Chapter 1: a Revelation

Gwen and I were best friends since grade 10. We had almost every class together and graduated together. We both lost our virginity at our grade 12 prom, on a double dare that had become a tradition between us. We would both dare each other to do the same thing. In grade 10 it was to walk up and kiss a nerd; by grade 12 we were daring each other to flash old men, go without underwear during a cheerleading practice, and lastly daring each other to give up our cherries to our respective boyfriends at prom, both of us having turned 18 the month before.

In college the dares got crazier, each one created by me. Gwen was psychologically shy, yet when a dare was given the shy facade always seemed to fade away as she also hated to lose.

Anyway I digress; we both got our teaching degrees at the same college. Luckily for us, we also got jobs at the same school; me teaching kindergarten and Gwen teaching grade 3. Over the next few years I dated a couple men before strictly dating women. Unfortunately, I had been through a string of women. I broke up with women for many trivial reasons: she had an annoying laugh; she was too high maintenance; she was too low maintenance; her family was crazy; she wasn't intelligent enough for me; she was too intelligent for me; she wasn't good enough in bed; etc ... What I realized after the fact is they actually all had the same problem ... they were not Gwen. Gwen, on the other hand, dated a couple guys briefly before falling hard for a decent guy named Rob.

Anyways, life went on and had been very normal, until she announced she was getting married. It shouldn't have been a big deal as they had lived together for two years already and nothing had really changed in our relationship. We still had our weekly girls' night, our occasional dares, our daily phone calls and our constant text messages. Yet, when she gave me the news, something triggered deep inside me. I had this empty feeling and then it was replaced by this overwhelming fear and then it was replaced by something I can't explain. A light bulb went on. It didn't flicker, it shined bright. I was in love with Gwen. Not as a friend, not as a sibling; no, I loved her in an 'I want to spend the rest of my life with you' love.

That night I went to bed alone thinking of the few times we experimented with each other. It started with drunken kissing a few times to tease the boys at the pub, then one time for the boys when I fingered her, on a drunken dare of mine, for their entertainment; on a few occasions we masturbated side by side as we watched some porn and then eventually helped each other reach orgasmic bliss once ... just once. I remember how gentle she was and how she found my g-spot, something very few had ever been able to do. In retrospect, that night was so tender, so gentle, and so perfect. Unfortunately, we never were intimate again, nor had we ever talked about that one special night.