"Okay, Jade, time to spill all the sordid little details that you left out last month!" Sunny proclaimed, margarita in one hand, her other pointing furiously at her curly haired friend who was rolling her eyes as she sipped her Bailey's.

"Sordid? That's pushing it a bit," Jade replied. She was caught off guard when a pillow hit her in the back of the head. Jade turned and glared at Alex who sat perched on Sunny's bed, snickering.

"Come on, Jade! You're the first one to have a real, honest-to-God, serious boyfriend! We're going to question you 'til you beg for mercy!" Alex said.

"Mercy." Jade said dryly.

"Never!" Hyper declared, waving her half eaten chocolate bar, and the other girls joined in. Jade laughed good naturedly, trying to hide her own excitment. In truth, while there were parts of her relationship with Kloud that she would never share with anyone else, there were also parts that she'd never had a chance to share with anyone. She'd been dating her first boyfriend for the past six months and had been unable to share, gossip, or even ask advice of her best friends. And she hadn't fully realized just how badly she wanted that until this moment.

"Fine, fine, where do you want to start?" Jade asked, curious, and gleeful.

"The beginning of course," Jen said, practically, "describe your first kiss!"

The others all looked on and leaned in to listen. Jade grinned, knowing she would enjoy this, "First kiss? That was just before Christmas. I was leaving his house, he pounced on me, pushed me up against his back door and kissed the living daylights out of me. I threw a pickle jar and a snapple bottle at him for it, too."

"Ehhhh?!" the girls all hollared in surprise.

"Wait! I'm confused, I thought you told us you started dating Kloud after New Years?" Sunny said.

Jade smiled a little mischeviously, "I did. And it's true. Kloud kissed me in December, without my permission. It was a complete surprise."

"He stole your first kiss?!" Hyper yelled, her eyes laughing.

"Yup," Jade replied, grinning.

"And you only threw a pickle jar and a snapple bottle at him? I'm shocked," Alex said, making the rest of them laugh.

"My restraint was unconcious on my part. I think I was still shocked by the fact I enjoyed the kiss."

"Damn skippy. If a guy as hot as Kloud pushed me up against a door....yummm," Hyper said, taking a bite of her chocolate to prove her point.

"Okay, okay, moving on, first date?" Sunny asked.

"That was back in October of last year,"

All the other girls just looked at her, confused again.

"Okay...what?" Alex asked.

"We made a bet," Jade explained, "if I won, he could never ask me out again; if I lost, I would have to go on one date with him."

"So you lost?" Jen asked.

"Yep, I lost," Jade smiled, "he took me to the Dollar Theater over in South Windemire. We got sushi from Osaka next door, and ate it in the back of the theater. I didn't want to admit it, but I really did have a lot of fun with him."

"Of course you didn't, we can't actually let guys know how much we like them, that's just insanity," Sunny said sarcastically. Jade turned her golden eyes on her friend, eyes that were half amused, half annoyed.

"Ain't that quite a bit of the pot callin' the kettle black, Sunny?" Jade asked knowingly.

Sunny flushed bright red, and could practially feel the other girl's attention shifting from Jade to her. So, thinking quickly, she spat out another question for Jade.

"Favorite kiss?" Sunny squeaked out, effectively distracting the other girls, who all whipped their attention back to Jade. Jade herself rolled her eyes at Sunny but chose to answer anyways.

"March 21."

"You remember the date? Wow!" Hyper said.

"It was his birthday," Jade explained, "but I'd probably remember the date even if it hadn't been."

"Whoa, really? Must of been a hell of a kiss, what happened?"

Jade smiled, and there was so much in her eyes - satisfaction, amusement, mischief, and the subtle sweet touch of something else - but then Jade blinked, and it was gone.

"All the sordid details then?" she asked cheekily.

"Hells bells yes!" Alex cried out, impacient.

Jade chuckled, took a sip of her drink and thought back with ease to that particular day...

"I hate this stupid class," Kloud grumbled, flipping open another reference text with more force than nessessary and tried to block out the soft giggling of his girlfriend. He turned his blue eyes over to her, his face semi-accusing. "I find it disturbing that you find pleasure in my pain."

"You're not in pain," she replied, smiling that quick and easy smile of hers. He couldn't help the smile that alighted his face in response.

"Not when you're here with me," he said, the smile turning into a crafty smirk.

Jade reached out, and slapped the back of his head, "Lech," she said affectionately.

"You wouldn't have me any different."

"Which is simply proof of my complete lack of taste in men. Now focus, you've still got a good four pages to come up with."

Kloud sighed and went back to looking at his books and papers spread out in front of him. Dejectedly, he picked up his pencil and went back to work. Jade smiled and shook her head. He was the one that had put off writing his AP History term paper so long. Even her, a hard core fan of procrastination wasn't as far behind as him. She had mostly finished hers on Friday night, thinking of getting it done so she could spend Kloud's birthday with the birthday boy without worrying about it too much. But low and behold, she showed up at his house to find him in a panic, trying to pull together a paper from nothing.

