Coming home can be a return to everything warm and cozy. Back to a time when you felt securely taken care of and welcome just for being you. Or it can be a misery to be endured until you can make a final escape. You can guess which option I was dealing with in coming home to visit for the first time in five years.

And this isn't even my home, although I have walked up these stairs many times. It's his home – was his home. Steele's.

Back then.

Now? Nobody's exactly sure.

Steele's been gone almost as long as I have and hasn't been heard from since he left the house. The pain of that worms deeper into my core as I climb the staircase.

I was his second best friend from the first day of school (first best if you only count two-legged animals). Steele and I were instantly acquainted when our eyes locked in humiliation across a sea of desks and snickers. When Scheherazade Granger was followed by Harden Greengross the Third during roll-call, you can bet we bonded for life. Or so it seemed at the time. That is until life came in and bit us both on the backsides.

“How did you end up with a name like Scheherazade?” Steele asked me as he plunked down beside me at a table, where we ended up sharing our lunches.

“My mother fancies herself as exotic, I guess.” I bit out, more harshly than I intended.

I'd never been super close to my Mom but recently, things had really gone sour. Steele looked at me from beneath impossibly lush lashes and my heart shivered for the first time in my life. Then the talk turned from 'Aladdin' and the 'Thousand and One Nights' stories that inspired my name, until somehow I found myself telling Steele all about it.

“It's like she wants nothing to do with me or my sister and especially my dad. As though all three of us have become an irritating nest of vermin she'd like to be rid of.”

Steele munched on his rather haphazardly made sandwich and nodded, letting me know he was listening closely.

“At least she's stopped standing over us every time Bella or I leave the house, saying we look like mini sluts or we need to lose weight. Now she's gone to the other extreme. Barely knows we exist. It's like we don't even have a mother. Can you imagine what that's like?”

Steele nodded again with a humph and stuffed the remainder of the curly ham and bread into his mouth.

“Can you? Really? I'd just be glad if she'd stop shooting her disgusted looks at dad every time he opens his mouth. Sorry, I''ll stop ranting. You probably get along great with your parents.”

“Parent. Single.” Steele said as he swallowed the last of his mouthful. I quickly latch on to the idea that he's a boy of few words. “My Mom died this summer.”

My mouth couldn't have dropped further open without actually hitting the floor. My cheeks filled with a rush of heat that I had no control over. All I could do was stammer and wish I could take back everything I'd been raving about.

“I'm, oh God, I'm so sorry. I would never have gone on and on like that if I'd known.”

“It's okay. I mean it's not okay, but my dad and I talked about it a lot, then we went to a grief specialist who suggested to Dad I get a dog. Rod's been a brick through this.”

I recall how I laughed a little at his ironic attempt to make things light, grateful that he was making the effort to alleviate the guilt at my thoughtlessness.

One thing that taught me as I grew older was to watch what I say before I go spouting off about my own problems. You never know what someone else could be going through. I owe that valuable insight to Steele.

So now I ought to be excited about coming back to town, the home of my best friend in all the world. So why am I filled with dread?

“I'll come if I can stay in the attic, I told my mother when she called to tell me Gran was ill and not likely to last long.

“Don't be ridiculous,” she snapped back with her usual domineering tone. “It's the end of summer, you'll roast up there. You'll take the blue guest room beside us.”

“Sorry, those are my terms. I need privacy to be able to do this.”

“Whatever. Have it your own way. But you'll wish you'd listened to me.”

Yeah. Like always.

I didn't tell my mother what my real fears were and now, as I tentatively walk up the stairs behind her to the first floor, I'm glad I risked her wrath with my insistence. Even moving along the hallway I passed along so many times through my teenage years brings technicolor movie-like memories rushing into my mind.

All the times I came here to study with Steele in his room. All the times Rod padded along behind me as though he had my back. Oh god, I wish Rod were here now. Who would have thought I'd miss a dog that didn't even belong to me so much?

“I swear it's like he knows what anyone's thinking,” Steele had told me, when we were talking about his Mom, stretched across his bed on our backs, staring at the ceiling and eating pop tarts Steele had brought up from the kitchen.

I was crying about my upcoming move. Saddened, not that I was going to leave the home I grew up in, my school and friends, only that Steele wouldn't be there too. I couldn't even tell him, hardly found the words. But Rod got up off the floor where he was lying on Steele's side of the bed and padded around the bed. He put his chin on the mattress and nudged at my leg. Then lifted his paw and put it on my hand bringing tears immediately shoving at the backs of my eyes.

“The way he looks at me, those huge compassionate eyes, how does he do that?” I asked Steele, who'd propped up on one elbow to look at his two closest friends.

“He just gets it. He's a superior being, too good for this world.”

Sometimes I had the same thought about Steele. How he dealt with his feelings and put me before himself, always a good listener. He'd also grown into a freakishly sexy hunk that girls at school trailed with their eyes. I made a lot of new friends when Steele suddenly turned from skinny kid to strapping god. Girls that sidled up to me and asked whether Steele and I were a thing.

“No we're best friends is all,” I said.

“Do you think you can put in a word for me?”

“A word?” I repeated dumbly. Never imagining they thought I'd want to lose my best bud in the world to some hair-flicking teen bimboid.

I stroked Rod's head, feeling the reassuring warmth of his smooth coat. And the moment I turned back to smile at Steele, my whole world changed.

His full lips came down onto mine, so out of the blue, I lay frozen solid, rigid and unable to move. Someone else had their mouth pressed onto mine. And someone I knew as a friend, not the other thing. A boy I crushed on.

Then the instant of shock reared up into a delicious swell of something else. A throb pushed itself between my thighs and my heart began leaping and racing like an Olympic sprinter. In all the years since then, my desire for Steele has never been bested by any other man I've met.