How To Sleep With Your Best Friend

Nervously invite your best friend into your bed. He’s too tall to sleep on your mushy, canvas clad Ikea love seat…His feet will hang off, ya know? Keep your fingers crossed he won’t contemplate the possibility of you coming on to him. Assume because you’ve been friends for so many years, you can successfully sleep next to each other without stripping down to bare skin. Feel his contemplation, his hesitation and eventual decision to lay next to you while maintaining a polite distance. One night passes. Then two. Ask him to rub your back, because it has been a long time since someone laid a finger on you, much less paid attention to the strained muscles in your over-stressed body. Feel his weight and be reminded of your 16-year-old selves, falling in love over guitars and cigarettes. Forget you quit smoking and puff on his Marlboro reds as if your life depended on it. Rub his back and fall into contented sleep, comfortable with his presence…No over-beating heart, no nervous butterflies, no sweaty palms. Wake with him the next morning as he shuffles with the blankets, unconcerned with your appearance. Ask him to cuddle with you, allowing yourself to believe he looks at you as his friend, his sister, his long-time constant companion devoid of sexual attraction or interest. Forget you slept together long ago, that you’ve spent the weekend recalling turn on’s and turn off’s…What old lovers did well and what you didn’t like. He teases you with his hands, placing them firmly around your neck, just as you told him you enjoy. Your breathing quickens while he laughs at your dramatic reaction. Taunt him. Tease him. Ask him to do it again. Show him how your body responds to his touch. His mouth hovers over yours, and it’s all downhill. His hands are retracing your body, registering old fingerprints. Reaching, pushing, pulling, groping. Feel as if you’ve never felt…Comfortable. As if your bodies are meant to be meshed together. Giggle and cuddle and kiss and cum and do it all over again. Feel his absence when he goes back to your hometown. Continue to converse as best friends. Guard your heart and guard your feelings. Be honest with your girlfriends but never honest with him. Obsess. Write. Listen to music. Get nothing accomplished at work. Long to go home and lay on the same rumpled sheets, reliving the last 36 hours. Eventually hand the results over to the universe, remembering you live 300 miles away and the timing is all wrong. Passion is one thing. Timing is another.