The Fundamentals of Friendship Pt. 02

"Just so you know, I'm on your team, even though Rocco's hotter." She'd said, then walked towards her husband while my mind went into a turmoil.

****

"Riley?"

"Yeah?" Suzanne's voice yanked me out of my reveries. I turned to see her smiling on the passenger seat.

"Are you alright? I've been calling your name for the past minute."

"Yeah, yeah. I just had an idea for the book." I said and, my god, my excuses were shit. Lost in my own head, recalling the conversation I had had with Sophia, I hadn't even noticed when I parked the car in front of Suzanne's building.

"Write it down, or you'll forget it."

"Yeah, I will."

She leaned in to give me a warm kiss I didn't have enough concentration to return properly. She pulled away, frowning. "You sure you're alright?"

"Yeah, sure. Don't worry." I squeezed her hand to reassure her of my life.

"So what did you think of dinner?" The girl was as canny as a cat. It was clear my opinion of dinner wasn't what she wanted to know. Not really.

"Was fine."

"Fine?" She enquired, cocking a brow.

"Yeah, fine."

She was quiet for a few seconds, then blurted. "Laura's very beautiful."

"Yeah, she is." Absentmindedly, I agreed with that irrevocable statement for the second time in one night.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I heard Suzanne's deep sigh. "See you tomorrow?" Her voice was a little low, uncertain.

"Are you sure you don't want me to go up?" I offered her again, trying to make up for being a bad date. She had an early meeting with Mr. Perfect Rocco and had subtly suggested I sleep at my own place.

"I have to be up very early tomorrow, Riley."

"Ok."

She kissed me again. "Bye, handsome."

"Bye." I waited for her to go in and lock the door behind her.

Reflexively, I reached into the front pocket of my jeans lookin for my phone and didn't find it. I mentally retraced my steps to the last memory of having it with me. It had been in my hand when Sophia approached me.

"Shit." I had left it at Ells.

I turned the engine on and made my way back the road I had come from. Back to Laura's. Where I unconsciously had been wanting to go.

***

I had a key, but Laura never did remember to lock the little garden gate by the side of her house. It was all too easy for me -or anyone who cared to try- to sneak in.

Just as I had suspected, the lights in her kitchen were on. She was pissed at something. Probably me. Cleaning or cooking were her ways of letting some steam off. The door connecting the kitchen and her garden was open too. I kept telling her not to let the damn door open at night, especially at this hour, some pervert might creep in -just like I had. She never listened, though. She said she liked the fresh air of the night.

I leaned on the door, watching her drying the dishes, rubbing a cloth on a glass like her life depended on its cleanness.

"What did that glass ever do to you?" Before I had completely closed my mouth she screamed, and the glass in her hand turned to shatters.

"Fuck, Riley! One of those days you'll give me a heart attack!"

Lines of liquid ruby started running down her hands. "Shit, Ells!" I rushed to her, taking her bleeding finger and putting it in my mouth. She winced, and I noticed her eyes were unusually sad and red rimmed. She had been crying.

We both slid down to the floor, backs against her green kitchen cabinets. "I really hope you don't have any STDs." I pulled her finger out of my mouth, still tasting the rusty saltiness of her blood.

"If I have any, I got it from you." I studied her voice for signs of imminent tears, but she sounded tired more than anything else.

"That's very probable." That made her smile a little and I was content to be the cause of it.

"Why are you sneaking into my house at this hour, Riley?" She kept her eyes down, avoiding mine.

"I forgot my phone. Didn't want to wake you." I put a finger under her chin to force her to look at me. "Is Rocco asleep?" I asked, hoping he wasn't to blame for her blotched eyes. I wasn't his biggest fan to start with, so he better not be making the woman I loved cry.

Laura brushed my hand away, casting her eyes down once more. "He's not here. Went to his hotel. He's got an early meeting with Suzanne." Her small voice confirmed he really was the reason why she was crying. But she didn't even want me to notice she was crying, who's to say talk about it.

"Oh, right. The meeting. How crazy is it that they know each other?"

"Where's she?" She asked, ignoring my remark.

"Her place."

She nodded, sinking her teeth on her lower lip. Trademark move for when she wanted to say something she was afraid to.

"I was about to have some comfort Oreos. It's a good thing you're here, you can eat the filling." I doubted asking me to eat the filling of her cookies was the thing she really wanted to say. I wondered what made her need comfort ice cream and cookies to begin with.

