i can't tell if i like her.
i think i like her as a friend - just a friend - y'know, in that platonic way where you laugh until your sides hurt and you talk for hours on the phone, the cord wrapped around your fingers. where you spend nights in each other's homes, watching the sky fade from a youthful blue to a purple daze to a midnight black that's swallowed the sun. where you cook bad meals, soggy waffles and too-much cream cheese on bagels and smoothies that taste like rotten kiwis. where you plaster on those muddy green face masks and sticky nose strips and take dumb pictures because you can. where you paint each other's nails colors of the rainbow and put on fashion shows as if you're still little kids (back when things weren't complicated and you didn't look at your best friend like she was something more.)
but what's the difference - between a friend and more? because yes, i think she's beautiful. chestnut hair that's always a mess, uneven at the ends because her friend chopped it all off. deep brown eyes, wide and unblinking, dancing when she laughs and her whole face crinkles. i like those jeans that she wears, high-waisted and worn-in and faded and blueblueblue. she thinks they make her look bad, but nothing makes her look bad. if there's anything i know for sure, it's that.
she doesn't want more. she wants simple. right? i should want simple too.
everything is chaotic in my head, a swarm of bees, stingers poised and sharpened like daggers. everything is racing, too wild for my liking, like the peak of a storm, lightning shattering, splitting me in two, thunder roaring with a mind of its own. it is anarchy inside of me. my heart is a mess and my thoughts are too controlling, strangling me with a noose of my own creation.
she calms me.
i am at rest around her. she makes me feel safe. friends do that. but not only friends. she is more to me, i think. she holds more meaning than a friend - no, not more. just different. she's different. i want to twist my hands into her hair until i am grounded. i want her hands on my waist, i want tight grasps and loose lips and i want more.
her hair is in a messy braid, slapping against her back when we drive with the sunroof down, wind slipping through our movements. she's laughing now, she's always laughing. i laugh too because it feels right. she's looking in the car mirror and i am too, that's how our eyes meet. it feels like everything has stopped, that the world is just us. i'm scared that only i feel that way. that the butterflies in my stomach are just that - in my stomach, and my stomach only. when i'm on cloud nine, she's planted firmly on earth, and my heart strings are being tugged on so harshly i'm afraid they'll break.
i wish we were dumb kids again. i wish she wasn't something more to me. but she is she is and i know that i know that.
