I Could Be A Million Things ( Pt. 2)

Years passed, seasons changed. They grew up, turned from mischievous, naïve children to cocky, gangly teenagers. And yet that special bond they shared never showed any signs of fading, of breaking. They were still the best of friends, still always seen together everywhere they went.
But there was a slight difference in their friendship now. People winked and clucked their tongues when they saw them together. Their names now rolled off people’s tongues with knowing looks in their eyes and teasing smirks on their lips. They felt it too, felt that slight shift in their relationship dynamics. He was no longer that best friend she hung out with every afternoon after school. She was no longer that snotty-nosed girl with the scabby knees and reckless plans.
Lingering stares, secret smiles, quick brushes that sent tingles down the spine. Afternoons usually spent in the arcades and making up pirate adventures were soon replaced with long walks down the beach and quiet conversations under that big old tree in the fields behind his house.
They shared their first kiss there, on a hot, summer afternoon when there wasn’t a cloud in the sky and no breeze at all. It seemed the world stopped turning just for them at that very moment when their lips met. Everything was perfect. The slant of sunlight across her face, the perfect stillness of everything around them, the cloudless blue of the never-ending sky above them. That feeling that had been simmering under the surface for so long finally came out in full-burst, hit them with their defences down, and filled them.