KISS

The love was there, no doubt about it. As long as they had known each other they had always shared a private, unequal love; his for her greater than hers for him, he the lover, she the loved.

To her, he was her comforter, companion and counsellor. Old enough to be her father, he never judged, always listened, and never had to try to see the best in her, because that was all he ever saw. He was the one who saw right through her and loved her still, and when she was sad, she looked at herself through his eyes and was dazzled.

To him, she was everything he wanted. When they first met, he saw her beauty, and she was, in truth, stunning; but in time he came to see that beauty was the least of her. Just as women learn to be attracted to the men they love, men learn to love the women they are attracted to, but he would have loved her if he'd have been blind. She was funny and clever, kind and sensitive, innocent and vulnerable ,all of which made him want to fold her in his arms and keep her safe every bit as much as he wanted to make love to her.

They both knew that they would never be together. For a long time they shared the pretence that it was because of the difference in their ages, which was sweet of her; the truth was that even on his best day in his best year, she would never have looked at him twice. She could have had any man she wanted. He was, at best...nice.

And so, over the years they grew together and became like a pair of comfortable shoes. They came to realize that the each filled a need in the other. He gave her his insight and his wisdom, and she gave him one last mad romantic dream to follow. He gave her experience, she, without ever laying a finger on him, gave him sex.

With time, their feelings changed, of course. Over the years, by nothing more sinister than osmosis, he came to be close to the centre of her world. When something made her laugh, he was the person she shared it with. When something made her cry, he was the one she called. When she saw something amazing, he was the one she wished had been there to see it with her, and one day she realized, with an uncomfortable bump, that this fairly funny, fairly clever and basically unremarkable middle-aged man was the best friend she had ever had.

When he first saw her, he thought the same as any man thought when he saw a woman like her; but as she grew more dear to him, whilst he still dreamed of laying with her, rather than them making love, he imagined her sleeping with her head on his chest as he felt the strange electricity of skin against skin, or kissing her neck and shoulders whilst his fingertips brushed the curve of the base of her back; no longer thinking about their being lovers, but the two of them being as close in body as they were in their hearts. He knew it would never be, and somehow he clung on to just enough sense to realize that although he could not have everything he wanted, there was no reason to throw away the something that they had.

And so the two of them grew together like honeysuckle and ivy, and the folks of the small town they lived in grew accustomed to the sight of the strange couple; the beauty and man who could have been her father; but they never understood, and never asked; and the pair never told.

One night, they sat on his sofa watching a film together, his hand in her lap and her head on his shoulder, when he caught the smell of her hair and realized what it was he wanted most; and as he thought the thought, the thought became a wish wordlessly breathed into life.

One day, he thought, she'll kiss me. Not the fond kisses on the cheek we give each other all the time. Not the warm, affectionate kisses she plants on the top of my head as I sit, or the loving but sexless kisses I lay on her hand. No; one day she'll be happy or emotional or drunk or tired or just impulsive and she'll kiss me – soft and wet and deep – and that will be all. No frantic groping or tearing at clothes, no falling into bed, no ill-judged passion; just a kiss. And we'll both be a bit sheepish afterwards, we probably won't speak for a day or two and then we'll pretend to forget all about it.

There's one thing she'll never know, though. Nobody will. I'll take that memory, and put it in a special box in my heart, along with all my greatest treasures, and for the rest of my life I will always be able to take it out and look at it. When I die, if there is anyone by my bedside, they'll see a faint smile cross my face and wonder what I'm thinking; but nobody, even those who know me best won't know.

I'll be thinking about the time she kissed me.