“Well,” she said with a swallow. “I’ve always loved you.”
My veins flooded with warmth and my chest hurt from my heart expanding the way it did. “I’ve always loved you, too, Navy.” Warmth settled through me in saying that.
She met my eyes briefly before looking down at the French fry she was currently demolishing in her hands. “Not the way I’ve loved you. In high school, I loved you so much that I prayed to God to let me love you less.”
Fuck, I’d really been inconsiderate of her feelings. I’d pushed her to give me answers, to talk to me, not understanding that she’d always felt like she had more to lose than I did. Because her feelings had been established before mine had. She’d been harvesting this full, lush garden since high school. I may have planted the first seed in mine before hers, in elementary school, but I just hadn’t tended to it as lovingly as she’d tended to hers. I was careless, impatient. And it showed. “Did it work?” I asked softly. “Your prayer?”
This time, she didn’t hesitate. “No.” She met my eyes. “If anything, it just kept growing.”
“I wish you’d have said something.” But wishing to change the past wouldn’t affect what we did from this moment on.
“It was a good thing I didn’t. We were both too young as it was. You needed to figure things out, and so did I. You were the first person I wasn’t related to in this town who talked to me. The very first. And besides, it didn’t matter. I wouldn’t have loved you more if you loved me back. I couldn’t measure it out, or pour more into my heart if only you’d said the words to me. That’s not how love works.”
She was more generous than I deserved, more beautiful that I’d ever realized, and stronger at things that had never existed in my world. “I’ve always said you’re the prettiest girl, and it remains true. But you’re more than that. You’re the most loyal friend. You’re the most trusting partner. You have a heart that makes you love harder than anyone I know and the courage to love even when it isn’t easy, even when that love isn’t received in return.” I wanted to touch her. I ached to feel her skin under mine again. But I resisted. “I’ve always chosen the easy route. It was less complicated, less messy. I didn’t let myself look at you as more than my best friend for a long time and I think that’s because deep down, I knew that all of the things that were so fucking special about us would change. Like the nights in the back of my truck, watching drive-in movies as we shared fries and burgers.” I held mine up. “Or all times we’d stare up at the stars and you’d listen to me talk about them not because you felt obligated to, but because you actually wanted to know. You’re the first person who ever listened to me—really listened—and the only person to make me understand exactly how it feels to lose something you love.”
She already knew I loved her. We’d said it to one another more times than I could remember, which was why I wanted to remember this conversation. I was mesmerized by the wisps of hair that tore loose from the ponytail and streaked across her face. I took in the way her thick, dark lashes nearly touched her eyebrows, and the softening of her lips as I continued.
“And it sucks. I hate it. How people put themselves through this again and again, I’ll never understand. Because I’d never want to lose this feeling, the one you’ve given me. The last six days have shown me that it’s too easy to lose something I didn’t think could be lost in the first place.”
“Whoa.” It was said on an exhale.
“You haunt me, Navy.”
I watched the way her chest rose and fell, the way her bottom lip opened a fraction more. I read the shock in her eyes, the softening of the lines around them as she absorbed what I was saying. But I still hadn’t told her I was in love with her—which I was. Wholly, messily, completely. But I needed to mend our friendship first—because that had been our foundation long before our first kiss. She was my best friend, but she wasn’t mine. And that’s what I wanted. I wanted her to be mine, and I wanted to be hers.
“I wasn’t lying when I said I missed you. This is what I want. More nights just you and me. In the back of my truck, on my parents’ trampoline, on your couch—I don’t really give a fuck where. I just want time with you; however you can make it work in your life. Best fucking friends forever.” When I stopped to think, I realized the placement of ‘fucking’ in that sentence was definitely a double entendre. And from the look in her eyes, it was for her too.
“Shit,” I said, burying my face in my hands. But then she laughed. And she kept laughing. And I joined her, the echoes of it in my chest giving me the lightness I’d needed for weeks.
“Best fucking friends forever.” She laughed harder, wheezing now, as her arms wrapped around her middle.
“I really need to think of how I word things.”
“It’s okay. I knew what you meant.”
“Did you, though?” I asked, more seriously. “Because I want you to know that’s not what I want.”
That quelled her laughter. She stared at me, eyes searching.
“It’s not at all what I want.” It wasn’t enough. We couldn’t be friends who fucked. That cheapened the whole friends part of us.
“Okay…”
“No, listen.” I raked a hand over my hair. “All my happiest times have been with you. Happiness is synonymous with you. And I know I have happy times when you’re not around. I’m sure of it. But I don’t remember them. I only remember you. You’re the first person I reach for, and the last one I think about at night. You once told me you wanted me to give you the smile I give to other girls, the girls you say I chased. First of all, I don’t chase girls.”
“You’re really hung up on that,” she commented.
“Because it’s true.” And it was. “And I don’t know what kind of smile it is that you see me giving others, but I don’t want to smile at you like I ever smiled at them. I can’t look at you unfeeling and detached. You and I have history. I’ve told you for years that when we die, we end up somewhere else, on another planet with the people we love. I’ve always said it, wanted so desperately for it to be true after my gram died. But it wasn’t until you that I believed in it—because you believed in it too. Or, at the very least, you listened to me without humor. You gave me the space to have a belief in something that everyone else laughed at.”
“I believed it,” she said, looking down at the galaxy on my arm.
“I know. You got your moon tattoo.”
“For me,” she reminded me. “You gave me the moon, but I got the tattoo for me.”
“I know.” And because of it, I wanted a matching one. “So, I don’t know what kind of smile I was giving to everyone else,” I repeated, “but I know that when I look at you, I don’t see anyone else. I see only you. And the feelings I have for you don’t always make me smile—sometimes, like this week, they make me hurt. Growing pains, I suspect. But the hurt is good. It’s needed.”
Her eyes were wide, focused, dark. She was so beautiful—not merely pretty. Despite what Navy said, I wished I’d seen the light sooner. I had eight years of catching up to do, tending my long-neglected garden.