They're still friends - but it never goes further

The next afternoon, I ended up coming across Jessica in the hallway. While there was no unspoken agreement to avoid each other, it didn't make the situation less awkward. For a long while we just stood, staring at our toes.

"Ian, I... I'm so sorry about last night," she mumbled. "I thought that given the circumstances, you were - available. I didn't think about how you might have felt and I really went over the line, and - "

"It's not your fault. We're both in pretty strange places in our lives right now," I murmured. "I don't know if Amy really broke up with me, and I don't want you to feel that I dislike you or anything. ...It probably sounds crazy, but as things are right now I don't think we can be anything more than friends."

"It does sound pretty crazy, doesn't it? Guy like you, turning down a hot girl like me," smirked Jessica, nudging me on the arm. "All I can say is, Ian - if you feel so strongly about Amy, it doesn't matter what she thinks. You do everything you can to go after her for me, yeah?"

That was the last time Jessica and I had such an intimate talk - or spent prolonged periods of interaction with each other. Although we still remained friends with the same interests and sense of humor, the change was inevitable - Jessica needed to move on from what might have been between us.

It didn't mean I never saw her again. Far from it - no more than a week later, she ended up going out with my roommate, and it didn't take long for them to start going at it whenever they could. This meant half my nights were interrupted with them doing the horizontal tango next door, and I had a front row seat to their Symphonie de Nachtmusik.

I still kept in touch with my buddies from high school, though by then we'd gone from best of friends to mere AIM associates - we didn't chat often, and when we did it was never for long. Apparently, save for Talia and Rachel, all of them were still experimenting with the college dating scene. The topic of me and Amy never came up - no one brought it up, and I was still too much of a mess to do it myself. Her smile, her tears, memories of everything about her still haunted my dreams. The constant thumping between my room and Jessica's didn't help either.