"Chocolate?" Ever since we were kids Laura loved to have Oreos with chocolate ice cream. She loved the cookies, but hated the filling, so I always ate them for her, remarking on how the filling was the whole point of Oreos.

"You bet."

"Sure, let's have it. I can't believe you still eat this stuff. Remember your 10th birthday? How much ice cream we had?" To this day, my stomach still lurched when I recalled the 10 year old versions of us, puking our guts out all night long due to excessive amounts of ice cream and cookies.

As I watched her get up and walk to her fridge I noticed she was wearing my Star Wars t-shirt. There were several holes in it. That shirt was maybe ten years old, if not older. No. Older. Definitely older. I had that shirt when I was in college and had given it to her a few months before we broke up. She still slept in it. I felt a smile stretching my lips. Then, sudden and uninvited, parts of the talk I had with Sophia crushed back into my mind. Tell her you love her before you lose her for good. You still have time.

I shook my head to physically try and make the idea go away. I couldn't do that. That would be a jerk move. I had Sue, Laura had Rocco. I had had my chances, it wasn't fair to Laura to do it now. I had no time. Not anymore.

She returned with the ice cream bowl and the pack of cookies. She sat down like she used to as a child; with her legs streched in front of her, forming a V. She raised one spoonful of the icy stuff to her mouth so forlornly that I put an arm over her skinny shoulders.

"What's wrong, Ells?"

Without looking at me she sat her spoon down, taking several minutes to give me what I knew to be a dishonest answer. "Nothing. It was just a long night. I'm tired."

"I could go-"

"Don't!" She clutched my arm with such force her nails dug into my skin. "Don't leave, please." Her eyes were wide, terrified. There was no way in hell tiredness was all there was to it.

"I'm just kidding, Ells." I took her hand, carefully making her lose her grip on me. "You're sure you're ok? You don't look so good." I asked her, opening the cookie pack.

"I'm fine, Ry." She lied again.

"Hey," I pulled her to me, and she willingly rested her head on my shoulder. "You're clearly not fine. Talk to me."

She took my hand, squeezing down on it. "I don't want to talk right now, Ry. Maybe later."

She didn't want to tell me what was wrong. Not yet. She wanted me to leave it alone, so I did, focusing instead on eating the filling of her cookies. She'd tell me in her own time. She always did.

"Do you really have to lick my cookies, Riley?"

My tongue froze flat against one dark little chocolate disk. "Lick your cookies? I remember a time when you didn't mind me licking your cookies." I joked only to have her blush and elbow my ribs. "What do you care if I lick 'em?" I asked.

She wrinkled her nose, considering her answer. She was the last person in the world who could complain about my tongue or where it had been. Too late for that. "They get wet. It's disgusting."

"You're dipping them on ice cream, Laura. They're bound to get wet." I gave a cookie a dramatically long lick and dropped it into the ice cream bowl. "There."

"Jerk."

"Don't worry, Ells. You have antibodies against me."

We both stood quiet for a few minutes, focused on Laura's favorite childhood meal. The only sounds were the crunching of our teeth against the cookies and the clicking of the spoon against the glass bowl. For such old friends as ourselves silence wasn't uncomfortable. On the contrary. We could seat beside each other for hours without saying anything and not feel the need to speak, or to fill the air with meaningless small talk. Not because we didn't have anything to say, but because sometimes we didn't have to say it.

I knew she was upset. She knew I knew it. She didn't want to talk about it, yet. And she knew that, when she felt like talking, I would gladly listen and do whatever was in my power to help her.

"Ry," She called in a small voice, disturbing the silence.

I looked at her expectantly.

"What did you and Rocco talk about tonight?" She asked.

And sometimes I lied to her. To protect her. "Oh, not much. Just man stuff."

She arched a brow "Man stuff?"

"Yeah, you know."

"No, I don't."

"Just-" Shit. I didn't want to talk about fucking Rocco. "His business and...you." Shit.

"Me? What about me?"

I didn't have a way of answering that. I wasn't about to tell her Rocco and I had had a pissing contest over her. "You're dating him, right? I mean, officially. Exclusively."

"Yes. I suppose I am."

"But," My next words would stir shit out and maybe start a discussion I shouldn't want to have. "He lives in France, doesn't he?"

"Well, we," She frowned. "We've talked about how we can make it work."

"Long distance?"

"There's no other way, Ry." Her voice betrayed some guilt. The same guilt I had heard the night she told me about wanting a child.

