Best Lesbian Romance 2012 by Radclyffe

Author:Radclyffe
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Cleis Press
Published: 2011-12-01T16:00:00+00:00

MISTY AND ME

by Catherine Paulssen

I was a cliché.

Falling in love with my best friend—can that happen outside of Hollywood?

Fools rush in, they say.

Sometimes, fools tumble slowly.

Being in love with your best friend. It can be the best thing that ever happened to you. It can be the worst. In my case, it must be the latter. I wrapped my jacket tighter around myself and scowled at the glum beach underneath a cloudy sky.

A golden retriever, far ahead of its owner, came romping around me, wagging its tail. McAllister’s dog. I stroked its damp fur and furiously blinked the tears away.

My best friend. It wasn’t the boy I had built castles in the sand with when we were kids, living next door to each other.

It was Misty.

Misty, who would watch people on the bus and invent stories in her head about where they came from and what they were up to. Who could crease her mouth into a smile so broad that her eyes, heavy-lidded gray eyes, would become small underneath her ginger fringes. Misty, who would never miss a Robert Mitchum movie being rerun on TV, and who was freaked out by ants.

I knew the lilt of her voice when she was lying about how she really felt, and I knew the moment she would come out of that hiding place deep inside her to confess, to cry or rant. I knew how she tried to be the best mom to her son, and how she struggled every day with the notion of having failed him. In moments like these, I would hug her and tell her that she was the bravest person I had ever known. I would hold her until the tension left her body.

Lately, a new feeling had sneaked its way into the safety that was our embrace. Her curvaceous body pressed against mine filled me with anxiety, with desire, with shame. I wanted to bury my face in the crook of her neck, vanish in her smell that reminded me of the skin of fresh apples which had been lying in the sun, and I knew it would take away my ability to breathe. Everything within me started to hum, my skin was getting heated and flushed, my palms became sweaty. I would watch my hands behind her back, lying on the small of her back, the tips of my fingers tingling with the wish to trace the curve of her neck.

I smothered the sensations as soon as they started to crawl up inside me, shame following in their wake. I was betraying our friendship, a friendship tried and tested since I had moved to the small town on the northern coast. I wasn’t sure if I would be able to remain quiet about it, or how long it would take before my guilty conscience would scream out and beg for forgiveness. The fear of that moment, and even more of what would follow it, scared me.

But what scared me most was that from the way she said my name when her guard was down I could tell she felt it too.

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