Falling For My Best Friend

Chapter 9

If you mashed together every lewd, dangerous, inconsiderate, and downright idiotic thing that Lapis had ever done, this would still take the cake. And honestly, I don't think I'm too much better on our dim spectrum of moral grayness.

After all, the war appeal may have come from Lapis, but I'm the short-sighted i***t who accepted it.

And that's what makes me mad- I've read enough forbidden romance stories to beat the dead horse into a sick, teenage-hormone filled oblivion, and I still agreed to this. I'm still letting Lapis have me even though I don't get to have her. I'm still giving in to a plot device set in place to wreck absolute f*****g havoc upon my life.

Why? Damn, if I knew, I wouldn't be f*****g with her in the first place. But I am, and I think it all whittles down to two things, selfishness and desperation. Both of which I am in no short supply of, I assure.

It's different when you're the one experiencing everything instead of reading about it. It's like every action you perform suddenly has weight, and they seem like a phantom dominos, ramming into the next, and creating a string of interrelated consequences, and suddenly, something you say you would never do becomes the next link in your iron-cast chain.

And frankly, you find out that you don't care.

My dad once told me that you should never make a gamble unless you're absolutely positive that the chance of payout will overwhelm the fate of loss.

I know that the fate of loss here is far too large to play, but I don't care, because Lapis isn't a Texas Hold 'Em table in Vegas, she's a gas station scratch ticket. And I'm a poor sucker with three extra dollars in my pocket and a minute to waste on that sliver of a chance that I might just make something worthwhile out of a chance like her.

But I don't think about all of this as I claim her hand as mine for the hour like she's some kind of human timeshare- and I don't think about Pearl, or school, or myself. I just let myself exist without thinking for just one moment.

And it's nice until Lapis takes a long breath and disturbs the stagnant water.

"I'm sorry," she mumbles, even though I know she's not.

I avoid her pleas, both to spite her and because I've had enough feels-y conversation for one evening. "Do you want to swim more?"

Lapis cracks open an eye to read my expression before answering, "Nah, not really."

"Good," I say with a thankful sigh. "Me neither."

"Let's get out of here," Lapis decides, nodding her head towards the changing rooms. One look at the freezing pool water has me agreeing eagerly and following her lead.

I avoid her eyes as I grab my things from the bench and slink towards the bathroom stalls. Being forced to change in front of her once is more than enough awkwardness to fulfill me, and now that she's already poked fun at my tacky underpants, I'm a tad reluctant to let her know that my bra depicts a cartoon ghost saying 'BOO-bies!'.

Lapis hides her disappointment like a large person hides behind a pole during a game of hide-n-seek.

I change hastily, peeling the water-stuck suit from my skin and hanging it on the stall door. I pretend I'm selecting armor in an RPG as I equip my shirt, shorts, and Lapis' swim team jacket. Somehow, it smells even sweeter now. I zip it up, tucking my neck into the high collar snugly.

I nudge the stall door open and make my way back to the lockers, stashing my suit away without much thought. Lapis is already switched into her neon blend of authentic preppy sports attire. If she wasn't a complete academic moron, I might even be jealous of it.

"You look good," she says, granting me cheeky thumbs up.

"You look like a traffic sign for the colorblind," I snap back, offering her a more vulgar hand gesture.

Lapis shrugs. "That's fair."

I go to push past her, but she stops me suddenly by barring her arm in front of my chest. She has a stony look on her usually goofy face, and it almost scares me.

"What?" I ask, quirking a brow.

"I dunno. I guess I want to like, you know. Like, before we have to go outside again," she stammers, waving her hands wildly about her.

I know what she's saying. She wants to kiss me one more time before we have to expose ourselves to the cold sun and hide away again. I wish we didn't have to hide at all, but I indulge her anyways because that's just the kind of person she makes me.

"You're so dumb," I snort, smacking her playfully.

"You love it," Lapis coos. And maybe, possibly, even conceivably, she's right.