I locked my jaw, literally biting down on my tongue. Problem is, I never knew when to say what I had to and when to shut up. "I thought you didn't believe in long distance relationships, Ells. It didn't work for you before, remember?"

She gave me a hurtful look, as if I had slapped her. "It was different back then Riley."

In the interval that took one second to become another, we were 21 again. Quarrelling the way we did when I could've shutted her up with my mouth.

"Different? What was different?"

"I was younger. I didn't know better."

"And if you'd known better?"

"I didn't."

"But what if you had?"

She proudly held her head back, pointing her chin at me. I braced myself for her next words, half expecting them to throw more wood into the fire and give me a reason to throw my resentment at her face. Why him? Why are you trying it with him and didn't try it with me? Why?

"Did you, Riley?" She asked. "Did you know better? It takes two to tango."

With reluctance, I admitted she was right. I could've tried harder too. I, even more than her, could've have changed things by simply telling her. "Yeah. I guess we were just a pair of dumb kids." I said, giving up.

She reached for my hand, squeezing down on it. "Water under the bridge, Ry."

"Yeah." Troubled waters, tough. Probably under a broken bridge, too.

Taking the spoon, Laura stuffed her mouth with too much ice cream. A strategy to avoid more talking. I was being an asshole. She was already tired and upset and I was only making it worse.

"What did you think of Sue?" I asked for the sake of curiosity, as well as to change the subject.

"What?!" She startled.

"Suzanne," I repeated. "What did you think of her?"

She grimaced, avoiding my eyes. "Oh. She's nice. Very pretty."

"Nice and pretty?"

"Yeah."

A little poisonous joy winked at me. Was it jealousy I heard on her words? From what I had seen, Laura had behaved as a perfect hostess to Sue, but she had worn fake, forceful smiles all dinner long. She wasn't the jealous type, had never been, but maybe Suzanne had changed that. Maybe she was jealous after all. Sophia herself had hinted at that possibility. I had to restrain myself from entertain the notion. I liked the idea of Laura's jealousy too much for my own good.

"We had a nice talk tonight. Sophie and I, I mean." I clarified when Laura gave me a puzzled look. "Been awhile since I chatted with Soph. She's still crazy, uh?"

Laura's face lit up the way it always did whenever she talked about her sister. I had always been a little envious of their relationship. Being adopted, I never had any siblings myself. Laura was, in an incestuous way, the closest thing I had to one. "Crazier, I'd say. It worried me a little when I saw you two talking."

"Yeah, she gave me an advice."

"Oh, oh. I smell trouble."

I smiled without humor, wondering what were the odds of Sophie being right about the time I still had.

You will never know unless you tell her, Riley.

"I thought I should listen to her. It worked the first time." I made that decision right there as I spoke the words.

"First time?" Something in my tone must have alarmed Laura, because her voice lost its bantering mood. "What did she say to you, Riley?" I didn't answer her, internally panicking for a second. Should I tell her? I have to now. No way out. "Ry?" She called again.

The ice cream bowl lay forgotten on the floor. The chocolate was melting, turning into a warm, liquidish cream. The cookies swimming in it.

"Do you remember my 30th birthday party?" I blurted, bringing my eyes to level with hers.

"Are we really going to remember every damn birthday we had? That's like 70 between the two of us." She had her eyebrows raised and a fibble smile in her mouth. I had shifted into a different mood, though. I had to grab the sudden burst of courage -or madness- that had hit me before it left me. "I remember tequila shot number 3, then...then I remember the next morning. Waking up. Your bare white ass was the first thing I saw." She said, her smile fading.

"Did you put weed on the cake?" My question made her laugh again, though I hadn't meant to be funny. It was a simple curiosity I've had for years.

"Well...Maybe. I might have mistaken it for vanilla."

"Don't you remember what you said to me?"

"Ahh..." She frowned, looking at me like I was crazy. "Happy birthday?"

"No, Ells. Before."

"Ry, I ate a lot of cake." Again, she laughed a weak, unconvincing sound. "I...I remember nothing, buddy. Sorry."

I remembered everything. I would, very likely, never forget what she'd said to me that night. And for at least a couple of years I believed she remembered it too. But that had only been wishful thinking. Somehow I knew that, if she had remembered what she'd said, I wouldn't be needing to have the talk I was about to have with her.

