Like a Best Friend | ✓

chapter three

"Where are you off to?" she asks as I settle in, getting out my water bottle and my notepad and my earphones, all the things I need for a productive day in the office.

"Vegas, next month."

"Vegas in October..." Sally muses. I know exactly what she's going to say next. "Isn't that what your friend's doing for her honeymoon? That trip you were mooning over for ages?"

"Yup."

"You stalking her and husband-to-be?"

"Nope. She asked me to join her," I say, purely for the reaction I know it will provoke. Sally doesn't disappoint. Her jaw drops, eyes widening behind the glasses she only wears when she's in front of the screen.

"Hold on. What the fuck, Fliss?" She's literally gobsmacked, whipping her glasses off to see me better. "You're crashing your friend's honeymoon? She asked you to crash her honeymoon? Jesus Christ. Does her man know?"

"He's not her man anymore," I say, giving her the briefest details on everything Kitty told me Friday night. She ended up staying with me most of the weekend and when she eventually got up the energy to go back to her apartment (a million miles nicer than mine, by the way), I went with her. Levi was gone. No trace of him left behind except for a bunch of flowers on the kitchen island and a bottle of Kitty's favorite champagne in the fridge.

"Good god, you've had an eventful weekend," Sally says, blowing out a long breath. She scoots to the edge of her desk and I do the same so our computer screens aren't in the way. Jason doesn't care that we talk half the day, gossiping throughout the morning, when we work as hard as we do. As long as the job gets done, he always says, and between us we do the work of four people. "So, let me get this straight."

"Mmm?"

She steeples her fingers, elbows on the desk, her expression severe. A lot of Sally's expressions are severe, even though her personality is anything but. She has a sharp face; people expect her to be strict, serious, lacking a sense of humor. Looks can be deceiving: she's the total opposite.

"You never liked this dude – don't try to deny it, I've put up with two years of your little comments about how Kitty deserves better – and now he's out of the picture. You planned your dream trip to Vegas for their honeymoon, and now you get to go on it."

"Um ... yeah, sounds about right," I say, not sure what she's getting at. I unscrew my water bottle and drink until it reaches the ten a.m. mark. My hydration is pretty poor. Sally got me a bottle with the times of day marked on it in an attempt to get me to drink more after years of watching me go all day on a couple of coffees and little else.

"Question: does Kitty know you're in love with her?"

I choke on my water. Half of it ends up on the desk between us, the other half going down my front. "I'm sorry, what?"

Sally's expression doesn't change. She fixes me with her trademark mom stare, the one I've seen her use on her sons. Stony-faced, one eyebrow raised, waiting for a confession. But I don't have one.

"I'm not in love with Kitty," I say. I take another sip of water, almost spilling it when my hand shakes.

"Oh, sorry, did you not know?"

"I think I'd know if I was in love with my best friend," I say, laughing Sally's comment off. "Are you only saying that because I'm bi?"

It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out that I'm not straight. Like, it's literally only a couple years ago that I understood the way I feel when I see a beautiful woman is not just appreciation. In hindsight, I've always had crushes on girls but I've only ever dated guys, so I never thought too deeply about my sexuality. At least, not after briefly questioning it when I was fifteen and getting so stressed out about the chance of being queer that I buried those feelings for years. It took a decade for me to be ready to reassess myself, by which point I was long free from my toxic high school and it no longer seemed so terrifying to be anything but cishet.

She leans back, hands up. "Absolutely not. I'm saying it because the whole time I've known you, I've been listening to you talk about her, and I know how mopey you get any time she's dating someone. I just assumed it was, like, an unrequited love situation."

"Well, it isn't. I'm not in love with Kitty," I say again, firmer this time. I've known Kitty for a decade and in that time I've had plenty of crushes and flings. Sure, it's only more recently that I've allowed myself to feel that way about women but I'm pretty sure I'd know if I felt that way about her.

"You literally call her your soulmate."

"Soulmates can be platonic," I point out.

Sally laughs. It's a short, dry laugh. "Sure."

"Don't say it like that."

Sally raises both eyebrows now. "I'm not saying it like anything."

I give her my version of the mom stare. "You're saying it like you don't believe a word I'm saying."

She shrugs. "I don't. But you do, and that's more important."

I stare her down for a second before I look away, scooting back to my computer. "I don't like this conversation," I say, shutting it down.

"Sorry, hon." Sally's demeanor changes in an instant. "I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable."

"Well, you did. I don't like your insinuation that I somehow sabotaged my best friend's relationship because I'm, what, jealous and madly in love with her?"

A bonus of my friendship with Sally – we've always been able to tell each other exactly how we feel. There's no tiptoeing around emotions and no hard feelings when we express ourselves.

"Hey, I'm sorry, Fliss, that's not what I was insinuating," Sally says, her voice lower now. "I was just teasing you, because I genuinely thought you had a crush on her and I know how close you two are, and it's kind of funny that her reaction to her engagement falling apart is to take you on her honeymoon."

"She's hurting and she wants her closest friend by her side," I say. I don't know why I'm being so defensive. It doesn't matter. A wave of regret rushes over me and I lean to the side so I can see her around my screen. "Sorry, I'm being a dick, I don't know why. Must be coming up to that time of the month."

"Ugh, tell me about it," she says with a laugh, the last few minutes forgotten. "I've spent the last decade dreading the menopause and now I'm wishing it would just hurry up already so I can get it over and done with. Seriously, what is the point in having periods in my fifties?"

"You have very determined eggs," I quip. We're okay. Sally and I are always okay.

"Fuck that. I was too old when I had my youngest and he's fourteen now. I am not about to become a mom again at fifty-fucking-three."

I wink at her. "Stranger things have happened."

Sally throws her head back and guffaws and says, "Honey, I haven't had sex in six months and, let's be honest, I'm in no rush to change that. I might as well have had a hysterectomy the minute Logan was born for all the use I've got out of my uterus since then."

"I might as well get rid of mine for all the use I plan to get out of it," I say. I used to want kids, back when I was a teenager desperately craving normalcy: I wanted to want it, marriage and a house and a kid or two, but now that I'm closing in on thirty I'm realizing I have no desire to be a mom. Maybe that'll change in another ten years, who knows, but for now parenthood is the furthest thing from my mind.

Once the air is clear between us, Sally and I settle into a day of work. Her words keep popping into my head though, and I don't know when or how I've given her the impression that I'm in love with Kitty. Of course I love her. She's my best friend, it'd be weird if I didn't. But in love? That's a whole different ball game. Just because I thought Levi wasn't right for her doesn't mean I think that I am. I'm not that big headed.

Plus, kind of a major deal: Kitty is straight. Even if I was madly in love with her, as Sally seems to think, it would be a dead end. So I brush off her comments and get my head down. When the middle of October rolls around and it's time for me to get on a plane to Vegas, I don't want to have a single work thing to worry about.

*

i hope you're enjoying the story so far! this is the last of the updates for the 1st of november, there will now be one chapter posted each day until the story is complete!