Free The One - No one said it would be easy by J.F. Goldsmith

subject! What else can I ask him? Quick, come on, I need an idea!” We had none of that. It all went swimmingly. We sat on a bench next to each other, facing each other. I had a stiff neck and my back was seizing up from sitting so crookedly, but no way did I want to miss even one moment and so I put up with this spine-twistingly disastrous seating arrangement with total devotion. There was a live band but I missed it completely, I was so captivated by our conversation.
     
    On the way home we spontaneously decided to make a nighttime excursion to a sunflower field. There, he picked some of the giant yellow plants for me. Bright moonlight, night, silence, sunflowers, this wonderful young guy – it was all perfect. It would have been the ideal moment to make love in-between sunflower stalks in the silvery light of the moon, sighing towards the approaching dawn. But, even though I was a hopelessly girlie girl, this was too much even for me. Even I thought the moment was just too corny, and so I remained sober, reserved and distant, just so that we would not even get close to a first-kiss situation. Number Five drove me home. In his ice-cold car, we sat and talked for over an hour. On the outside, I was shivering with cold, but on the inside I was burning up, and we arranged to meet again in two days’ time. Our farewell was quite unromantic, in spite of the lovely evening. I was suddenly full of panic, like I always am when I can feel the first kiss lurking in the wings, and so, with a quick “Bye, thanks” I bolted from the car. But I hadn’t bargained for Number Five’s extremely fast reaction capacity. He jumped out of the car, held me, hugged me and planted the obligatory “kiss-kiss right and left” on my cheeks. Simultaneously perplexed and relieved that it wasn’t a real kiss with tongue and everything, I disappeared through my front door. Phew! I made it! Of course I wanted to kiss him. And I was so in love I could burst. But somehow, that night it was all just too much for me. I was quite overwhelmed by all those beautiful things that were happening to me.  
     
    Next morning I woke up with one of those warm melting-chocolate-sweet-velvety butterflies-violins-floaty happy feelings in my stomach, that everyone knows who has just entered the wonderful, happy start-up phase of a great love affair. Everything feels like it’s wrapped in candy floss. It was autumn break and I could surrender completely to my candy floss world of feelings. The time to our next date passed in endless misery and impatience and longing strained my nerves.
     
    Then, finally, I was standing in front of his door, excited as anything. We were meeting at his house to cook a meal together. He was twenty-two and he still lived at home, but luckily his parents were away and so didn’t get in our way. I had brought recipe and ingredients, and we got started. Most of the time we giggled and messed about, how we ever managed to prepare this feast remains a mystery to this day. When the food was prepared, I found that I had no appetite even though I was quite hungry. I was so excited, I felt sick. My stomach rumbled but I couldn’t manage more than a few bites. I was hot, my face was burning. We both sat there with plates of steaming hot food in front of us, neither of us had an appetite, both prodding about half-heartedly with our forks. Instead of eating, we beamed at each other, we giggled and were terribly silly. The wine, eagerly refilled in large glasses, contributed further to our exuberance. I tried to retain some composure so that I would not lose the plot all together. I felt completely plastered and completely overwhelmed by the heat, the excitement, the rumbling in my stomach, and being so in love. In the end we left the food to itself and set out for his room in the attic. There, totally befuddled from all that wine, we sank down on his dark brown 1970s corduroy settee.
     
    We sat next to each other, virtuously. We turned