I lean forwards, biting the corner of my lip. I'm still very much new to the entire idea of being intimate, and when it comes to kissing, I have nothing but a collection of low-budget rom-coms to reference. Lapis meets me half-way, pressing our lips together too gently for such a scandalous affair.

I try to move back and copy her movements, but I'm sure that I'm screwing something up in the process.

Lapis pulls back suddenly to stifle a giggle and I sweat.

"Wh-what? I didn't-?"

"No!" She assures me quickly, "No, you're fine. It's just- wow, this is really weird. I mean, like a month ago I'd never-,"

"I'm very aware," I cut her off through grit teeth. Her eyes widen in sudden understanding and she gasps.

"How long have you-,"

"Since the Great Sexuality Crisis of 7th grade," I grimace.

Lapis is quiet for a moment, lost in thought, before finally replying. "Me too."

And then she kisses me again, and I try to figure out how many years I've wasted falling in love and never experiencing it. And I'm honestly a little disappointed, because that's a lot of potential s*x I've missed out on.

Lapis moves down to nip at my neck gently, pulling my sensitive skin with her teeth like I'm anything more than a uselessly warm body. Her fingers are pressed firmly to my hips, the pads of her thumbs rolling around my skin lazily. Her lack of awkwardness almost makes me sad, because it betrays that these motions aren't at all as new and special to her as they are to me.

As she tilts my neck up for better access to my jaw with practiced movements, I wonder how many times she's done this with Pearl. As she makes my eyelids flutter shut and a freaky whine escape my throat, I tell myself that right now, it doesn't matter.

After eliciting another series of embarrassing noises from the void of my throat, Lapis laughs lowly, "Oh my god, this is turning you on, isn't it?"

My eyes go wide. "You're the worst," I hiss, hiding my fire truck red face the sleeves of her jacket.

"It is!"

"That's it, I'm leaving. Have fun on your own, you f*****g clod." I grumble. I shove her off, red-faced and with dignity weaker that the moans I wish I hadn't released.

"Aw, come on Peri! I was joking!" Lapis snickers, hugging me from behind as I try to leave. She nuzzles me behind my ear like an overzealous cat. I shove her off with a jerky roll of my shoulders.

"You're-,"

"The worst, I know. Chill, Peri. I didn't mean to piss you off or anything," she rolls her eyes.

Face burning out worse than a one-hit wonder, I study the tiles at my feet for a few intense moments before finally breaking the silence. "It kinda was, by the way," I admit.

Lapis breaks out into a wide smile once more, "No way! Oh my god. You're so innocent."

"You're some kind of ass, Lazuli," I sneer, shoving past her, relishing the bubbly sound of her laughs as they echo off the locker room walls behind me.

I fish out my car keys as I stumble outside, hands shaking too hard to fit them into the lock. After some trial and error, I eventually manage to open the doors of my Bug-On-Wheels and ease myself into the driver's seat with Lapis in tow. Lapis settles into my car and knocks over a half-full Monster Energy can, grimacing like one grimaces after touching wet food while cleaning the dishes.

She's offered to help me clean it more than occasionally because the growing mess tends to f**k with her borderline obsessive tendencies, but I've refused. To be honest, I've kinda grown used to the funk of spoiling food. Lapis once described, in all of her flowery verse, that my car was "basically the nastiest f*****g thing I've ever had to exist within a fifty foot radius of".

I probably shouldn't've taken as much pride from that statement as I have.

I wait until all the redness has left my face before taking a labored breath and jamming my keys into the ignition.

"So," I drawl as I throw the old stick-shift into first and ease off the clutch. "I don't mean to kill whatever mood we have going on, but what exactly are we now?" It stalls at first, and requires another three attempts before finally spluttering to life.

Lapis stiffens and jerks her shoulders up and down in the most robotic attempt at a shrug I'd ever seen.

"Dunno," she admits. "There really isn't a title for what we are. I mean, I guess we're like, friends with benefits?" She draws her lips into a fine line, taking on the likeness of a substitute teacher already worn down from an unusually rowdy bunch of kids and considering a different career path.

