The Fundamentals of Friendship Pt. 03

Her lips were just as soft as I remembered. She still kissed me the same way; both tender and hungry. She let me be in control because that's how she had always liked to be kissed. I didn't even know how I got closer to her. I didn't see myself move. Suddenly I was standing on my knees in between her legs, tangling my fingers in her curls, kissing her deeply, savagely enough to bruise her lips. I could feel her chest heaving, pressed against me.

"Riley," she breathed my name between kisses. And that brought me back to myself.

I tore myself from her with a strength I never knew I had. "Jesus, Ells..." I could fight her. If only I were strong enough to do it.

"Ry, please." She slid to the ground, straddling my lap. I was hard everywhere already. "I love you." She kissed my cheek. "I love you." She kissed the corner of my mouth. The weight of her body over mine...I wanted to stop. I could not.

Her skin smelled fantastic. Like no perfume could be. It was a smell that was hers alone. I bit her neck. Her skin tasted salty. She moaned in response, moving, grinding against my erection.

"Fuck! I can't. I can't." I couldn't. But I would.

"Don't stop," she whispered, lips so close to mine we breathed each other's air. "I'm ready for you. I've always been ready for you. I love you." She repeated words she'd said before. In my bed. When we were 15 and about to have sex for the first time.

"Say that again." I asked. I needed to hear it.

"I love you," she said and I believed her. I wanted to believe her. It didn't even matter that she might not even know what she was saying.

She kissed me again and I gave in to her.

***

I IGNORED the burning protestation of my muscles, straining arms and legs, working against the chlorine smelling pool water. I was sleeping badly. I couldn't write anything. I was thinking too much. Had I screwed everything up? Had I lost Laura for good? Had I hurt Suzanne? What the fuck was I thinking?

One minute I told myself I had done the right thing in confessing my love for Laura. The next I regretted it so badly I wanted to punch myself. I was glad she knew. I needed to tell her. To put it out there. Although I did everything the wrong way, I did it. If I hadn't told her then, I never would.

I left Laura's house that night and drove straight back to Suzanne's to break up with her for the second time, for the same reason. I was such an asshole to her. God, I was such a coward. How did I even live with myself?

But then again, how could I have gone on pretending all the time? Pretending I was fine with being Laura's best friend. Pretending it was alright to be with one woman whilst wishing she was another. Suzanne deserved better. She deserved someone who loved her completely. Someone who loved her, and only her. Someone who loved her the way I loved Laura.

I reached the edge of the pool, giving in to exhaustion. Maybe now I could get some sleep. Close my eyes and shut my brain off. Stop thinking. Stop rummaging through every mistake I'd made.

I hadn't seen Laura in days. I missed her. I was worried about her. I needed to see her.

***

"MADE you this. You look like you need it."

"Thanks." Gladly, I accepted the steaming mug of hot chocolate Laura slid my way. The scent of cinnamon dusted on top of whipped cream made my mouth water.

I got to the Bistro a few hours before closing time, late in the night. My computer was open in front of me. I'd read the same line a hundred times pretending to be revising some book chapters I should've finished already. Laura had been in the kitchen, preparing the pastries for the next day.

Now she sat across from me at one of the Bistro's little tables. "I'm glad you came here today," she said, smiling the kind of smile that could warm you to your bones.

"Me too." I took a sip of the hot chocolate and hummed in appreciation. It was perfect. Just the way I liked it. "God, Ells, this is amazing. Thank you."

She planted her elbows on the table, rested her chin on her hands. There was a smudge of white flour on her cheek. I couldn't resist the temptation. I reached for her and brushed it off with the back of my fingers.

A couple of weeks ago, she would've made a quip about what an awful, neglectful friend I was being to her. I hadn't seen her in over a week. This time, though, she said nothing. She needed the time away too. She looked depressed, tired. Her eyes were larger on her face. She'd lost weight. If I knew her well, and I did, I'd say she wasn't sleeping well either. It made me crazy to think I was partially to blame for that.

"How are you, Ells?"

