We got to town and tracked down a reasonably priced hotel called the Bavarian Inn. It had a neat little atmosphere and we figured independently owned by virtue of the desk lady’s German accent (Bavaria is a province in Germany). When she asked if we wanted one bed or two I quickly replied one and she quickly replied two. I figured that I was sleeping on the floor, so the prospect of getting a bed was nice. We asked the prices and determined that we would go ahead and get a one-bed and save a few bucks.

We quickly made our way up to the room to take a nap. I’d only gotten four hours of sleep or so the night before and she’d gotten only two, so we needed a nap. For reasons I cannot recall (no sarcasm again), I laid down on the bed and she laid down beside me. We talked for a bit before she fell asleep.

I found myself looking at her , and strangely all of my thoughts disappeared. I'm not sure that'd ever happened before. It certainly hadn't in the previous couple years.

Before long, I fell asleep too.

We woke up to the sound of my cell phone alarm and met Cathy and John up at the bar where the band was playing and all decided to go grab a bite to eat. We were talking about dieting and Camille lectured me a bit on everything that I’m doing wrong and John commented, out of nowhere, “See, you shouldn’t go to Idaho. You’re good for him.”

We went back to the bar, met up with Kevin and Callie and saw the show. Much to my surprise and contrary to the First Rule, we ended up sitting on opposite sides of the table. I took that as a sign of something, but can’t remember what. It was likely a muffled “she’s not interested” conflicted with a “but it doesn’t matter.” I spent most free moments of the show talking to John and Kevin.

Camille and I were both dead tired when we got back. The thought of lying in the bed with her seemed appealing, but I’d already agreed to sleep on the floor. We’d napped together, but that wasn’t exactly the same thing. Luckily for me, I’d had about six beers. I was possibly the slightest bit buzzed, but not very much as I’d eaten a lot. Camille didn’t know my drinking tolerance levels, so I figured I’d just collapse into the bed and if she thought it wrong I could pass it off as the alcohol diluting my memory.

She made no objection. After all, two reasonable adults could sleep in the same bed without feeling weirded out, correct? Besides, she'd sleep under the covers and I'd sleep over. Instead of falling asleep as both of us really should have, being as tired as we were, we stayed up for a couple hours and just talked. It was great enough that I felt the need to put it to an end before I started getting any unnecessary ideas, so I pretended to fall asleep. Within minutes, she’d appeared to fall asleep, too.

What happened next is strange and hard to describe. I couldn’t really seem to sleep. Between the alcohol and exhaustion, there’s no reason (other than the obvious) why that might be the case. At one point, I dozed off for a second and had a dream where we kissed. When I woke up, I inaudibly cursed myself. First for the dream leaving me to want the intangible and second for the cowardly feeling of my waking inaction.

But then again, I thought to myself, she's going to Idaho and what good would letting her know how attracted I was to her have done? This wasn’t just a random meeting and there would be consequences for one false move. Kevin and Callie are good friends of both of ours and an uninvited gesture could have proven rather embarrassing. It still didn't work. I still felt like a coward trying to talk myself into keeping my feelings in check.

Yet, as I laid there, we seemed to move closer and closer to one another - in very, very slow increments - over a process that literally took about three hours. we found ourselves with our arms around one another, each wondering if the other was awake and, if they were, what was going through their mind. I started opening my eyes to see how asleep she looked and couldn’t tell if her eyes were open or closed. Then she blinked and I knew. Unless I was hallucinating. I watched her do it a couple more times before realizing that she’d probably been just about as awake as I was. I kissed her forehead, figuring I could gauge her reaction from there. There wasn’t much of one.

Then I took the plunge. I leaned down and prepared to kiss her when she met me half-way.

Once we'd done that, something became unhinged. It felt like the force of a simple kiss blew out the wall behind us. We were tumbling down until we fell off a cliff in freefall together. Kisses are often, to me, somewhat anti-climactic. It's a step towards something furter or a token of previously verbally expressed affection. I'd never felt magic in a kiss until that night. Afterwards, we just looked at one another, undoubtedly wondering what the other was thinking about tomorrow. We knew what we wouldn't do, and we didn't. We didn't need to.

The next day we got everything together pretty quickly in the morning, were very affectionate, and hopped in the car and drove back. Throughout the drive we held hands and talked about everything under the sun and learned a lot about each other, but we never did talk about us, what happened, or really what it meant. We'd both resolved in our respective minds that it wasn't going anywhere, however much we had wished that that hadn't been the case. The more we talked and the more comfortable I felt with my hand in hers and vice-versa, the more we wished that hadn't been the case.

We decided that a nap was very much in order when we got back to the apartment. I was very nervous about her coming up because “mess” doesn’t even begin to describe my place. Camille is a rather clean-minded person as one would expect of a doctor. My bed wasn’t even made. I had underwear on the floor.