I turned to her, took one of her hands in mine and, like a man about to jump off a ledge, I told her what I should've told her 5 years ago, surprising even myself. "You said you loved me." She didn't express any particular emotion at that. She didn't understand what I meant, so I made it clearer. "You kissed me and you said you loved me. I tried to stop you, but you said you loved me, Ells. And you meant it. How could I have fought against that?"

She started to shake her head. "No, I don't..."

Every other chance I came across, I had allowed to slip away through my fingers because, deep down, I knew I'd have another. I knew she'd come back to me. She always did. But this time there was Perfect Rocco. I couldn't bear to be her friend while he lived the life I wanted beside her. I wouldn't just sit and listen to her tell me she had fallen for him. That she loved him. I couldn't let that happen.

"Listen to me, Laura." I moved even closer to her, our thighs touched. She flinched, brown eyes terrified. "I'd hate to lose you, but I won't spend the rest of my life wondering what if. I know my timing is awful. I'm sorry to do this to you now you've met Rocco, but I just can't lose my fourth chance. I have to do this."

"Fourth chance? What are you...?" She shook her head again. She looked more than confused. Lost. Like she couldn't believe she was actually awake. My courage wavered for a second there.

If you don't tell her this time, Riley, you won't have another chance. Tell her. Lose her or win her, just tell her.

I looked down at our joined hands, swallowing dryly. Earlier, as I parked my car in front of her house, the last thing I imagined I would be doing was what I was about to do. Now I had to do it. I had to. It was an urge so strong, so raw I wouldn't have been able to resist it even if I tried. It was also terribly selfish and wrong. But I had to do it. I was aware of the great, and very real, possibility that I might lose her faster this way than if I actually waited for Rocco to sweep her off her feet, put her over his shoulder and take her to fucking France, or Italy or whatever it is he's from.

But I was going to lose her one way or the other, wasn't I? Wouldn't it be better to lose her knowing that I had at least tried? That she at least knew she had another place to run? Another option?

"I used this time away from you to think things through, and it almost drove me crazy not to see you everyday." I breathed deeply, staring intently into her eyes so she would know I was serious. "Rocco seems like a nice guy. He sure is perfect, but I'm me, Laura. I'm Riley. I've always been here. I'm the one who's always been by your side, I'm the one who's..." I paused, taking a breath before letting the words out. The words that would change everything. The words that might win me, or lose me, the love of my life. "I'm the one who's been in love with you for twenty years."

She was so still I wasn't sure she was breathing. "What are you sa-"

"I love you, Ells." I said. "Like I always have. And I'm asking you to, please, come back to me. Let me be the guy by your side 5 years from now. Let me be the father of all the children you want to have. I don't care if you want to have ten of them, I'll do it. Just let me do it. We're us. We're Riley and Laura. We belong together."

My throat was dry like the desert as I waited for her reaction. She was silent for what felt like an eternity.

"You...you..." She sputtered

"Yes."

"But, Ry...you never...you..."

"I love you, Laura." After the first jump, the rest was easy. I could've said it a million times over.

Her hand was still in mine. She retrieved it, leaving mine feeling clammy and lonely. "Wh-Why now? Why are you saying this to me only now?"

"Because this time I might really lose you."

Her brows gathered together in a look both sad and disoriented. "You would never lose me, Riley. Never."

I smiled wanly at her. "Yeah, I would. If I just sit here and watch I'll lose you to Rocco, and I won't do that. I can't do that."

Laura got up to her feet, needing to grab the edge of the marble counter to do so. I remained on the floor, watching her as she paced back and forth. She stopped, pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes and groaned. The sound was deep and angry.

"Why didn't you tell me the other day, Riley?!" She yelled. "When I told about wanting a steady relationship with someone? Fuck! Why didn't you tell me while you were fucking me through all those years?! Why the fuck didn't you tell me that when you came back home??? I would've left thim for you!" She sucked air in through her mouth making her whole body shake. "Why now? WHY?!"

She was, understandably, mad. Of course she was. She had the right to be. It wasn't her fault it took me almost fifteen years to tell her I wanted her back. Once I had already made my bed I had to lie in it, though.

"I got scared." There. I voiced it. The truth. "I didn't know you were having those kinds of thoughts. It just scared me how serious you were. It made me realize I didn't have much time. And I always thought you loved Jordan!" From where I sat on the floor, the view I had was of a larger than life Laura. She glared down at me like a giant from a greek myth. "As for the sex," I continued, standing to my full height. "I just...That way I could have you, Laura. I was afraid to say something and lose that as well as the best friend I ever had. I was afraid to scare you."