She smiled. Nothing genuine. Just a shift of muscles on her face. "I'm fine." She tried to lie to me, saying she was fine even as she looked at me with those big, plaintive eyes of hers. The thing about Laura was that she didn't like people worrying about her. Specially people she cared about. Her world might be breaking apart, and yet she'd tell you it was all sunshine.

"Don't lie to me, Laura"

"I'm not." But she was.

It was only the two of us in the building. The refrigerators purring in synchrony in the background. "Give me some credit, will you?"

She bit her lip, eyes still down. "I'm not sure how to tell you," she said.

"Ells," I said, reaching out for her hand. She let me hold it. "I'm still your friend. Nothing's changed here. Talk to me. About anything. Always." My words floated between us. It was a dangerous word to use with her. Friend. But I was her friend. First and foremost, I would always be her friend. Whether she was in my arms or out of them.

She squeezed my fingers. "I don't think I know how to talk about this yet."

Talk about us. How I loved her. How unrequited my love was.

There was something I could do, or at least try to do, to cheer her up. I couldn't bear to see her so gloomy. "Do you think you could skip work tomorrow?" I asked her as an idea was taking shape in my mind.

By Laura's reaction one would think I asked her set the Bistro on fire. "No! Why's everyone trying to make drop work?! I can't. I have to be here every-"

"Listen," I interrupted her. "Let's spend the day together. Like we used to." She almost choked on air. I could read her every thought. See every reservation she had about spending the day alone with me. I probably had the same fears. Eventually, we would have to learn how to orbit each other again.

After our break up and my return home, our relationship was at its most complicated. We went through a period of getting to know how to be with each other again in which we'd walk around the city aimlessly, like a couple of awestruck tourists, just talking about anything and everything.

Her eyes travelled to my lips, then back up to my eyes. Whatever she was looking for in me I hoped it would make her say yes.

"You're stressed and you're sad," I said, trying desperately to convince her to agree to my proposal. "You need to have a little fun. Come on, Ells. Just you and I. No agenda. We'll walk around the city, eat at some place we've never been at. Get off the train in some random station. No strings attached. No talking about anything you don't want to. I promise."

She hesitated, fingers drumming on the table. "Maybe next week?"

"Next week. It's a date."

She put a smile on that could almost touch her ears. "It's a date."

I stopped for a just a second. I allowed myself to look at her the way I always did when she wasn't looking. She had the face that, for me, meant home. I had long ago memorized every line of her. Even so, I never tired of looking at her. She had the softest full lips. Back when I had the right, I used to just kiss her for hours on end.

As a young boy I used to think she was a funny looking girl until that moment, a moment I could never explain, when it all changed and I just realized she was the most beautiful girl I knew.

Laura cleared her throat. "Ry?"

I snapped out of it. "What?"

"Cinnamon roll?"

"Yeah. Absolutely."

She left and, in a flash, was back with my cinnamon roll and a cup of coffee for herself. I shouldn't have shocked me how easy it was to fall back into the skins of the people we were a couple of weeks ago. When she knew nothing of how I felt and I said nothing of how I felt. We talked the way we used to. She told a story about some peculiar customer she'd had that week. I talked about my mother and her upcoming birthday. Laura wondered what kind of cake Mom would want this year.

"I hope aunt Florence doesn't ask me for a weirdly shaped cake this year. It's too much work," she joked, laughing.

I loved her laughter. It was as contagious as a song you couldn't help singing along to. I didn't overthink anything when I was around her like that. She made me feel like myself again. Although this strange new sensation was present, I found myself clinging to every little thing she did or said. Afraid this closeness, this ease I experienced around her, were treasures I had to enjoy because I could lose them at any second.

We talked about the past. It was inevitable. One of us kept going back to "Do you remember when..." Then the other would laugh, and we'd recount a mundane moment that meant something only for the two of us. To the rest of the world it was just another boring piece of romanticized bullshit.

I took a bite of my cinnamon roll. I glanced up to find Laura staring at me. A little smile playing at the corner of her lips.

"What?" I asked, mouth full.

"I'm just watching you make love to that cinnamon roll," she said, pointing. "Is it good?"

I shook my head vehemently. "God yeah."

