The morning after we watched a horse race online together, I finally told my friend how I felt about him. I was scared he would reject me. I was also getting tired of having all these feelings while leaving him to guess at absolutely none of them.
We’re both eighteen, and the race was the Kikuka Sho. We already had a friendship I cared about, which made admitting I wanted more feel like a bigger risk than simply telling a guy I found him attractive. He mattered to me before there was any possibility of calling him my boyfriend.
But I did find him attractive. Very. My interest in him had gone well beyond enjoying our shared hobbies, and keeping it to myself wasn’t making it smaller. So that morning, fear of rejection and all, I said it. I wanted him to know, even if the answer wasn’t the one I hoped for.
He felt the same way. We’re together now, which is still a wonderfully strange thing to be able to say about someone who was already my good friend. Nothing about him had suddenly changed; I had finally learned that the attraction went both ways.
Then he told me he’d liked me before I confessed. He’d kept quiet because he thought I only saw him as a friend. While I’d been worrying about being turned down, he’d been treating friendship as the limit of what I wanted. We had both managed to keep the other person impressively uninformed.
That part makes me especially glad I spoke up. I’d had encouragement to tell him, and I’m grateful I listened. From what he told me afterward, staying quiet could easily have meant carrying on as friends, each unaware that the other wanted something different. Instead, we finally have something real to be excited about.
Now I’m trying to enjoy it without racing ahead of myself. I know we’re in that early, infatuated stage when everything feels exciting. I really like him, and I don’t want my enthusiasm for sex to set the pace for the whole relationship. Before he became my boyfriend, he was my friend. I want to keep caring for that part too.
I haven’t been entirely discreet about the attraction, though. I’ve let slip that I’d like to take charge sexually, and he seems pretty enthusiastic about the idea. That’s as far as I can honestly take that particular update: a desire I’ve admitted, and a response that looks promising.
This weekend, I’m going to stay at his house. The plan is to bake together, then cuddle up with anime or a movie. He’s my boyfriend now, and we have a baking date to look forward to.
