The Enhanced Version

I probably should've prefaced the story by saying that our first kiss wasn't exactly a huge shocker. We'd spent years going back and forth flirting, talking till 2am, every now and then confessing that we liked eachother. We actually started casually saying "I love you" to eachother that summer. I waited and waited for Brad to make a move. He knew I'd always loved him, but he never acted on it. If he did act on it (such as holding my hand at my birthday party, etc), it never developed into anything. I'd waited 7 years for him to do something. So I took matters into my own hands. I decided to start dating other people.

And it worked.

I began dating a friend of a friend. Nothing real serious. The weeks prior to that day, Brad had been acting strangely. He seemed to be irritated with me alot. So the day that I went over there, Brad and I sat in his room and talked about it. He apologized for being a jerk. He said that he wasn't used to me talking about all my other friends outside of him and now I was seeing some guy, and he didn't like that my attention wasn't all on him anymore. As he put it, "When you used to call me, it was all 'Brad, Brad, Brad'." I told him I was sorry and asked what exactly he wanted me to do. He said he just wanted a little more attention from me.
He also gave me a late birthday present. It was a Hawaiian shell necklace he said he made. He put it on for me. He cleaned up a little, put on some music, then we went downstairs.
As he was walking me to the door, he asked me if I was proud of him for not trying to put the moves on me. haha I just smiled and said yeah.
He opened the door, and I went to give him a hug goodbye... except the hug never ended. When I tried to pull away, he shook his head no. I said, "What?" He whispered, "I'm not letting go." He kicked the door shut with his foot, then asked me if I wanted to stay a little longer.

You already know the rest, except that as I was walking home, he stood on his porch and yelled, "I love you!" I just smiled and said, "I love you too."