"It's too fucking cold," he said, and considering his t-shirt was soaked with water, i didn't blame him for saying it.

But i did blame him for making me move. It was the first time i'd gotten drunk iin almost three years, and you could say it was as new as one's first orgasm. My legs were heavy, my head was numb, and i had this unstoppable urge to laugh at anything i saw. My boyfriend wasn't there that day - i really can't remember why, but i remember being irritated at him because he wasn't there, and suddenly forgetting about it the moment Kris arrived.

It wasn't supposed to be like that - i had three of my five guys over, as well as my girlfriend, the sexpot called Siri. Elmo, Ryan, and alex. I was showing off the persian kittens we'd just bought, and after calling my boyfriend and feeling annoyed that he didnt bother to come over, i knew this party wouldn't be a party without Kris.

So we called him. As usual, i had to spend over half an hour on the phone with him to hail a cab and make the long journey to my house. While the three that were already here obsessed over the tiny, fluffed-up persian cats, i gave him a multitude of reasons to come. He'll get to spend time with two adorable kittens, he'll get to go wild with us as we usually do, he'll get to play with my guitar, he'll get to do something with his weekend besides sitting around.

"I'll come if you can get me drunk," he said.

And come to think of it, that wasn't such a bad idea.

Elmo and Alex left us after a couple hours, leaving Ryan with the two chicks he'd had indiscreet wet dreams about - the same wet dreams he bragged about to both of us on seperate occasions. To him it never mattered if i was dating his close friend and she was dating a 19-year-old metalhead - his ADHD convinced him that he was irresistible to both of us.

I'll get into the dynamics of our group - five boys, two girls. Elmo, alex, ryan, skander, and kris. We were all mixed up, siri being german, elmo half dutch, half indonesian, Alex half honduran and half american, ryan pure america and kris a lithuanian. Then there was me and my complex mix of cultures - such a weird creole of cultures could only come together in an international school, and that's exactly how it did. Since siri first came to egypt we clicked. We shared countless classes together, said hi one day, and in an instant we were friends. She was spontaneous and daring, tomboyish and largely complex, and that's what drew me to her. I would sleep through science class and have her fill me in later - and eventually she introduced me to her crew.

The first time i saw skander, she was having a playful fistfight with him. I walked up to them, watched for a while as he tried stealthily to escape her violent rain, and when he smiled at me, i smiled back. I was recovering from a long distant relationship that just couldn't last, with a guy i'd known for seven years already. I was slowly getting over him. And when i saw skander, i can't remember what it was that made me interested. Maybe it was the way he shook my hand.

Siri immediately saw the exchange and decided to get us together, the same way she was with Elmo. I began sitting with them at the table, getting to know all of them. We sank into a comfortable ring of friends, and by the time alex and elmo's birthdays came around, Skander was starting to make the moves on me.

I accepted it all immediately. By the time summer started we were seeing each other on a regular basis. I got the sick-to-my-stomach nerves every time i picked up the phone to call him. Twice, i overslept and got a call from him at 3:30pm, as he asked why i wasnt there to meet him yet. Not too graceful, but it didn't seem to matter. We spent our coffee dates talking about writing and books and all that. I talked about the things i wrote, the animes i watched, the books i loved and the authors i was crazy about. It turned out though, that i was far more talented than he was. It came in the psychology of my characters, the vocabulary, the style - everything. But i was too blind to see it at the time.

Eventually, it all culminated to a proposal that we make our thing official. Textbook romance and courting. Everything was like the movies. I was infatuated, and i didn't pay attention to his shortcomings - that the entire summer, i wrote him three long, detailed emails about my time in singapore, and i got nothing in return. None of the old feelings i had, i can explain now - because they're all just gone. He gave me some interesting conversations, he gave me some nice hugs, it was all ok, but for the nine months we were in our relationship, he had a bad habit of never showing up.

I only really spent time with him every thursday night. I taught him how to kiss and how to make out. I was the sex symbol, giving him a full guide to the female orgasm and how he's supposed to make it happen. The amount of times he began crying during our physical n sexual explorations was ridiculous, but at the time i was too infatuated to see it. On thursday nights, and only thursday nights, we spent the night in my room, making our explorations more and more daring. But the further i pushed, the more fragile he became. He had a thing for getting me worked up and doing nothing about it afterwards. I was doing everything i could to convince him to go all the way. Now, i'm glad he didn't take me on.

