Work Text:
I remember falling in love for the first time, allowing myself to hold her hand in public and writing dumb poetry about her and falling asleep staring at her at sleepovers but never, ever allowing myself to tell her anything, even when I was absolutely certain she reciprocated. I remember once we jokingly slow-danced to a boppy song from the seventies and she asked me if I ever wanted to kiss someone right in front of me and I froze and lied. And I told myself this was perfect, this is exactly what I wanted, someone who made me happy but who I wasn’t with , someone where the only thing set in stone was love. I was so completely entranced with how perfect this was for me , how this was exactly what I wanted, that it never occurred to my silly self-obsessed brain that maybe it wasn’t what she wanted, and when she told me in no uncertain times that this wasn’t working and she couldn’t even think about me anymore without feeling deeply, deeply sad, I felt like slapping myself over and over again, because of course . Of course.
I started dating again after that. An on-and-off relationship with a boy who was so smart, so handsome, who really thought about things, who cared about how the world should be run, who would go on about how he wanted to know who he really was and what he could really do because he felt like what people had shown him and told him wasn’t right. I loved that. I loved the way he thought and felt about things. I loved him. I was not in love with him.
I remember our first kiss. It was terrible, I thought. He leaned in and I panicked and hugged him instead and we broke down in giggles, his confused and mine horrified. We had been on two dates, the second of which had involved going to a school dance and publicly holding each other in front of everyone (When I felt the stares I’d closed my eyes and pretended I was somewhere else). Neither of us could drive but he’d ordered an Uber to take us home, him first and me next, and he’d offered me a stick of gum when we’d slid into the car, possibly the most obvious ‘I want to kiss you’ a teenage boy could ever give. I was prepared but I physically couldn’t stop myself from ducking his face and wrapping my arms around him instead. When we stopped laughing he looked at me with painfully tender eyes and very, very gently touched my cheek with the tips of his fingers. “Okay?” he asked, and he was being so fucking nice to me I wanted to cry. So I kissed him, and it was a little awkward, he was a more aggressive kisser than I was used to, so I started laughing which made him start to laugh, and we stood very close to each other and laughed and kissed. A year later he told me, with an arm lazily draped around me and my legs entangled with his, that that was one of his favourite memories of us. I didn’t tell him that after that I had sat in the Uber and stared out the window and felt like I was underwater and wondered how long this relationship could possibly last if I couldn’t even get a first kiss right. Then I thought about how that very thought was evidence that I simply was not one for relationships. Excuses, excuses.
The on-and-off bit was because of me. Obviously. For periods of time we would be fine and then I would remember that I was Not A Romantic, and that I Did Not Love Him, and that I really enjoyed Being By Myself. And I wouldn’t answer texts as often, I would make excuses to end dates early, I would do all this while at the same time watching him teach a little girl to skateboard and thinking about how absolutely wonderful he was and how much I did want to hold his hand and how of everyone I knew he had one of the largest capacities to love (different from me). He would tell me he wasn’t feeling it, that he liked me very much but there was some weird barrier, and I would nod and smile and tell him I totally got it. I never cried over these breakups, I’d just walk around and feel a completely unidentifiable feeling. At least I think it was unidentifiable. So we’d break up and wouldn’t see each other for a few months and then something would force us to talk again and we’d remember that, hey, we’re pretty cool and we’ve got good chemistry, and he would ask me out and I would resist a bit and tell him that the fact it had ended before was evidence for why it shouldn’t happen again (fucking excuses ) before we’d take care of a mutual friend who got a little too drunk at a party and when we knew he’d be safe and okay we’d find our hands in each others and I’d say we could try it again but we had to take it slow and he’d agree and the next day when we were back in class we’d sit next to each other for the first time in months and he would try taking my hand and I would flinch it away from him, then apologise later by holding it in the privacy of his bedroom.
He told me he loved me after we slept together for the first time. I mechanically told him I loved him too. He looked like a child when he laughed at that, with unusually red cheeks and sparkly eyes.
