Best Friends' Off-Limits Kiss - Chapter 5

Rachel

I kiss her properly this time.

Not like during the taste test with our colleagues. Not the brief, startled press of lips over strawberry juice and panic. This is the moment I’ve been waiting for, for far too long, and I’m not going to squander it. My hands find her face, and I kiss her the way I’ve been thinking about for eight years, and after approximately half a second of stunned stillness, Maya kisses me back. Her hands find the front of my jumper and hold on, pulling me closer than I thought possible. I want to lose myself in this feeling, in the sensation, in her. My groan is guttural when her tongue sweeps over my lips, and I open up for her. She still tastes like strawberry and it’s enough to drive my need
higher.

Reluctantly, we come up for air. I rest my forehead against hers. We’re both breathing like we’ve run somewhere. My nose bumps hers awkwardly enough that we both laugh, breathless and slightly hysterical.

‘I’m in love with you too, Maya,’ I say into her mouth. ‘I’ve been—God, I can’t even remember the last time it wasn’t you.’

The world narrows to the careful press of my hands at her neck and the fevered grip of hers on my arms. Eight years of close calls, of wrestling with my feelings, wanting to blurt them out and never doing it because she was always with someone. Or getting over someone. All those nights pouring terrible wine and holding her upright.

‘Good,’ Maya says, and her voice cracks on the word, but she doesn’t flinch. She holds me tighter, and it steadies us both. ‘Good, because I don’t think I could have done another year of pretending this wasn’t everything.’

I lean in, kiss her cheek, then the corner of her mouth, then straight on her lips again, and she melts against me.

‘You’re trembling,’ I say.

‘So are you,’ she replies, and it’s true—I’m shaking and she’s shaking and there’s some new centre of gravity located exactly where my hands are holding her face. I want to laugh, or cry, or lie on the floor and let the world reassemble itself with a new set of physical laws in which this is allowed to be real. ‘God, I can’t believe—is this really happening?’

I don’t answer with words. Instead I kiss along her jaw, towards her ear, and feel her go still beneath my mouth in a way that makes something tighten low in my stomach.

I don’t remember closing the space between us, just how Maya’s arms hook tight around my waist, how her palms find the skin beneath my shirt like they’ve always belonged there. I don’t think—maybe can’t—just react, every nerve ending tuned to her, to us, to years of wanting collapsed into the single point of contact where her mouth presses to mine, impossible to tell where inhale stops
and exhale begins.

We stumble backwards, and my legs hit the edge of my bed. Maya’s hands slide up under my jumper, fingertips tracing the curve of my spine, and I make a sound I’ve never made before—needy and desperate and entirely beyond my control.

‘Is this okay?’ she asks, her breath puffing against my mouth, even as her fingers map out the territory of my ribs.

‘Maya,’ I say, and it comes out half laugh, half plea. ‘If you stop now I might actually die.’

She grins against my lips. ‘Bit dramatic for an emergency medicine doctor.’

‘I’m being completely clinical.’ I pull back just enough to look at her properly, to make sure she can see I mean this. ‘Eight years of build-up. If we stop now, the medical consequences could be severe.’

‘Oh, could they?’

‘Absolutely.’ My hands find the hem of her shirt. ‘I’m thinking elevated heart rate, shortness of breath, possible cognitive impairment—’

‘Rachel.’

‘—inability to focus, tremors in the extremities—’

She kisses me quiet, and her hands slide higher, and I lose track of the list entirely.

We fall back onto the bed in a tangle of limbs and laughter, and somewhere in the chaos of trying to figure out whose leg is where, Maya’s elbow catches me in the ribs and I let out an undignified ‘oof’ that makes us both dissolve into giggles.

‘Sorry, sorry,’ she says, still laughing, propping herself up on one elbow to look down at me. Her hair falls forward, creating a curtain around both our faces, and the laughter dies in her throat. ‘Hi.’

‘Hi,’ I say softly.

The humour drains out of the moment, replaced by something heavier. Maya’s looking at me like I’m something precious, something she’s been waiting for, and I reach up to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear.

‘Are we really doing this?’ she whispers.

‘I think we already are.’

‘No, I mean—’ She swallows. ‘Are we doing this? Tomorrow morning, and the day after that, and—’

‘Maya.’ I pull her down until her mouth is millimetres from mine. ‘I have been in love with you since you held my hand in a supply cupboard. I’m not going anywhere.’

She kisses me then, slow and deep and thorough, and I feel it everywhere—in my chest, in my fingertips, in places I didn’t know could ache this way. Her weight settles over me, and it feels right.

‘Your jumper needs to come off,’ she says.

I laugh. ‘Does it now?’

‘Yes. It’s in my way.’ She tugs at it. ‘And I’ve spent a long time wondering what you look like without clothes, and I’m done waiting.’

‘You’ve seen me in my bra approximately a thousand times.’

‘That was different.’

‘How?’

‘Because now I’m allowed to look.’ She sits back on her heels, hands at the hem of my jumper. ‘Can I?’

The question is so earnest, so Maya, that something cracks open in my chest.

‘Yes,’ I say.

She pulls my jumper over my head, careful and deliberate, and drops it on the floor. Then she just looks at me. Her hands hover over my ribs like she’s asking permission again, and I catch her wrists and guide them down.

‘I’m not going to break,’ I say.

‘I know.’ Her palms are warm against my skin. ‘But I’ve wanted this for so long I’m terrified I’ll wake up.’

‘You won’t.’ I reach up and start unbuttoning her shirt with fingers that are steadier than I feel. ‘Because I’m right here. And I’ve wanted this just as long.’

Button by button, I work my way down, and Maya watches my face the entire time, and when I push the fabric off her shoulders, she shivers.

‘Cold?’ I ask.

‘No.’ She leans down, presses her forehead to mine. ‘Overwhelmed.’

‘Good overwhelmed or bad overwhelmed?’

‘The best overwhelmed.’

I kiss her again, and this time when we come together there’s no laughter, no awkward elbows, just skin and breath and the exquisite, terrible knowledge that we could have had this years ago if we’d been braver.

But we’re being brave now.

Maya’s mouth traces down my throat, across my collarbone, lower, and my hands tangle in her hair and I arch up into her touch. Every nerve ending I have is alight, tuned to the precise frequency of her fingertips, her lips, the soft sounds she makes against my skin.

‘Rachel,’ she breathes, and my name has never sounded like that before—half prayer, half promise.

‘I’m here,’ I say. ‘I’m here.’

And I am. Finally, after eight years of almost, after a thousand nights of wanting and not saying, after every wrong person and every safe choice, I’m here.

With her.

Where I’ve always belonged.