Kris was always there though, on the side. Elmo and alex and ryan were people i saw every day at school, three times a day - even after siri was thrown out of the high-profile place, my friendship with the guys remained. The first time i really got to know Kris was when we met up with him a few days after the beginning of tenth grade. He turned out to be extremely funny and extremely likeable. He was the guy you would feel comfortable with, even in your bunny pajamas. He slipped as easily into the framework of our group as he possibly could have, and he was a welcome addition. He completed the circle, and the seven of us became so-called best friends.

I went to the same school as skander - but for some reason, he barely ever took the time to see me. I had this idea in my head that he was just working, but it turned out he was just strange. I created my feelings for him with my own ideology of romance and love, to compensate for the lack of charm and complexity in him. Back then, my mind was so different to the way it is now. It's almost dazzling. He would show up for our lunch breaks or our 20-minute things between classes, usually five minutes before it was time to go.

And the rest of the time i spent fooling around with the others - usually elmo and kris. They were my favorites. I felt like i could trust elmo more than anybody else in the world, and i enjoyed my time with kris more than i did with anybody else in the world. Alex and ryan were sort of in and out - alex was the one i barely made contact with. I would never call or text him as casually as i called or texted everybody else. I was more comfortable having long conversations with ryan, elmo and kris on the phone than i even was with skander. The lack of intimacy there was just unacceptable. And the bursting into tears because of his loss of innocence - a regrettable incident that came along much more than once, on my bed, when i was in the middle of advancing - was just unacceptable.

What i had with Kris that i didnt have with elmo was simple: chemistry. That chemistry was mind-blowing, and when i began to see that skander may not be the right one for me, the way that chemistry just stared at me in the face left me almost no choice but to develop silent feelings.

We were closer to each other, Kris and i, than we were to probably anybody else in the group. He spent lunch times waiting at the table with the others for me to come, and as soon as i appeared he would slam me down on the table to tell me one odd story or another. We listened to strange music together n laughed about anything that came to our heads. When we went our separate ways on our school trips, the first thing he did on the first day back was track me down to tell me all about his tanzania trip, and how much his ass hurts after seven days of climbing, and how amazed he was by the giraffes that looked into the men's toilets. There was something about our friendship that was exclusive to us. It was obvious he cared about me and he liked talking to me - just as much as i liked talking to him. But there was something more. His growing sex drive mirrored mine, in the way we wanted each other.

But the growing feelings went unmentioned, because it was better for all of us, for me, skander, him, and the standing of the group as a whole. It would create a deep rift. One by one, i could tell, they were all starting to fall for me, and that rift would come soon, anyways.

By march, skander was angry that i'd repaired the space between siri and i. We grew apart for a while n we both stopped calling each other, but all of a sudden in february, we met up, i met her new boyfriend, 19 year old army guy Dani, and we were closer than ever.

Within that time Skander had become more agressive, without realizing it. My hyperthyroidism had just peaked, and i'd just come back from a trip to a doctor in london, so i was emotional, losing a lot of weight, and in a bad mood. My patience was thin. Kris was a remedy for that stress, and skander was an aggravation. He held me back from getting back to our friendship because her grades werent all that great. As if he had the right to do that in the first place -_-. He was envious when it came to the amount of time i spent with the others, despite the fact that they were mutual friends n he almost never bothered to spend more time than necessary with me. I didn't need him, but i liked the idea of love. I couldn't see his flaws until all of a sudden, the cat was out of the bag, and the chemistry as well as the feelings between me and kris came out into the open.

All it took was a few vodka cocktails and a sexy green dress to do it, and on that night, everything began to change - not just my relationships and surroundings, but the real me that even i didnt know until they helped me see.

I'll go back to that night in my next memoir, as soon as possible.

You know, Lynn, I think it's great that you're writing your memoirs. At the very least, when you're much older, you'll be able to look back on your life with a whole different perspective than what you started with, and all the lessons you couldn't grasp in the past will be revealed to you in the present. Life is really awesome that way.

I hope you have a great day and a great week ahead, sweetie. Take care, and keep writing...