My answer made her flash a full smile. The kind that lighted her whole face, and God, was she beautiful. Big, brown eyes, full lips and a smile like the sun. There was nothing I could do but stare at her in awe. My own mouth morphing into a wide, full of teeth grin. Of course I was crazy in love with her. How could I not be?

I struggled to muffle an insane urge to slide my fingers into her hair just to feel how soft her curls were and to have that smell of coconut linger on my fingertips. Like a car crash, it hit me that I was living with the possibility that that would be how we were now. Me wanting and fighting against that want whenever I was around her.

Drinking in her smiling face like an alcoholic I noticed as her expression began to change. Her smile faded. Her lips pressed into a line. A frown appeared in between her perfectly designed brows. I swallowed, not really knowing how to interpret the way she was studying me.

"I'm glad you came. I really missed you, you know" she said with such ease, words that, in a second, dismantled the illusion that we were just two friends having coffee.

I had almost forgotten what a mess we were until it was there, hitting me square in the stomach. I didn't expect her to be the one to poke at the wound. I'd been wanting to talk to her. I had rehearsed what words I'd use, how I'd steer us into talking about what we were and what we weren't to each other. Laura was careful with what came out of her mouth, unlike me. She knew words hurt and she tried her hardest not to hurt anyone. It was probably her biggest virtue as well as her biggest fault. I could've done with a few more minutes of pretending we were just two friends with no complicated feelings between us. But I couldn't pretend I didn't hear her. I signed, long and heavy. I missed you too. I miss you still. I didn't say it.

She cast her eyes down. Mouth twisted with sadness. "You didn't see it coming, did you?"

What? I almost asked out of a reflex despite knowing what her answer would be. We communicated like that, leaving things hanging for the other to catch. She cocked her head, biting on her lip. I didn't want to answer her. I didn't want to go there because, if we did, there'd be no coming back. It was a black hole and it would suck us both into it.

"No," I admitted. No, I didn't see us coming to an end. I didn't see you ending us. I didn't see it when you stopped loving me.

Her eyes dropped to her coffee. "Did you always believe we'd make it? Didn't you doubt it? None even for a second there?"

"Never." My tone was pure certainty where hers was all doubt.

She shook her head in disbelief. "How?"

"Because I loved you."

Her eyes widened a fraction. Hurtful. "I loved you too, Riley."

Loved. Something snapped in me when she said that. "So why wasn't it enough for you? You know, you were not the only one in that relationship. I missed you, too. Just because I'd gotten used to the distance doesn't mean I didn't love you. It was hard for me, too."

Laura flinched. I never showed her all the bitterness I still harbored. Now, I almost regretted it, but not quite. It was a sick, twisted feeling in my gut. I wanted her to know, to fully understand how she'd hurt me and be hurt by that knowledge. I wanted her to regret the past and come back to me. I wanted her to be the happiest human being living on the planet. I wanted to be the one to make her that happy.

"I know that," she said after a while, the hurt showing in her voice.

"Then what was it? Was it the sex? You couldn't do without it?"

She stiffened. "Riley, we had this conversation before. If sex had been our only problem I could've found someone else to do it with."

"Then what?" I heard how I sounded. Acerbic. Cruel, even. "I never understood it. We just had to endure it for another year. Just one year and I'd be back. I loved you so fucking much, Ells. How come that wasn't enough? What else should I have done? I drove myself crazy wondering how I could have saved us. I don't even know where it was that I went wrong."

"Riley..." She gave me the exact same look she gave me all those years ago. "You're right. You never understood it, I guess we just...we wanted things we couldn't have the way we were. And, yeah, it was the sex. Sex with you. Being with you. Touching you. Talking to you face to face. Seeing you in the flesh." Her eyes were so big and pleading that I had to look away from her for a moment. "If I could never touch you then what was the difference between you and a friend? I loved you too much to have you be so far away. Meeting you five times a year wasn't enough for me. It didn't mean I loved you any less. It just meant I loved too much to not have you around."

"That's not even close to a good excuse," I spat to instigate a response from her, to make her tell me something I could believe to be the truth. "I don't think I'll ever understand what happened to us. I know how much you loved me, Laura. Love like that doesn't just fade away so easily."

