Just friends, he said when he grabbed the collar of your shirt and pressed his lips to yours like if he stopped they'd seal together. Just friends, you replied when you finally parted and hazy eyes, misty breath and hot air between the two of you was like water, like it hydrated you and kept you alive.
You were just friends when you sprawled out over your bed, Texas heat laying claim to your skin and drowning it in sweat, and he crawled over you with green eyes like forests and glasses falling off his nose and kissed you stupid. Breathless, as you remembered that you were just friends and clutched his waist with a vice grip and dagger fingers, kissing him back through chicken mesh teeth.
Behind the sports hall you were just friends, as you offered him a cigarette and he told you he'd never smoked before and you said you'd show him how. 'Showing him how' meant blowing billows of smoke into his mouth through sloppy kisses and feeling his voice bleeding through your tongue. Just friends as you tucked your pack of cigarettes into his back pocket and told him to ask anytime he needed a drag.
Walking together, hand in hand (just friends hand holding), through the woods behind his house at night. When he told you with a shaky voice and chattering teeth that it was really cold but nice to walk with you. Walk with you as a friend. Of course it was obvious that you were still just friends when you pushed him against a tree and kissed the words out of his mouth, leaving him with a numb tongue useless for speech and teeth that wanted to break your skin with love bites. Suck the paleness and freckles out of your complexion until you were a universe of splattered purple bruises. He wanted to give you bruises because you were just friends.
Swinging your legs over the edge of the balcony, waiting for you brother to get home, and feeling his presence against your side because you're just friends, and he's your best just friend and you hope he's sleeping well. Press your face against the rungs of the balcony and watch the city move with him by your side and feel his heart beat against his ribcage and through to yours and shudder, because his arms are around you and his hand is ghosting against your thigh and he's just your friend. Kissing him awake when he begins to blink away sleep and chuckling greetings into his mouth when he wraps his arms around your neck and holds you close like just friends do.
Moving into your own apartment with nothing but vague anxiety and his voice, soft and reassuring over the phone as you sit alone in your new kitchen in with the phone clutched between your ear and your shoulder, because he does things like that, because he's such a good just friend. Struggling to eat anything you can scrounge up from the cupboards whilst he promises to get there by seven so that you don't have to spend the first night alone. Feeling glad that he's your best just friend when you watch him look around the new place and realise how good he looks when he's in your space, with you, somewhat domestic and somehow that's stupidly comforting. Kissing his cheek when you wrap your arms around his waist from behind and rock against him, a low hum in his ear, because when you look out of the bedroom window with him in your arms you realise how lucky you are to be just friends with him.
Just friends. Just friends when you hold him close to your chest on the first night, second night, third night, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and then it's good bye to one week of living with your just friend and hello to three weeks, four, six, nine, twelve. When you reach six months and you notice his stuff is scattered around the apartment in as equal abundance as yours, you realise, yeah, just friends has sufficed for this long.
So you kiss him long and slow and careful in the kitchen, and he hooks his thumbs into your belt loops forgetting that he was supposed to be making lunch, kissing back and holding you close. Running his hands over you like you're something special.
Like you're more than just his friend.