How are you feeling?

I was afraid of the depth of my emotions. I was afraid they would scare him; afraid, too, that once they were out there, they would scare me. Nine years' worth of desire, love, devotion, friendship, intimacy - lust too, let's not kid ourselves - all safely contained in this diary and locked away inside me. If a dam like that suddenly breaks, you can be overwhelmed.

How was I feeling?

Overwhelmed.

Not in control.

I like to be in control. This was a good not-in-control, but still, it's unfamiliar territory, so it's scary.

So I was getting ready to explain all that to him, once we both had our coffees to hold onto. I thought he might understand. It might not be so very different for him.

It was such an attentive question. Which shouldn't have surprised me. He's an atttentive lover. But it caught me off guard, because he doesn't do talking about emotion. The only other time he's asked me how I was feeling was in Germany. And probably a good thing too - it's not like I could have opened up to him about what was going on inside me, behind that dam...

In my daydreams, I used to ask him how he was feeling, and he would open up, and that was progress enough. I never expected it to be this way round. I wasn't prepared for it. I love it when he takes the lead. I will tell him that one day.

Damn everyone else's insomnia. I would have liked to talk, to have him hold me, to lose myself in those amazing eyes of his. I would have liked - loved - to have been as verbally intimate as we had been physically intimate, to be as close as possible in every way possible, at last, after all this time. But the moment's passed and it's not the easiest thing to recover.

And after I reacted the way I did, maybe he'll never ask me again. And I so want him to ask me. To ask me every day for the rest of our lives. I wanted to share everything, every emotion, everything with him. Like I've always wanted to.

And this might be it. Can it really be happening? On three hours' sleep and a rush of adrenaline like this one, everything seems a bit blurry...

Anyway. I wasn't lying. I do really want to win this thing. Win it with him. How amazing would that be?