Laura held her chin up high, determined not to give me the discussion I wanted. "I don't have a better excuse for you, Riley. I'm sorry I wasn't strong enough. I was always the weak one." She didn't look at me as she spoke. "I couldn't bear to not have you near me when I needed you."

"If you'd told me you needed me I would've run back to you in a heartbeat. You know I would've." My response hit her like a slap. She stilled, eyes wide, lips quivering.

"Maybe I didn't want you to."

She was lying to me. Omitting something. There was more to it. There had to be. She couldn't stand the distance? She did it for three years, what was another year compared to that? She was crazy about me back then. She loved me. I knew she did.

I wanted to press her into telling me more. I wanted her to fuel the blame I held against her. Instead, I found myself voicing my own guilty thoughts. "I should never have let you do that to us. I should have fought you harder. I never knew how to say no to you. Maybe that's my problem."

"Maybe it is."

Our eyes met. Hers were sad and supplicant, almost as if she were asking me for something. If only I knew what. I used to know her better. There was nothing she could hide from me. Now I second guessed everything I thought I understood about her. Funny how you think you know someone so well you forget how complex people are. Everything they keep hidden inside.

"You're right, you know. I wasn't around," I said, agreeing with her excuse for the first time. "Something happened to you and I wasn't there. You changed somewhere along the way. You used to be lighter than this. You were so...I think the right word is mawkish."

"Mawkish?"

"Yeah. You were so gooey but sexy at the same time. You said I love you all the time and you meant it. It wasn't just a habit of saying words to you. You said it because you felt it and wanted me to know it. I don't know when you stopped, but you did. Just before you ended us. You changed. And I missed it."

Laura's eyes became tender. "I did change. But you didn't miss it. You didn't see it because you just couldn't accept that I wasn't that starry eyed girl you fell in love with."

I couldn't have stopped my reaction even if I'd tried. She saw the expression on my face and I saw hers. Something in the way I looked at her made her regret her words. "I fell in love with you, Laura. I love every version of you."

The air around us charged with all that was left to say and none of us dared say it. I wondered, only at that moment, how did I manage to live through all those years pretending nothing happened? That I didn't still love her? That the way everything ended was clean and right? Come to think of it, I didn't even remember how she convinced me to agree to put an end to what we had.

"Do you think..." I started, after a while.

"What?"

"...if I had chosen a school closer to home instead..."

"No. I don't." She dismissed me even before I was finished. "We both agreed you should go. I wanted you to have that. I just didn't expect the distance to be so difficult. I thought I could do it. I couldn't." She didn't seem convinced of her own words. She shifted in her seat, looked everywhere but at me. I could tell she was trying not to cry. "Anyway," she continued, clearing her throat. "This isn't one of your books, there's no alternate reality here. This is how things are."

Yes. She was right. But why did I allow things to be that way? I tried harder, didn't I? I must have.

"I asked for a transfer. To Columbia. To come back to you." It was the first time I said it out loud. "I got accepted. But you ended things before I could do it."

Laura just stared at me, her eyes sad under her gathered brows. I expected more of a reaction from her. I never told that to anyone. Not even my mother. At some point, I even forgot about it. But Laura didn't seem surprised when I told her.

"I guess it wasn't meant to be," she said, wrapping her hands around her mug. "I wouldn't have wanted that. For you to give up your dreams for me. I could've ruined your whole future."

"Ruined my future?" I had to laugh. She was unbelievable. "What grand future could you have ruined, Ells? You were my dream. I wanted you more than I wanted a stupid job. I still do. I want you more than anything."

She offered me a little bland smile. The kind that hid a million thoughts. I always hated that smile. It meant I couldn't get through to her.

"Which one of us was the most stupid do you think?" She asked.

Sitting across from her, in possession of all that knowledge of her I gathered throughout the years I knew she was putting on an act for my sake. She kept swallowing a lump stuck in her throat, she blinked too many times, she fidgeted with the wing of her mug. She hid things from me with every word she said.

I knew she was full of shit. "Ells, please."

"Did you ever feel that again?" She asked, changing the subject. "Anything that intense?"

Did I ever love anyone the way we loved each other when we were younger? "No. Not really." That was all I was trying to tell her. I never did and I didn't think I would again.