"Oh no," I mumble, "Not that."

I downright refuse to hold the title of someone who only f***s around for pleasure. That's a phrase reserved for someone and their flat mate who are both single and reconsidering emotional attachments to their relationships. That's what you call two guys who always find their way to the back room at parties, yet still insist they're seeking girlfriends. That's not me. I don't want to just be Lapis' s****l relief when Pearl isn't enough. And maybe I'm funny because I don't want our less than morally elegant situation to influence our romantic bonds.

But mostly, I'm just greedy.

"Why not?"

"It just doesn't feel right, okay?" I hiss. I don't explain further.

Lapis crosses her arms and invests her eyes in the seams of her hoodie. "Well, I mean, you know you're not like, my girlfriend, right? I mean-,"

"Painfully aware," I assure her, grinding my teeth together and tightening my bony fingers around the steering wheel and wishing it was Pearl's neck instead.

"Look, I'm sorry. Never mind," Lapis snaps, making a feature film out of a resigned sigh. "We can be whatever you want us to be, okay? Whatever you want."

The offer is tempting, but I'm stubborn and bitter, and I block it out. Instead, I slowly speed up, my foot twitching on the acceleration. "You make it sound as if this bothers me," I growl, shifting us into second, and then third.

"Slow down, dumbass!" Lapis yelps, the steel in her voice bending just a bit before straightening out again. "Look, let's not do this. Do we really need to put a label on this? Can't we just be friends?"

Being friends really isn't a luxury we have access to anymore, and we both know that. Yet still, the romantic idea allures me, and I end up offering her a noncommittal grunt.

"Lemme guess; I'm taking you home?" I ask, attempting to derail the awkward silence that grows like fungus around us.

"Sure."

I turn down her street and park next to her tree lawn. We're shaded under a dying shield of lime-yellows and undecided greens. Lapis' hand somehow moves to my thigh in this time frame, and she begins to rub gentle circles through my jeans. I wish I knew who she was trying to reassure.

I say nothing for a long time, caught up in the way the pad of her thumb is moving against my leg. It's such a simple act, but I somehow find comfort in it anyways.

"Are your parents home?" I ask in a content voice to gentle to be mine.

Lapis smirks and rolls her eyes. "Totally. That's why the driveway is completely empty, and the lights aren't on."

"Sorry," I grimace, looking down at the McDonalds bag under my shoe.

"Don't worry, Peri. I'll be fine." Lapis assures me. Still, she shows no sign of leaving or even attempting to do so.

"Peridot?" She asks as her thumb is displaced by her palm. "If it's not weird, can I like, kiss you? I mean, like a goodbye kiss or whatever." She averts my gaze and forms phantom chord shapes with her hands. The song on the radio fades into a cheesy party remix, and I almost have half a mind to shut it off because it's really f*****g with the mood.

Her face bears a ruddy glow, and f**k, does she look beautiful with her teeth digging into the slightly chapped flesh of her lower lip. If this is what Pearl sees every time they're together, then maybe I can begin to understand why she's so possessive. If Lapis was mine, and I mean really mine, then I think I'd be pretty protective of her, too.

"You can kiss my ass," I sneer before leaning in to press our lips together.

Lapis cups my skull with a big bear paw hand and pushes me down under the dashboard to hide us from curious eyes. Right now, I'm bent at an awkward angle, hands clenched tightly enough to leave half-moon indentations on my palms, and feverishly kissing my best friend to a song about getting laid on a Friday night.

It's f*****g perfect.

And in this moment of perfection, I am on fire and burning through the pages of every drugstore love story I've ever held between my paper-cut fingertips.

And for once, maybe not everything sucks.

I feel as if it ends too early when Lapis moves to pull away, so I try my hardest to lean forwards and hang on to that last split-second of teenage immortality. And even when it's finally the feeling is finally severed, I am satisfied.

"That wasn't my ass," I point out, outmatched and overwhelmed.

