Maybe you are in love with your best friend.
Okay. That doesn't say it all... but it says more than you are willing to voice aloud, much less in your own head...
But you can't deny it, can you?
Not with the way your eyes linger, ever so slightly, on her as she leans back and stretches her legs out and the wind plays with her hair.
It toys with the strands the way your fingers might, if you weren't so damn scared.
It pulls them back and pushes them forward and you envy an act of nature.
But then, you envy a lot of things right now.
The ground beneath her and the grass against her palms and the sun upon her skin.
You are a mass of timid want and all the elements have earned your wrath.
You are too dramatic as well.
Look at what these crazy... stupid... overwhelming feelings have done to you.
You, Spencer Carlin, sitting here and trying not to stare at your best friend.
Who you like. A lot.
Who you more than likely love, as in... love.
Fuck it all...
/ / /
Sometimes, you think she knows. And sometimes, you think she knows and taunts you with what you cannot manage to grab a hold of.
First, there is the way she will hug you and keep you close and not let go until all the air is sucked from your body - then she pulls away with a grin and not one look back.
Or maybe it is the way she will spend the night at your house and tell you that the 'floor is too hard... and the couch is too lonely'... and she won't kick you out of your own bed, 'that is too rude'... and so she is plastered to your side, warm palm flat upon your hip, keeping you awake as she slumbers.
But come morning, you are tired and she is chipper, as if nothing happened at all.
Sometimes, you want her to know. Sometimes, you want her to know more than anything.
And then she is kissing on some guy. Or girl.
And sometimes, you hope she doesn't know... because if she does, then she just likes hurting you.
Even the hot friend you lust after shouldn't do such things.
Right?
/ /
Oh, the things she can do to you with just a look.
She must work on it - no one can be that naturally sexy - and you picture her in front of that long mirror in her bedroom, raising eyebrows and practicing smirks. And it almost makes you laugh, but it certainly makes you smile.
"Must be a nice thought, Carlin."
But you are used to being caught off-guard, daydreaming about her even as she is beside you.
"It sure is."
And she glances at you, popping down her sunglasses as you both wait for the red light to change to green.
And she gives you the 'look'. The look that makes a lot of boys get hard. The look that makes a lot of girls get wet. The look that gets the under-age into clubs and gets those free drinks.
That look can get just about anything.
It could make you confess every single sin of your young life - the things you have stolen, the toys you have broken, the alcohol you've drank and the church services you've skipped... the lies you tell and the desires you have...
"Take me with you next time, okay?"
And your best friend, Ashley Davies, gets a promise out of you that you are pretty damn sure you shouldn't make - all things considered...
But that look gets things.
"Okay."
And what is scary is that, in this moment, you really mean it.
/ /
Maybe you are in love with your best friend.
And it started out as shared interests, then spiraled out into bubbling need and has bottomed out in a nasty pool of unspoken devotion.
You are so smitten and you can't stand it. You are so smitten and you wouldn't have it any other way. You are so... just so...
She is tugging you along, as usual, after some party and she is drunk and there is talk of walking all the way to that park where you can see the stars at night - you don't have a jacket and it is cool and she is in heels, one of which she loses somewhere along the way.
You are beautiful. You are gorgeous. You are amazing.
"There you go..."
"What?"
"Off to that secret place, to wherever you go all the time."
"...Oh. Sorry."
Maybe you are in love with your best friend.
And you've toyed with the idea of honesty - in a letter, by text, through an email. Or perhaps, if you are feeling brave, right to her face. Her lovely face, tilted and curious, ready to hear what you have to say... and you'd tell her all about your big, bad love.
I am the wolf. You are Little Red Riding Hood. Let me blow your house down.
She stops walking and you finally look around and there are trees surrounded the two of you. This isn't the park. You don't even know where she has taken you. And you even wonder if she knows where the two of you are as she spins and watches the sky and giggles to herself.
"You said you'd take me with you, Spennnnnncerrrrrrr..."
She made your name go on forever and you laugh and she suddenly opens her arms - wide and waiting - and from her lips passes the most blissful sigh.
And, somehow, you think that these steps... these nine or ten steps toward Ashley... are like crossing a canyon. And, somehow, you think that these are the steps she's been wanting you to take.
Because you know you've been wanting to take them, too.
I'll take you everywhere I go from now on. I'll put you in my pocket. I'll keep you close.
/ /
Maybe.
Maybe you are in love.
Maybe you are in love... with your best friend.
And maybe she is in love with you, too.
/ /
END