Best Friends' Off-Limits Kiss - Chapter 4

Maya

I sit at the dinner table and smile at whoever talks to me and turn my fork over in my hands and give it three minutes because I’m a grown woman and I’m not going to chase my best friend down a corridor like something out of a film.

At two minutes and forty seconds, I excuse myself and go after her anyway.

The cabin door is unlocked. I push it open to find Rachel sitting on the edge of her bed, elbows on her knees, head in her hands, and for a moment I just stand in the doorway looking at her. She looks up. We stare at each other across the small room, and the air between us feels like the moment before a storm breaks, pressurised and strange.

I close the door behind me.

‘Right,’ I say. ‘I’m trying to find a delicate way to say it, but I think I’m just going
to blurt it out. Okay?’ I continue when she nods. ‘What the hell was that?’

Rachel opens her mouth. I can see her assembling something, arranging words into a shape that will yield an explanation. I wasted precious time on the way here thinking about the moment that had happened between us without realising what I should have actually worried about is what I want her to say. I should be way more worried about how she might react. And if she’s going to
treat this just like any other near hookup in her past.

‘It was nothing,’ she says, and my heart sinks. ‘It was a weird exercise, and we’d had a glass of wine and I think we should just—’

‘We had one glass of wine each, Rachel. Two hours ago.’ I’m certain I should drop it, but I don’t. Kisses between friends don’t just happen.

‘I know, but—’

‘So let’s not do that.’ I fold my arms, hanging on to the shreds of bravery I feel slipping through my grasp. For the last year, maybe much longer, we’ve been dancing around each other and now I have confirmation that it’s not all been in my head. That she feels it, too. ‘Let’s not blame other things when I know it’s something else.’

She looks at her hands. ‘It was an impulse,’ she says finally. ‘A wrong one. I’m sorry. It shouldn’t have happened and it won’t happen again and I think the best thing we can do is just forget about it.’

Something about the word wrong pushes between my ribs like a splinter. It’s not good that I’m making up my mind about this situation as it unravels, but her words make me realise they’re not what I wanted to hear from her. I want enthusiasm. Hesitation, sure. We’ve been best friends for eight years, and I’ll be the first to admit how scared I am to change things between us. But as I’m
looking at her, the need to take the leap coalesces in me. And I want her to take it with me.

But what I hear from her now is regret. ‘An impulse,’ I repeat.

‘Yes.’

‘You kissed me, and it was an impulse, and it was wrong.’

‘Maya—’

‘Just so I’m clear on where we are.’ I’m a doctor in emergency medicine; thinking on my feet is how I keep most of my patients alive. But I’m struggling with it right now as the situation unravels.

She’s lying. The words manifest in my brain, and I can’t help but heed them. No idea why she’s pretending she doesn’t feel the same way. Maybe the reasons are the same as mine: she doesn’t want to risk our friendship. But it has happened already. We’ve crossed the line, and no amount of compartmentalisation will bring us back from the brink.

‘I’m not trying to—’ She exhales, hard. ‘I don’t want things to be weird between us. You’re my best friend and I don’t want one stupid moment to change that.’

‘One stupid moment.’ My chest squeezes tight at the dismissal in her voice, and I’m struggling with the right words. ‘Great. That’s— Yeah. Great. If that’s how you see it, then there’s no point telling you what it was for me.’

‘That came out wrong.’

‘Did it?’ I can’t keep the bitterness in my voice in check, and Rachel can hear it.

‘Yes.’ She stands up, and now we’re both on our feet in this tiny cabin with nowhere near enough space between us for this conversation. ‘I just mean—you’ve been going through it lately. The break-up… And I don’t want to take advantage of that or make things complicated when you’re already—’

‘Oh, don’t,’ I say quietly.

‘Don’t what?’

‘Don’t make this about the break-up. Don’t make this about me feeling out of it because it doesn’t change how I feel about you.’ I look at her directly. ‘You kissed me, Rachel. At least be honest about that, even if you want to explain away what I know is between us.’

Her jaw tightens. ‘Fine. I kissed you. Is that what you need to hear? Because what I need right now is to move on from this and forget it ever happened.’

‘And I’d like an honest conversation for once, so it seems like neither of us is getting what we want tonight.’

‘That’s not fair.’

‘Isn’t it?’ Something is rising in me now, some pressure that’s been building for weeks, months, years, and the job offer and the retreat and the blindfold and the strawberry and the kiss have apparently conspired to remove whatever valve is keeping it contained. ‘You want to talk about things? Fine. Yes. I date the wrong people. I always have. I pick people who aren’t right for me,
and it falls apart, and I end up on your sofa and we do the whole post-mortem and then I go and do it again.’ I spread my hands. ‘I know. I’m aware. But at least I’m trying, Rachel. At least I’m out there attempting to—’

I stop.

‘Attempting to what?’ Rachel says. Her voice has become careful.

I press my lips together. I thought we’d already crossed the line completely, but somehow I’m standing in front of another one: the one where I say it out loud.

‘Maya.’ Something in her seems to have snapped, though I don’t know how to explain it. But a crack in her walls appears, and she takes a step towards me. ‘Attempting to what?’

‘Move on,’ I say, and my voice comes out quieter than I intend. ‘I’m trying to move on.’

The room goes very quiet.

‘Move on,’ Rachel repeats slowly. ‘From what?’

I look at her. At her face, which I know better than any face in the world. At the slight furrow between her brows and the way she’s holding herself very still, like she knows she’s in danger, but she can’t extract herself. That’s why I’ve been dating all these unavailable people—chasing the unattainable that is Rachel.

I am so tired.

I’m so tired of dating people who aren’t her. I’m so tired of sitting on her sofa and letting her pour me wine and talking about every man who wasn’t the right one when she is standing right there, has always been standing right there, and I kissed her back tonight, I absolutely kissed her back, and she’s standing here calling it wrong and I’m just…done.

‘From you,’ I say. ‘I’ve been trying to move on from you. That’s what all of it is, every single person I’ve dated since I figured out that I was—that I am—’ I stop, and make myself say it plainly. ‘I’ve been in love with you for years, Rachel. And I have been trying, very unsuccessfully as it turns out, to stop.’

Silence.

Rachel stares at me.

I stare back and wait for the world to end.

It doesn’t end. Instead Rachel crosses the room in three steps, takes my face in both hands, and kisses me.