Accidentally in Love by Sara Travis

It happened very suddenly on a rainy Tuesday afternoon. I remember it was Tuesday because I was supposed to be working, but the basement at the store had flooded so we’d all been sent home early. He said, ‘Let’s chill,’ and I said, ‘Sure,’ so he came over and we dug out our pyjamas and ordered pizza and stuck on some old Friends re-runs. We ate strawberry ice cream from the tub and sat under a wooly blanket and turned the volume up to drown out the rain pounding at the windows. And he sat close to me. And my gut squirmed when his hand brushed mine. And I liked it. And I noticed that he smelled of sawdust and cologne and coffee and something slightly sweet and musky that I couldn’t put my finger on. And I’d never noticed that before. Because he was who he was, and that was my friend, and you don’t really notice stuff like that about your friends, do you? Or do you? I don’t know, but I never did. Until Tuesday.

And then out of nowhere he says, ‘Oh hey, I’m seeing Celia this weekend. Like, you know, a date. Can you loan me twenty quid?’ And all of a sudden I was very cold, and my mouth was dry, and my heart was pounding in the back of my throat and I thought I actually might die. Because he was going on a date with Celia, and that meant he liked her and she liked him back. And it didn’t matter that I’d had an epiphany, that I’d finally noticed what had been staring me in the face for fourteen years, that I’d realised – holy shit – he smelt bloody fantastic and there was a very good chance that he was the one. And that everyday I’d thought about the future, every time I’d fantasised about jobs and houses and new cars and road trips, he was standing right next to me in a suit and tie, or signing his name next to mine on the deeds, or sat in the passenger seat feeding me biscuits, or taking my picture next to the Taj Mahal. And now he was going on a date with Celia. And he was going to marry Celia, and have a baby with Celia and there’d be no room for me in his new life with a wife and baby. Even though we’ve been friends since we were eight years old, and he calls my parents ‘Mum’ and ‘Dad’, and we’d holidayed together every other year since forever, and I’d seen him naked on two separate occasions that he may or may not know about.

And then I realised we were still sat on the sofa under the blanket, and the chill from the ice cream tub had made my thigh go numb. So I arranged my face to resemble a smile and said, ‘Sure,’ and I got my purse and I handed over the cash and I winked at him and said, ‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,’ and he laughed and I laughed but really I was crying except on the inside.