Anticipation

That breathless, waiting, almost feeling.  Senses on alert.  Nerves on edge.  Heart races.  Eyes glaze over with imagination. 

What's next?

Dread or desire.  You are driven to it.

I love that feeling.

I was in a one-act play my first year of college called Great Catherine.  My roommate was producing it and needed to fill the role of a prissy, bratty aristocrat so I didn't even have to audition.  Not that I am that way but I can do one hell of an impression and she knew I'd done theater in high school.  Anyway, there was a guy who played the role of some brutish, body guard in the play.  He was a year or so older.  Tall, dark and just enough damaged.  And extremely good looking.  Our characters were supposed to hate each other.  So of course there was chemistry. 

To pass the time during rehearsals he and I started playing out these little scenes offstage that had nothing to do with the script except for the tension between the character types.   He was gruff and dark.  I was spoiled and petulant.  We bickered in rapid fire, circling each other with furious glares and biting words.  We closed in toward one another until he roughly grabbed my shoulders and we were face to face in a heated, yet fictitious, argument. 

We'd get so close.

Then silence. 

Heart pounding.  Gasping.  Staring.  Silence. 

We held that moment.  That Almost Kiss.

One word.  One slight lean.  And it would have been over.

Then he would release my shoulders sharply or I would wrestle away with a grand show.  And we would stomp off from each other in an exaggerated, exasperated huff.

We did that every day we saw each other at least one time for weeks.
We never kissed.

I loved that feeling.