It ended with graduation. We had gone to the coast, the two of us and some friends, celebrating. We took a walk on the beach alone (he loved the beach. He said it made him feel more like himself than anything else. He waxed poetic about the beach. I loved listening to that.) We paused on a particularly empty stretch of sand. He watched the waves turn into ripples that sunk into the sand by our toes as he told me that he figured we both knew what was going to happen when we went to university. We were in agreement about the idea of starting university in a relationship. University was about discovering who you were outside of what you already knew (to him. Because he was deep like that.) He talked slowly and thoughtfully, looking at the water the whole time. He told me that he loved me (we never said it very often). I mechanically told him I loved him too. He glanced at me, very quickly, a frown in his eyes, before turning back to the water. “I’m not sure you mean that the same way I do.” I opened my mouth, not even close to knowing what was going to come out of it, but it didn’t matter because he spoke again, fast. “And that’s okay. It’s okay. I just want you to know.”
The rest of that trip we spent swimming, reading, playing cards. One night we got high under the stars, gentle winds turning the normally warm air cool against our damp skin. Pot makes me sleepy so I put my head in his lap and fell asleep with his fingers in my hair. The next day I left. I left before anyone else, and I told everyone it was because my family missed me (Not even an excuse. A lie). I wrote him a letter, though, put it on the pillow we’d been sharing. There were no lies in it, though a few absent truths. I knew it would make him cry. He was crying when I got into the car, crying when he kissed me long and hard, and I didn’t care if it was in front of our friends because it was ending. It was ending.
I cried in the car too. Only one or two tears. Then I stopped.
I had a very good friend who I spent the majority of the following summer with. She had never kissed a girl and had often made jokes about how I could be her first. It sounds crude in writing, but it never felt like that to me. It wasn’t the convenience of a bisexual friend, but the possibility of trying something new with someone you trusted. I knew there was truth behind her jokes, but nothing had ever come of it because we’d always been in committed relationships during our friendship. About two months after our acquaintance with our newly single status we were watching a movie during a sleepover, lying down next to each other on the sofa. The film ended. We talked over it, its high points and low points, the recurring motifs and what they meant, how she had to cover her eyes when her favourite character was killed and how proud I was that she, at least, didn’t cry. We lapsed into silence. It was very late. The screen had gone into power saving mode and the only light in the room came from some wayward street fluorescents outside. We hadn't been looking at each other, both facing the ceiling thoughtfully, and I felt very keenly aware when her gaze became focused on me. She put her arms around me in a hug. I reciprocated. Her nose was buried in my cheek. I very slowly turned my head so that I could feel the ghost of her breath against my lips. We stayed like that for what felt like a painfully long time. I was brutally reminded of my first kiss with my new ex, reminded of the seventies dance with my first love (the words ‘first love’ make me nauseous because what the fuck kind of a first love was that). I was even reminded of all those moments with those friends-who-could-be-more, the moments when I knew what they wanted and I didn’t do anything, I sat there and waited for things to unfold. I’m still not sure what the connection between all these memories are and frankly I have very little interest in trying to find out (typical).
I broke the silence. “Well, if you’re gonna kiss me, you should go for it.” I said it with such dry indifference I surprised myself. It was not at all reflective of how I felt. I don’t think it was.
She laughed and kissed my cheek, quickly. “Kissed you already, haven’t I?” I gave her a pointed look that I’m not sure she could see with the limited light but I’m pretty sure she accurately read anyhow. She leaned over and kissed me. I waited a moment before kissing her back. I don’t know why. I felt like I should.
We talked about it the next day, while she painted her toenails and I drank my coffee. We knew each other, we liked each other, and the physical chemistry was shockingly good. So we stayed the exact same, friends who visited each other at uni as often as we could and bought each other thoughtful birthday gifts and listened to the other cry over the phone (I listened to her cry. She was a deeply emotional person.) And every once in a while she’d turn to me with an impish smile that I recognised as a sign to raise my eyebrows and wait for her to move a little closer. We’d fall into bed and wake up the next morning with bruised lips. We hated the term ‘friends with benefits’ even if it was, technically, correct. We thought it implied that the benefits came first, the friendship an afterthought, and we were always close friends before anything else.
We were neither of us in love. There are a good number of things I’m uncertain about, but I knew without a doubt I could never fall in love with her, and she could never fall in love with me. She felt the same way and openly theorised as to why this was without ever reaching a conclusion. I privately suspect it was because we both had a tendency to get on each other’s nerves in a way more reminiscent of two elderly women than Elizabeth and Darcy.
So here I am. A friend I can kiss and a heart that’s all mine and no one else’s.