Sloane gasps, and the bed on her side moves. I jostle with her, rolling toward her.
It’s light enough that my eyes catch on hers.
“You’re awake,” she whispers.
“So are you.” I smile at her, but it dims as fast as it appears. “Why can’t we be friends if I start dating again?”
Sloane blinks, a thoughtful expression on her face. Her full lips look amazing naked, just as they do with that pale pink lip gloss she wears. Sometimes she paints on dark red lipstick, and I like that too.
I’ve spent way too much time thinking about my best friend’s lips, that’s for dang sure.
With her hair swept off her face, and that soft look in her eyes, I sink lower into the pillow and mattress, relaxing. Everything about Sloane soothes me.
“I asked you a question,” I remind her.
“Women don’t like other women,” she says. I know there’s more coming, so I stay silent. She lets out a sigh, her eyes falling closed in a soft blink.
“If you started dating…let’s say, Lucy. You’ll spend all your free time with her, right? Bowling, burgers, birthday parties with just the two of you.”
She paints a nice picture, and I immediately think of April, and what the weather in Pittsburgh will be like then. That’s when Sloane’s birthday is.
“Yeah,” I prompt when she goes mute again.
“So when will you see me?” She shakes her head slightly, her chin barely brushing her own pillow. “You won’t. Because it’ll make Lucy mad. She’ll be jealous. She won’t get that we’re ‘just friends.’” She makes air quotes around the last two words.
“Because men aren’t just friends with women. And if they are, they’re either gay or they’re secretly wishing they could sleep with them.”
“That is not true,” I say, though instant heat floods my face. I’ve never been happier it’s too dark for her to see the flush creeping down my neck to my chest.
“Lucy will think so.” Sloane gives me a so there look and closes her eyes.
I watch her shoulders rise, the pillow in front of her chest puffing out with her breath. She exhales it slowly, carefully, in a measured way that tells me she’s trying to clear her thoughts.
I know, because she’s called me late at night before and told me she just needs someone else in the room with her until she goes to sleep. Sloane is a people-person, and I’m actually surprised she’s lived alone as long as she has.
There’s a moment here, and I should insert my voice into it. Tell her how I really feel, and that I’m not going to move to Pittsburgh to date Lucy or anyone else Sloane sets me up with.
I’m going to move there so I can be with her.
My voice feels like someone has crushed it in their fist and then shoved it down my throat. It’s in a ball, and I can’t clear it out.
The silence stretches, but it’s not as tight as before. We’re breathing together now, and my plan to stop by the front desk every hour until they give me my own room dries up.
I reach out and trail my fingers down her bare arm. Her eyes pop open, surprise registering there before she softens again.
“Are you going to play the app?” I ask.
“I don’t have to.”
“I don’t mind.” It’s not what I want to say, but my courage has failed me. Just friends echoes loudly in my ears, my very soul. My heart beats with the words, and I swallow as I smile at her. She shivers, her bottom lip shaking slightly as she returns the grin.
“There’s more blanket if you’re cold,” I say, pulling it up.
“You don’t want it?”
My body is blazing hot, but I keep that to myself and simply shake my head.
Sloane takes the extra blanket, pulling it up and over her shoulders at the same time she eases closer to me.
I shift with her, and the next thing I know, we’re cuddled together in the middle of the giant king-sized bed. Ten minutes ago, it had felt too small for the two of us. Now it feels like I have miles on either side of me
“I’ve missed you,” she whispers. “Why are things so weird between us?”
I hold her against my chest, wondering what my pulse beats out against her eardrum. Surely she can feel how erratic it is. It’s going to betray me, and I can’t make it settle down.
“I don’t know,” I whisper back, stroking her hair. “But this feels nice. This feels like…” I don’t know how to finish, so I tell myself to stay quiet.
I do, and Sloane doesn’t prompt me. I close my eyes and breathe in the floral scent of her hair. The powdery, soft scent of her skin. The pure femininity of her drives me to the edge, but I keep my cool and mind my manners.
“This sort of feels like the last night of our first trip together,” I murmur. She’d warmed up to me quickly, and I’ve had people tell me I’m charming and easy-going.
We had to share a bed then too, but there wasn’t this chest-to-chest cuddling until the last night.
The night we both shared a lot about ourselves. The night we bonded as BFFs.
The night she’d finally told me the whole story of her and Leon.
That guy. I’ve never met him, but I’d like to introduce him to my right jab and a few choice words for what he did to literally the smartest, nicest, best person in the whole world.
I pull back on my thoughts, because they’re not healthy. Sloane hasn’t answered, and I listen to her breathe in and out, in and out, in a steady way. Not a controlled way. A way that indicates to me that she’s fallen asleep.
“Two breaths,” I whisper with a smile. I press a kiss to her forehead and pull her a titch closer.
“I love holding you like this.” My voice barely sounds like my own it’s so quiet. I barely hear it myself, and Sloane doesn’t stir in my arms.
There’s so many things I want to say to her, but not in the dark, when she can’t hear me. Not when I’ll be whispering them to myself and wake up still pining after my best friend.
I don’t know when I’ll be able to say the things I need to, but I know they’re coming. Soon. Fast. This whispered declaration is only the beginning of the tsunami of confessions I need to make…
Sometime in the next ten days.
“Ready?” I ask her as she drains the last of her pineapple juice.
She nods and plunks the glass on the table. We’ve just eaten a late breakfast as literally the last two people they let into the crepery before they closed it. The waitress hasn’t said anything, but I can feel the daggers coming from her eyes. We’ve stayed too long.
This place screams opulence, and the waitstaff has been nothing but attentive, asking if we want mimosas or Bloody Marys. Our dishes get whisked away almost before the last bite of bananas Foster has touched my lips.
The floor is polished marble—white—with huge windows from floor to ceiling that overlook a fountain…that overlooks the infinity pool…that extends all the way to the ocean.
The view makes my lungs hitch, and I want to grab my notebook and try to capture the beauty in words. It’s impossible I know, but it’s literally my job to try to make words paint a picture.
In a place like this, though, with all the blues, turquoise, teals, azures, purples, violets, nothing can describe what an eye can see. Our bodies are just incredible, and I blink, taking in the beauty over and over and over.