knew Aerith and she loved that wittiness about her. Everyone did.

I tried to move on with the conversation, as fast and badly as I could.

"Is Sephiroth ok with you not dining with him tonight?" I asked. Grace squinted, beside me.

"With you not dining? Is that an expression we use now?" she asked, waving a flamboyant and trembling hand at me.

I squinted back. "What's wrong with dining?"

Edea laughed. "It is a little odd for you to say it like that!"

"I find it charming." said a smiling Aerith.

"It's a little bit old-fashion, don't you think?" Joanna was intrigued, turning to Edea alone.

"It's not old-fashion. It's regular!" I fought back.

"Ah! I'm old-fashion and no one calls me charming no more!" said Grace.

"That's because of all the cigars you smoke, mother! By the way, weren't you quitting?"

No, Grace was never really quitting. And her addiction turned into lung diseases and lungs turned into baking recipes which turned into Edea's new novel which turned into Bowie. Both Aerith and Joanna loved Bowie, so they really spoke of nothing else through the night. They were bonding, like Edea had suggested in a whisper, nodding towards them in the back of the room. It could be potentially damaging, she said.

I only understood what she meant a couple of years afterwards…

At school, every person who knew us threw their ashes to the fire and made their little joke. I never really minded people thinking we were together, mostly because I didn't particularly understand what «being together» even meant.

Aerith never bothered to explain, but she agreed with them. Said we made a lovely couple of friends.

"I just don't like it." was his response.

We were back to back with one of the oldest wagons in the Graveyard. Ahead of us, the chain-link fence that stretched across the outer limits cut the ash-gray fog the early morning always brought. Behind it awake the Lower District, with its dark fallen alleys and tipsy industrial air that left you feeling heavy. If we listened carefully we could already hear the cry of a truck, struggling to resume its journey.

Keep in mind this was a busy part of the city. Little Traverse was still in its nest.

He convinced me down there before we separated our ways to school. It was very important, he said.

"You don't like it? What?" I asked back, looking at him.

Zack grabbed a handful of gravel and, one by one, tried to get them through the holes in the fence.

"You and her." he bit his lower lip, prepared his shot – "You and anybody, I don't like it."

"Hum. I see…" I didn't, actually. "It's just people I know," I said.

"I'm just someone you know too!" the little stoned backfired. He stopped.

I was biting my nails again. "You're Zack… aren't you?"

He tossed his head back and sighed, his fingers playing absentmindedly with the cross around his neck. It didn't mean anything in particular since Zack was never a religious person, but it somehow suited his current mood. He was a true kid of nineties now, with his flannel shirts and denim jacket, his shorts above the knee and worn-out leather boots…

That morning I wore my black wool sweater I reckon from 1988, and I knew I would wear it for as long as it fitted me. Needless to say that, back then, I never afforded to be in synch with fashion.

And fashion was certainly something that moved far too fast.

"Alright then." he finally spoke again, shaking the dust off his hands as he stood up.

I watched him, clueless – "What now?" I asked.

He was smiling when he sat on my lap, his bare knees scraping the ground. He was uncommonly close: it felt strangely normal. Zack wet his lips.

"If I leave a mark on you, they won't." he said, quietly, his aqua-blue eyes languidly melting into mine.

I narrowed my eyebrows, "What do you mean, a mark?"

He chuckled, leaning over my neck, breathing against my skin.

I nearly flinched at the touch of his cold tongue, my image reflected on a dirty mirror clouding my thoughts. Just like that night. How could things like these get out of hand so quickly, I wondered.

How could I succumb to his touch so fast?

It hurt when his teeth savoured my flesh, but I refused to close my eyes. His hand grabbed the free side of my neck and, for one furtive second – I felt his. I wanted to be his.

.

It's probably one hundred a.m now. Review, please?