What took you so long, what took you all night? - Emma Bunton

It's time to end this, once and for all.

I'm not sleeping until I've full caught up on everything.

This may be a fairly long post. Additionally, there will be stream-of-consciousness moments, where I just sort of ramble.

You have been warned.

Okay, first and foremost, the whole "Lilie thing".

First, for those of you who aren't terribly good at predicting patterns or detecting literary foreshadowing, we're just friends. Close, affectionate, friends. (Well, we'll see how things go the next time we're together, but I think they're going to go just fine. I hope.)

Now that you've read the last page, let's go back to the middle of the book.

So on these four evenings, Shayna (?) had left, leaving Shelley by herself in their apartment. She called both Lilie and I to come hang out and watch some movies. So we did. The first night, we watched Van Helsing; the second, Day After Tomorrow and.... argh. For some reason, I can't quite recall the other movie we watched that night; the third, 13 Going on 30 and Mean Girls; the fourth, The Prince and Me and The Punisher. That's when things started to get weird. We started getting... really physical. Not sexual, or making out, but just about everything else. There was a *lot* of tickling. From both of them. Lilie also... bit me. Not in a sucking-vampiric-hicky kind of way (Suzie), but in an 'Ow! That's my knee!' kind of way. She bit me twice in one evening, once on the back (OW!) and once on the knee (OW!!). That night, when I was hugging her good night, she bit me in the tender area between the shoulder and neck. Without a shirt in the way. For a while. I didn't really squirm or shout or anything. I just enjoyed it. Because it was nice.

I also finally got to feel her, um, you know. No, not that! The other one. Yes, those. Once, when she was lying on the floor, and I was in front of her, I kind of leaned back to rest on her. I realized where I was and started to pull back and apologize, but she said it was okay. The other time, I was lying on the couch, and she sat on me, hip to hip. Her head was kind of on my head, and... yeah, they were kind of right in my face. Or something like that.

Shelley spilt her whole life story. I really had no idea. I'm not quite sure how to react or respond. Pity is definitely out; I think I'm going to end up with respect. To have to have gone through so much, for so long... I really can't even begin to imagine it. It makes me look back at the things I've been through, how difficult I thought they were, and laugh. it does help provide the context that you really have to use, though.

That's when the problem started. Not when Shelley started spilling her whole life story, I mean, but when Lilie and I started being really physical with each other. (I'm incorporating information I later learned as well). We're both very physical, affectionate people. Her "line", as she puts it, is in a different place from most people. I, on the other hand, don't know if I have a "line" or where it is. The problem was/is that I've never been in a friendship that was very physical. So, being in one was kind of weird for me, and I had trouble remembering 'just friends', and got really confused. That led to our most recent conversation, but we'll come to that later. I've kind of jumped out of seqeuence here.

I even kissed her good night once. It's weird - when we hug good night, we hug for a *long* time. A *long* time. Then, when we finish and go to un-embrace, our heads pull back, but we're still holding each other close. We tend to talk some, very quietly, with ouer heads very close together. It's really weird, because our lips are close together as well. So I did kiss her the other night. On the lips. Nothing open-mouthed or long or anything. Incidentally, when I asked her about that, saying I shouldn't have, she said something to the effect of she didn't not enjoy it; if she was offended or thought I was being too foward or anything, she would have said something.

Odd.

So I'm kind of jumping around here. The main point(s) - we had a blast hanging out at Shelley's, and explored the physical nature of our relationship (friendship). But I kind of forgot about us being "Just friends", and got confused. So I called her and asked her about it. Yes, I am an idiot. We sort of talked after the last night at Shelley's, which was incredibly awkward for all concerend. Didn't really accomplish anything, though, since she had a headache and was really tired. So her and Shelley talked yesterday (it's Friday morning now), and she almost had an anxiety attack and was in tears (as Shelley says). That *really* hurts me. The last thing I would ever want is to make her cry or freak out or get hurt in any way. She called me while I was at the SFFS costume ball (more on that later), and we talked some more. We also talked as I drove home, and some more while I was lying in bed. Basically, we talked (again) about being just friends, established that we're both physically affectionate people, and that I'm an idiot and that all the confusion was my fault (well, she didn't really agree to that last part).