Best Friends' Off-Limits Kiss - Chapter 2

Maya

I've been in love with Rachel for eight years now, give or take. I say it with a small amount of hesitation because I think I’ve felt the same way about her since I met her, but for the longest time I also deluded myself into believing this was simply a friendship. A really good friendship, yes, but nothing more than that. Didn’t everyone love looking at their best friend, marveling not only at their beauty but also their strength and skill as a person? Didn’t everyone make sure that people they saw romantically didn’t interfere with the vision of the future you built with said best friend?

This is the main reason most of my relationships fail before they take off the ground. I know what I want from life and it’s Rachel—in whatever form I may have her.

Unfortunately for me and my dumb heart, she doesn’t seem to return my feelings. No, I might actually be the only woman I know that she hasn’t hit on.

‘Did you have enough time to pack?’ Rachel sidles up next to me, a duffel bag in one hand and a backpack in the other.

‘Yeah, just. Though my hungover brain couldn’t remember where we were going, so I packed for both tropical heat and deep snowy fields,’ I reply, pushing my carry-on luggage forward.

‘Well, we’re going to the Lake District, so…neither?’

‘Great, guess I can use my bikini as regular underwear then,’ I mumble. Figured they wouldn’t send us to Aruba for a team-building exercise, but a part of me was hopeful I might get a post-break-up holiday paid for by the hospital.

Rachel gives me a once-over, and a spark travels up and down the same path her eyes follow. ‘You brought a bikini? Shame, it’s been a while since I saw you in one.’ The spark explodes at her words, filling all my limbs with pulsating heat.

‘Stop it, you,’ I say, swatting her on the arm, the bashfulness lacing my voice far more real than I would like.

Maybe this is the reason I’ve been hopelessly in love with this woman with no way of communicating it. She’s a shameless flirt and doesn’t realise what it does to me. How much faster my heart beats when she says things like that to me. Growing up the way I have, with a family expecting me to follow traditional paths, it took me far longer than I care to admit that I liked Rachel as more than a friend. The awareness only really came to me in the last year, and it’s
been…eye-opening.

Before I can spiral further into the warmth still buzzing under my skin, a clipboard appears between us.

‘Patel! Sterling!’

Dr Hargreaves. Our clinical supervisor and—I say this with the deepest respect—the most aggressively cheerful person I have ever encountered in my life. She’s in full walking gear: waterproof trousers, a fleece that has seen better decades, and the kind of boots that suggest she’s way more into this than anyone else. Lake District is her Aruba.

‘You’re in group two,’ she announces, ticking our names off her list. ‘Bus leaves in ten minutes. Don’t be late—last year someone missed it and had to get the train to Windermere, and let me tell you, it set the whole first day back by about three hours and we still haven’t forgiven Marcus for it.’

Nobody asks about Marcus.

‘Four days, people!’ She claps once, decisive. ‘Wilderness first aid refreshers, team building, some light orienteering—’

‘How light?’ I mumble under my breath, and next to me Rachel laughs.

‘—and a wonderful opportunity to reconnect with your colleagues outside of a clinical setting.’ She fixes me with a look that suggests my question has been noted and will not be entertained. ‘There are information packs on your seats. Read them on the bus. I want everyone energised and ready to engage by the time we arrive.’

She bustles off to terrorise the next cluster of people who haven’t found their assigned group yet.

Rachel watches her go. ‘She said light orienteering.’

‘She said it the way people say minor surgery,’ I reply. ‘Like it’s meant to be reassuring, but somehow makes it worse.’

Rachel snorts, and there it is again—that small, private laugh she saves for moments like this, when it’s just the two of us being quietly terrible together. I have catalogued every version of Rachel’s laugh over eight years. This one is my favourite.

‘Come on,’ she says, nudging my shoulder with hers. ‘Let’s get on the bus before we end up like Marcus.’

She heads towards the coach and I follow, dragging my frankly unreasonable amount of luggage behind me. Through the window, I can already see colleagues jostling for seats.

‘After you,’ Rachel says, stopping at a row midway down.

I slide in first, by the window. She hoists both our bags into the overhead compartment and drops into the seat beside me. Her arm settles against mine on the shared armrest.

I look out of the window and try to remember how to breathe normally.

Dr Hargreaves materialises at the front of the bus, clapping again. ‘Right! Information packs, everyone! And I want phones away—we’re using this journey as an opportunity to talk to one another!’

A collective groan moves through the bus like a wave.

‘Rooming assignments are on page three,’ she adds, already moving on. ‘No swaps, no negotiations—I’ve had the emails before and the answer is no.’

Rachel leans over immediately, her chin on my shoulder, and flips to page three before I’ve even opened the pack.

‘Oh, we’re together,’ she says, in the same tone she might say, Oh, it’s raining. Completely unbothered.

