I need to get this off my chest because I can't tell anyone I know and if I don't say it somewhere I'm going to lose my mind.

I've known her since she was a baby. Her dad is one of my closest friends, we played college ball together, and I've been at every birthday, every graduation, every recital. I was the one who taught her to ride a bike when she was six. I'm the guy who shows up to family barbecues with the good beer and lets the kids stay up late watching movies.

She turned eighteen three months ago and something shifted. I didn't notice it at first, or I told myself I didn't, but she started looking at me different at family dinners. Longer eye contact, standing too close, finding excuses to touch my arm when she talked to me. She hugged me at her birthday party and held on for two beats too long and I felt her press her chest against me and I stepped back and went to the kitchen and poured myself a drink and told myself I was imagining it.

I wasn't imagining it.

She showed up at my apartment on a Thursday night. No text, no call, just a knock. She was standing in my hallway in a denim skirt and a crop top and her hair was different, straightened, longer, and she was wearing makeup which she never used to wear and she said "can I come in" and I said where's your dad and she said he thinks I'm at a friend's house.

I should have told her to go home. I need to say that first. I know that's what I should have done.

I let her in and she sat on my couch and I sat in the chair across the room because I was already aware of what was happening and I wanted distance between us. She asked if I had anything to drink and I said you're eighteen and she said "I'm not asking for a drink."

"What are you asking for," I said, and my voice sounded weird even to me, tight and careful.

She looked at me and she wasn't a kid in that moment, she was looking at me the way women look at me and it made my chest tight and my stomach drop at the same time. "I think you know," she said.

"I've known you since you were in diapers," I said.

"I'm not in diapers now."

"Your dad is my best friend."

"I know who my dad is," she said, and she stood up and walked over to where I was sitting and she was close enough that I could smell her perfume, something fruity and young, and she put her hands on the arms of the chair and leaned down and I could see down her crop top and I looked because I'm a human being and she saw me look and she smiled.

I stood up and there was maybe six inches between us and she was looking up at me and I could feel my heart in my throat and my hands were at my sides and she took one of them and put it on her waist and said "I've wanted this since I was sixteen."

I moved my hand off her waist. I stepped back. My cock was hard and she could see it through my jeans and her eyes went down and back up and the smile got wider.

"I can't do this," I said.

"You want to," she said.

"That's not the point."

She stepped forward and kissed me and her lips were soft and she tasted like cherry chapstick and I kissed her back for about three seconds before I put my hands on her shoulders and gently pushed her back and said "you need to go home."

She looked hurt for a second, then something else, something determined, and she picked up her bag and walked to the door and turned around and said "I'll come back" and the way she said it wasn't a question.

She closed the door and I sat back down in the chair and I could still taste cherry chapstick and my hands were shaking and I haven't stopped thinking about her for three weeks and she texted me last night at midnight just a photo of herself in bed in a t-shirt and nothing else with the caption "thinking about you."

I haven't responded. I'm trying not to respond. I'm going to respond.