She shook her head. “No, Daisy. I like you, like way more than I should like my best friend. That kiss wasn’t a big deal to you, but it was to me.”
I stared at her, unmoving. She covered her face and threw herself on the couch. I didn’t understand what was happening. She liked me? She kissed me like that, because she liked me?
I sat down next to her and took her hand, squeezing it three times, just as I had at the funeral and so many times before. We always did that in moments like these. When one of us was feeling vulnerable, we’d do it to say “I’ve got you.”
She took a deep breath and looked at me, something sad in her eyes. “I’m sorry.”
Why was she apologizing? That kiss had changed things.
I had thought everything I was feeling was because I was just lonely, and she just happened to be there. A beautiful woman so close. After I’d kissed her and all those feelings came rushing back, I knew that wasn’t true. Everything I was feeling wasforher, not because of her.
I didn’t know what to do with that information. She was my best friend, and this was all so new, but I couldn’t let her go on thinking it meant nothing to me. That I didn’t want her.
“Will you stop apologizing? You might have forgotten, what, with being in the middle of a freak-out and all, but I kissed you first, remember?”
She gave me a half-attempt at a smile. “Yeah, because it’s a holiday tradition. I’m the one who basically molested your mouth.”
My fingers moved on their own to feel those same lips that tasted her hours ago. They still tasted like her lip gloss.
After a while, I began to sign again. “That’s true. It started out that way, but I don’t think you’re supposed to deepen the kiss. I might’ve had ulterior motives, Kaia. I kind of wanted to know what it would be like to kiss you. At first, it was just going to be a simple kiss, for the mistletoe, but…” I paused, unsure how to make the words come out.
“But once I started, I couldn’t seem to stop. Once you kissed me back, likereallykissed me back, I didn’t want to stop.”
I took her silence as an excuse to keep going. “Ever since that morning I saw you doing yoga, I can’t stop thinking about you in a way I probably shouldn’t. That’s why I was acting so weird. I’ve never had feelings like that before, or I don’t think I have, and you just lost your dad. I mean, what kind of friend thinks about their friend like that when they’re grieving?”
I felt terrible. It had only been a few months since the funeral, and here I was, trying to take advantage of her mouth in front of dozens of people at a party. I wished I had been drinking more so I could blame it on that, but it was too late for that. I had to get it all out there in the open.
“Yours does,” she said sheepishly. “Wait, so when you were sick, did you really need my help?”
I shrugged. “Yes and no. I would’ve been fine without your help, maybe. I was feeling weak. I was afraid I might fall asleep in the bathtub if you weren’t there, but I also wanted your company.”
“And helping you undress? And what about in the locker room after our pickleball game? What the hell was that?”
I bit my lip, thinking of both of those occasions. Feeling her hands on me as she washed my body? I was so thankful the water hid how turned on I was. Seeing her eyes watching every inch of skin as I undressed, knowing she was watching me touch myself? I had to fight a moan.
“I probably could’ve done that on my own. And the locker room? That was just fun. Would it have bothered you if I’d told you I was masturbating to the image of you topless in your room? And you bent over your yoga mat? I couldn’t get those images out of my mind, Kaia.”
Her brows came together, and it looked like she was in pain. “Daisy,” she said before biting her lip. I wanted to take that same lip into my mouth, but I refrained.
“It’s true, Kaia. I didn’t kiss you for the party. I didn’t kiss you because I felt obligated from the mistletoe or to please Drea. I kissed you for me.”
“What are you saying, Daisy?”
I smiled. She was hopelessly clueless sometimes, and it was adorable.I took a few steps toward her but still gave her the space she needed in case she wanted an out. “I’m saying, Kaia, that I like you, too. More than a best friend should.”
“You like me?” She repeated my words as if trying to process them.
I nodded. “Yeah, doodle, I do. I really do.”
“What does that mean?”
Instead of a response, I closed the distance between us and grabbed her face, capturing her mouth in a kiss so intense she stumbled back a step. I grinned into the kiss, enjoying the way she reacted to it.
I wanted to feel more than just her lips, so I moved my hands down her sides, taking in the shivers my touch produced. Why had I waited so long to do this? To feel her against me?
My hands moved to the front of her, cupping her breasts. I had been wanting to feel them ever since I saw them in her room.
If she wanted me to stop, she didn’t give any indication. I let my hands linger for a minute before I trailed them down her arms and linked our fingers together, slowly breaking the kiss.