I look down at the page.

Cabin 4: Dr M. Patel & Dr R. Sterling

Four days. Sharing a cabin. With Rachel. Who still doesn’t know that I’ve spent the last three months interviewing for a job in Edinburgh, that I got a verbal offer for on Tuesday and I’m waiting for the email to make it real—and that the entire reason I applied in the first place is sitting next to me with her chin on my shoulder, completely unbothered.

Because wanting her and not having her has driven me far enough to contemplate if maybe I just need some space to get over her, despite having spent most of the past eight years making decisions specifically to keep her in my life.

Dr Hargreaves continues talking, but I’ve tuned her out when Rachel leans slightly towards me. ‘She’s going to make us do an icebreaker, isn’t she?’

‘One hundred per cent,’ I whisper back.

‘I will not be held responsible for my actions if she makes us do the two truths and a lie.’

‘I’ll bail you out. I’ll do what I always do—start talking about that really graphic sepsis case from March until everyone’s eyes glaze over and Hargreaves moves on out of self-preservation.’

Rachel’s mouth twitches. ‘That has worked twice now.’

‘Three times. You forget the Christmas party.’

‘The Christmas party was a different situation entirely.’

‘It worked, didn’t it?’ I turn to look at her, and she’s already staring at me, and we’re close enough that I could count her eyelashes if I wanted to. I want to. I absolutely want to.

She smiles, settles back into her seat, and pulls out her information pack like she hasn’t just detonated something in my chest.

Outside, London starts to disappear behind us.

Four days.

God help me.

 ***

Unfortunately, the room has two beds. No wait, not unfortunately. The other one. Thank God it has two beds. Which isn’t all that surprising considering it’s a work trip and what else was I even expecting?

It’s the job offer, I tell myself. That’s what’s doing this—three months of trying to build a life that doesn’t orbit Rachel, and now I’m sharing a room with her for four days. The breakup hasn’t helped.
It’s left me rawer than usual, and with Rachel right here, it’s harder to remember why leaving felt like the right answer. Why hopelessly pining after her is slowly eating me on the inside.

Even though I’ve known for years now, ever since my interest in her awoke, how she sees me as her friend and nothing else. Each lingering look a figment of my imagination, and the flirty things she sometimes says… She says them to other people, too. I’ve been the one sitting next to her at the pub and listening to her banter. It’s who she is.

‘You feeling okay?’ Rachel asks, and I nod, bringing my attention back to the moment.

‘Yeah, just still a bit off from the bus ride. Motion sickness,’ I say, trying to explain away my surliness, though the moment I say it, I know I shouldn’t have.

Rachel puts her duffel on her bed and sends me a questioning look. When I don’t reply, she says, ‘You don’t get motion sickness.’

‘I do now. It’s eight years later, Rach. My inner ear fluid is all sluggish and unresponsive, making motion sickness far more likely to occur.’ I’m not wrong, and maybe she will let me off the hook.

‘You’re thirty-three, not fifty-three.’ Guess she’s not inclined towards mercy. Figured.

I busy my hands on my luggage, rummaging through all the extra clothes I won’t need on this trip. But I need something to occupy myself with, or I know I’m going to do something stupid like blurt out my feelings for Rachel. I don’t understand what’s happening to me.

‘Wow, okay. I didn’t know you’re the prime authority on inner ear things,’ I reply, not quite nailing the playful tone I’m aiming for. Luckily, she lets it go.

‘We should probably get ready for dinner,’ I say, seizing the excuse to stop digging through my suitcase like a woman possessed. ‘What time did the pack say?’

‘Seven,’ Rachel says. ‘So we’ve got about twenty minutes.’

‘Right.’ I grab what I need and turn around.

Rachel has her back to me, pulling her jumper over her head, and then her t-shirt follows, and I am suddenly looking at the smooth expanse of my best friend’s back and I need to not be doing that so I snap my gaze upward but it’s too late because she’s turning around and she’s standing there in just her bra and—

‘Can I borrow your deodorant? I accidentally grabbed the empty one while packing.’

‘No, yeah, totally fine, absolutely, don’t even—’ I gesture vaguely at my suitcase for her to grab it. My face is on fire. All of my face. Possibly my entire body. ‘Whatever you need. I’m just going to—’ I point at the bathroom. ‘Shower. Get ready. In there. By myself.’

Rachel blinks at me. ‘You sure everything’s okay?’

‘Like I said, motion sickness,’ I say while speedwalking to the door, and lock myself
in the bathroom.

I brace both hands on the sink and stare at myself in the mirror.

She is your best friend, I tell my reflection. She is your colleague. She is completely off-limits and you need to get it together right now.

My reflection looks deeply unconvinced. You’ve decided to move away from London without telling her.

I turn the shower on cold and get in.