Outer Limits | ✓

◦ tameless

⠀⠀⠀ A scoff. "I wouldn't even know where to begin. How to tell you."

⠀⠀⠀ Darcy felt her gaze harden, a pit in her stomach deepened. "What is it? You can tell me anything, Sam, we're best friends."

⠀⠀⠀ "Are we?" He queried. "Lately it feels like we're the furthest thing from it."

⠀⠀⠀ She tried not to flinch at his scathing words but it was his reluctance that hurt Darcy more than she'd let on. He was questioning their friendship! She tried to retrace the passed months where she went wrong and led him to feel scorned. Had she been a bad friend? Was there something glaringly obvious that she'd missed? Had she offended him somehow?

⠀⠀⠀ Sure, there'd been that stupid kiss. But surely, he'd gotten over it. They'd both established that was a knee-jerk matter and a projection of her then complicated feelings for Jude.

⠀⠀⠀ Had it been more? No. Darcy distinctly recalled the look in his eyes as he thoroughly rejected her. Darce...I wasn't... I'm not...it's not you. Truer words had never been spoken: it wasn't her. She'd chalked it up to friendship but could it have been more? Something else?

⠀⠀⠀ She felt her shoulders slump. She really hadn't been a good friend. A good friend would know exactly what was wrong with their best friend without so much as a word. But here she was trying to piece together that night, the words spoken and their double entendres.

⠀⠀⠀ Of course he'd been doubting and keeping secrets from her. Here Darcy was, letting herself being swept up for months by everything that was Jude, Jude, Jude, too busy falling for the bloke, to actually stop and wonder:

⠀⠀⠀ If it isn't me who is it?

⠀⠀⠀ There'd seldom been secrets between them, so for Sam to not trust her with this...with whatever it was he'd been keeping from her must have been huge. The reality that somewhere along the way she had broken their trust and in extension, the foundation of their friendship, shook her. She tried to bask in it, that painful truth but the world felt dead around her in the cold.

⠀⠀⠀ "You're right," she said, "we've been drifting apart. That's on me. But no more of that now that things with Asher have been somewhat sorted, you now have my undivided attention. Tell me. Tell me everything, Sam."

⠀⠀⠀ And so he did.

⠀⠀⠀ Usama's voice was soft, sad, when he spoke. More subdued then Darcy had ever heard him. But she listened, uninterrupted, with bated breath. What he had to say had her reeling and nothing would be the same again.

⠀⠀⠀ After a pregnant pause, he added, "Please say something."

⠀⠀⠀ Somewhere, a coin was being flipped and if it came up heads she'd forgive him then and there. Tails, she doesn't and the story goes on in another dozen ways. Here, something deep within became warm and open as the coin landed. "I'm... surprised, but happy for you."

⠀⠀⠀ She could picture his face wrinkle together in the endearing way it always did when he was confused. "Uhm," in her mind's eye she pictured him nibbling on his lower lip, "you're not mad? I mean... I should have told you sooner, but nothing had happened between us, and I figured...are you sure you're not mad?"