"Really? I couldn't tell the difference," Lapis retorts tartly, feigning shock. I roll my eyes and flick her off.

Lapis wipes her swollen lips on her sleeve, and I almost feel offended because it took me several years to make that blemish, and now she's scraping it off in less than several seconds.

"You free Saturday?" Lapis asks, fixing her bangs.

"Uh, yeah, totally," I say, trying to conceal the goofy grin on my face because as a solid rule, I do not make such expressions.

"Right. Saturday then! We can see a movie or something dumb like that," Lapis declares, her loose proposal ringing in my ears like the alarms in a winning slot machine.

She kicks the door open unceremoniously, tripping on a small burial mound of coffee cups and falling the rest of the way out of my Volkswagen. She wipes the grass from her pants, wincing.

Suddenly, there's a ring from Lapis' ass. Her hands fly to her back pocket, and she whips out her cell. She stares at the screen for a long time before finally answering on the last buzz. She motions for me to wait one second and turns away.

"Hi babe," she whispers as if she thinks I can't hear. I feel my insides, which were bloated with aliveness only moments ago, deflate completely.

"Yeah, I figured. Yeah, yeah. I'm free Saturday."

No, I mouth desperately, don't.

Look, I don't know what I did to make the universe hate me, but I figured that it could at least let me have this. Pearl's had Lapis for the past month- why can't I have her for one stupid f*****g Saturday?

"Uh-huh. You too." Lapis hums before hanging up. She turns back around and fakes a wide smile. I know it's fake, because it's the same big grin she gave me when I invited her to an anime convention in the 8th grade.

Lapis snorts almost disbelievingly. "Mom finally called," she says with crossed fingers.

I wish I could believe her.

"O-okay," I manage, jerking the stick into first. "I… I gotta go now."

I'm sure Lapis says goodbye as I peel away down her street, but I've already blocked her out with the sound of my squealing tires. As if it knows that I'm distressed, the Bug doesn't stall once. I lose control fast and soon, the only things going higher than my miles-per-hour is the volume on my radio and the acidic levels of stress colonizing in my head.

I don't even stop at the intersection before ripping my wheel left and just narrowly avoiding a collision with a bright red jeep. The driver and I share a few blared horns and some choice words thrown to the wind before parting.

In a moment of clarity, I decide that I should probably park and cool down before I become a traffic hazard. I drive to a shady area on the side of the road and turn my car off, letting myself fall victim to the soft ticking of the cooling engine.

I want to throw a tantrum, and I want to scream, and I want to hit something that can feel. It's all a very animalistic and childish instinct, and yet it's something I can't help but crave anyways. However, the day's events have rendered me too exhausted to indulge myself in my emotions, so I simply close my eyes, lean back, and let them tear at my exposed chest like starving dogs instead.

I wish I didn't love her. Who could love someone who not only stabs you in the back, but also twists the knife? Who could love someone like Lapis Lazuli?

I can name two people off the top of my head. And they're both sore dumbasses fighting over the smallest stick in a weak attempt to prove that anything is better than nothing.

I don't remember shutting down, or finding my way home to my bed, but when I come into conscious thought, I am curled into myself upon my black comforters. I furrow my brows, trying to define the emotion rippling in my chest like a built-up wave.

It's the feeling of losing three hours of progress on a video game due to a power outage. It's the feeling of being too exhausted to fall asleep at 4 am as you stare at the display of your alarm clock and wonder if the walls of your room were always this solid. It's the feeling of skipping every track on your music player because you know that they will only end up being ultimately unsatisfying.

It's feeling nothing.

Nothing but anger and regret and sadness and deep-rooted jealousy. And to feel that all at once would make me physically break down, so my body makes it all blend into a hazy numbness in a last-ditch effort to protect me.

I tighten my hand into a loose fist and watch as my fingers curl inwards. I notice the way my already pale knuckles turn white as the skin above them thins over the bone, and I wonder if they would fit with Lapis'.

Knowing my luck, they will.