Jade had dragged him downtown, telling the whole while that if he was going to try to throw together a paper from zip the only place he would be able to pull it off would be at the downtown library.

So here they were, spending a beautiful March day inside the library, not that Jade had any complaints about the location, but the work? Hell yes. Still, it was a chance for her to finish off her conclusion paragraph.

"Damn," Kloud muttered, lifting up papers looking for something.

"What'd you loose?" she asked, looking up.

"I think I left my notebook in the stacks. I wrote down the call numbers for the books in it, I think I left it on the last shelf," he explained, checking under his textbook real quick. Jade got up.

"I'll go get it, you keep working," she ordered, heading for the stacks where they'd pulled the last reference book.

She ducked inbetween the shelves, walking back two rows before spotting Kloud's notebook sitting on an open space of shelf. She picked it up and turned to go, when her eyes caught the titles of the books on the other shelf. Her mind switched focus, plucking one of the books off and opening it up. This was really cool: collections of folk tales, divided by cultures. They were reference texts, examining parallels between stories that came from cultures that had never had any contact with each other. Fasinated, she read the introduction, completely forgetting the notebook she cradled in her arm.

Kloud of course came looking after she didn't come back. He spotted her, nose buried in a book, her eyes focused and intense.

"Jade?" he asked, walking over to her. She blinked at her name being called and looked up in question. Once she saw him, she frowned, a little confused, and then it dawned on her what she'd been doing.

"Oops, got sidetracked. Sorry."

He chuckled, and came over to see what had distracted his Dragonet. "Fariy tales, huh?"

"Folk tales," Jade corrected absently, "look at this though, it compares tales from different cultures. The really cool part is how some cultures that reportedly had no contact with each other all came up with similar themes, ideals, even characters or events!"

Kloud stood next to her and read a few lines, it was rather interesting. But he had a term paper to finish, and only a little time with which to do it if he still wanted to enjoy his birthday party which was that evening at Donnie's house.

"Jade..." he said, his tone teasing,

"Oh, right. Sorry again, you know how I am, get caught by books without even thinking about it," Jade said sheepishly, shutting the book and putting it back on the shelf. She turned to lead the way back to the table but Kloud caught her arm with gentle fingers, turning her back to face him. She looked up at him, questioningly, but he just leaned in and put his forehead against hers, looking, smiling, into her eyes.

"I wouldn't have you any different," he whispered.

And Jade just...melted.

The kiss began as just a simple and soft touch of lips. Just a silent thank you. But then Jade parted her lips under his, and it all changed. Kloud ran one of his hands up her bare arm, making her shiver, the other wrapped around her waist pulling her flush to him. Jade raised up her own hands, which first went to his face, and then to his hair, and finally she wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling herself up onto her tiptoes. Kloud walked forward, backing her up against the bookshelf, he pressed her there, kissing her fiercely and deeply.

They broke apart, desperate for air, hearts pounding. Their eyes met, and there was nothing else for it - they fell together again.

Jade didn't know what to do. Her heart felt like it was going to burst in her chest and kill her. But gods above, what a way to go...

She wanted to just...crawl inside him. To fuse them together somehow so that she wouldn't be seperated from him. She wanted to stay right where she was, in his arms, a part of him. She wanted to love him, to be loved by him. And in that tiny little corner of her mind, where her thoughts were still semi coherent, she realized that she had half of what she wanted. She did love him, didn't she?

What a gloriously terrifying thought.

Jade finished telling her little tale, her eyes focusing on the present. The other girls were all staring at her with rapt attention. Hyper had finished her chocolate bar, and Sunny clutched an empty margarita glass.

"Wow..."

"Damn..."

"That really was a great kiss," Jen said dreamily.

"But why was it the best?" Alex asked, "And if you say it was because you were in a library..." that made everyone laugh.

But Jade just shook her head, still chuckling a little, "No, it wasn't that. It was the best kiss because...because it was the first time that I gave up trying to not love him," she said, her eyes distant again. "I put up a hell of a fight those first couple of months, you know. Trying to keep myself just emotionally distant enough that if something happened, it wouldn't hurt me too badly. But in the end, in that kiss, I realized later that I wasn't keeping myself emotionally distant at all. I already loved him, and for the first time, I let myself feel that fully. It was..." Jade trailed off, and didn't continue.

"It was...?" Hyper tried to prompt. But Jade just shook her head in refusal.

"Nevermind."

"Aw, come on," Sunny whined. "What was it?"

Jade just shrugged, "More than words, guys. More than words."

There was a long pause of silence as the girls all took that in, broken finally by Jen who grinned slyly at her friend.

"So how far have you and Kloud gone?"

Jade tried not to blush, but failed. She covered her momentary embarrassment by knocking back the rest of her drink. "You lot are going to have to get me a lot drunker to answer that question."

Sunny put on an evil smirk and raised up the bottle of Bailey's Jade had brought over, "That can be arranged..."