Age 18: 

When you turn 18, nothing grand happens. Well you don’t think it was grand. You find yourself in your room, on your bed beside her. She’s asleep while you stay awake, not because you don’t want to sleep, but because you can’t. She came up with the idea for a sleepover the day before your birthday. 

Of course you say yes because it’s your best friend, you always found it hard to say no to her. Not when you would follow her to the end of the seas if she wanted you to. Not when you would fold a thousand cranes for her, and not when you would wish for her happiness even if it meant you weren’t going to be a part of it. 

Suddenly, you think of others who are over the moon when they turn 18.  It’s the year you get to find your soulmate, but you weren’t in a rush to find yours.

Maybe because you thought you already found her, or maybe because it isn’t her, and you want to indulge in her.

Just a little bit longer. 

But that’s when she stirs in her sleep, you realize you’ve been zoning out, staring directly at her sleeping face. You snap out of it the same time she wakes up. She takes a quick glance at the clock. 

12:26am 

She wishes you a happy birthday in her sleep ridden voice, and you mumble a simple thank you. She pulls you closer and you feel her arms wrap around your waist. Like it has too much times before. You still feel that same giddiness you felt the first time you cuddled with her. You hold her in your arms. You feel a strange emotion, but it’s welcomed. It’s the feeling that creeped up on you ever since you met her. You like to think it’s love.

You like to think you’d do anything for her and she would do the same for you. 

For that love was easy; it was blameless.