This is beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.

It's a rare pleasure to find a story like this where I can feel as immersed in the author's emotions as I have with my own work. The last thing I read that did that for me was Catcher in the Rye.

I happened upon this through your forum post in The Royal Guard, and I have to say that this certainly deserves to be featured there. There is nothing at all explicit in this, and it handles sexuality in an entirely mature way. (Ironic that "mature" is most often used as a label meant to somehow stigmatize the subject matter, as if "sex" were itself a dirty word.) There's nothing wrong with what you've written here, not by any stretch of the imagination.