Yeah, me neither. But, I'll tell you what. That first moment when you realize you're in love comes pretty fucking close. Now, some people, they treat love like it's some sort of fucking commodity to be exchanged on the open market. Something that can be bartered, traded. The fuck ever. Love's, like, the only thing that separates us from the animals, y'know? True, conscious love. Seems almost ridiculous that it would take me four years to realize that I was in love with one of my best friends. Yeah, I'd been tight with Josh since we'd made that terribly cheesy (and terrible) horror flick, which was an accomplishment. It's hard as fuck to maintain a friendship in Hollywood, but somehow, we managed. Emails, phone calls, getting together when and how we could after I was done with "Rings". And it was easy to keep in touch because I liked him, y'know? Good sort, as Bean would say. Taught me to smoke, laughed at my bad jokes, willing to dissect the history of Palpatine and Couruscant at a moment's notice. But I never thought of him in that way. Hell, I didn't even think of myself in that way, despite all of the joking around we did on the "Rings" set and afterward. We were -- still are -- tight as brothers, a family. Incest isn't a part of my daily diet, y'know? And Josh was like that. Almost. But not quite. It'd been a few months since I'd seen him -- he was off filming and I was on location myself. But summer in L.A. is pretty much better than summer anywhere else, so there I was, home for a few weeks, listening to my barrage of backlogged messages. The usual kiss-ass bullshit mostly, from directors and producers and my agent, but only one held any interest. An invite from Josh -- his new movie was premiering at Westwood in a couple of days, did I wanna go, yada yada. Um, yeah. Free movies were always fun and a good perk of my job. Not that I really needed anymore perks. But, I'd take them. Kate and Orlando decided they wanted to tag along, and I'd invited Dom, too, but he'd said something about some party in Malibu. He's become quite the party animal since he's been here, which is cool, and, yeah. Digressing again. I do entirely too much of that. We'd all shown up, did the whole red-carpet-pose-for-Wire-Image thing, and walked into the lobby of the theatre. Bad thing about premieres were all of the people there to, y'know, be seen. Do the Hollywood politician press-the-flesh dance. Which meant that it took me a good fifteen minutes to even find Josh -- and he's not that easy to miss, what with how big he is and all -- and another ten before he was able to step away from his conversation and actually see me. It was really gratifying to see his eyes light up -- when had they gotten so big? -- but, before he could even say anything, he was swept away by his agent. Nassssty agent, as Gollum would say. Josh should definitely fire her. By the time he was free, it was my turn to be pulled away by Orlando...and so on and so on until the movie was about to start. Orlando, Kate and I crept to our seats, but I was pulled back just as we reached our row. I looked back, preparing to get royally pissed, and saw Josh smiling down at me, holding out his hand. Hey, you'd have taken him up on the invitation, too. He didn't lead me towards his seat. Instead, he walked out of the building into the narrow alleyway. And I opened my mouth to say something -- never could remember what it was, probably to ask where the hell we were going -- but Josh chose that moment to glance back and wink at me. Just a wink. And I'm here to tell you that every single stupid cliché there is about losing yourself in someone's eyes and everything else in the world falling away is the gospel truth, bring on the choir, sing "Hallelujah" and pass the donation basket. Because, fuck. I was lost. Gone. Suddenly so in love that it was frankly amazing to me that I'd never noticed how brown Josh's eyes were, how soft his lips looked, how well our hands fit together, and how he'd always been there, no matter what or how far away I was. All I ever had to do was pick up the phone. Where the fuck we were headed no longer mattered. Just the feel of his thumb rubbing across my knuckles and the promise in his eyes as he led me to his car. Did he follow through on that unspoken promise? Fuck yeah. Am I going to go into detail about what happened after we pulled out, Coldplay blaring from the speakers, Josh's hand warm on my thigh? Nope. Because that would be telling.
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