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“I’m glad you are my friend”
It’s undeniable true for Helen Sharpe. It’s also a big fat lie
So many times she has hated that word, that too often acts like a wall that separates them from everything else, all the things they could do and be.
She needs Max in her life, in any capacity. He gives her his friendship, but there is so much more she wants, because at the end of the day, she is a greedy person, she has always been.
When he hugs her, she wants his kisses and she suspects if one day he kisses her she’ll want his soul
But the fear paralyzes her. And deep down, she knows he is in the same terrible spot
Friends…
It isn’t a small thing.
Friendship means love, respect, loyalty
It also means fear, obstacles, incompleteness.
It means I almost kissed you, I almost told you and we almost had it all
So many times they had been at the edge, ready to tear apart whatever stays them, the intangible thing that keeps them stuck between friends and something more
That hug on the roof, on that secret place in the hospitals that is only theirs.
Sometimes she remembers it and dreams about it, she can see it in her mind, as a scene out of a romantic movie.
She recalls the hug and how when she looked at him she could only see his big eyes and the childish innocence reflected on them regardless of the way he was looking at her lips, which was the same way she was looking at his. Right there and then, she wanted so much and so many things,
His touch’s always the softest touch, so full of reverence and care that never fails to make her feel loved and special.
Sometimes, when they are together and they fall in silence and they are too close, for a couple of beats, she feels they are in their own bubble of desire and love and she thinks “this is it”
When that happens, she always tries to be ready and act like the adult she is instead of the teenage girl she feels like. Then, s he looks up, closes her eyes, smiles, and tries to force her heart to stop beating so strongly and be steady.
It's always exhilarating and precious. A couple of seconds when there is only hope and happiness.
And then, there’s always that moment in time when she feels the cold contrast of the ring with Max’s skin and with her own skin.
And the bubble breaks, the moment passes and they stay in the friend zone.
It’s Georgia’s ring, Georgia’s ghost
Still there, still in Max’s life and Max’s heart
She will always be there, and Helen gets it, she doesn’t care about that. Max will always have a place for Georgia just like Helen has a place for her own ghosts
The problem is that Max still touches the ring instead of kissing her, he looks at the ring instead of at the future
She hates that ring and everything that represents: a chance that wouldn’t be there without blood and tragedy
It's not fair, she knows that.
For Max, it's something else, it's the memory of a marriage and a life he loved, of the woman who gave him his daughter, of the woman he loved.
For Helen, it's, a frontier that Max doesn’t seem willing to trespass.
Helen looks at that ring and sees everything she wants but she can't have whereas Max sees everything he once had but he lost
He is holding on to that ring in the same way he is holding on to his memories so he stays in the past
And he and Helen are stuck
One day and another goes by and Helen wonders why she told him she was glad they were friends when all she wanted was to leave that word behind move ahead, cross lines, and jump ahead.
She enters the hospital and sees the chaos and hears the complaints. He is once again pursuing a new complex impossible cause that should have been fixed decades ago but will remain broken for more decades to come. Max idealism stopped being cute months ago, now is a savior complex that should annoy her more than it does as he keeps winning battles that he wouldn’t have been able to start if he weren’t a hot white cis man.
Sometimes she hates him. He fights for all those causes and asks for her help when all she wants is for him to stay quiet and still long enough for the world to catch their breath.
She doesn’t know what is his new battle, but she knows this is not the day. She feels she might kill him or kiss him senseless and neither of the options are possible
So she takes the elevator because he always takes the stairs and she hopes she can avoid him for the rest of the day.
As usual, her hopes go unanswered as soon as the elevator stops, t he doors open, and there he is, with a good morning and a speech. Not even a coffee.
He is talking, non-stop, with his usual excitement. He is childish and smart and she hates he is usually right but the world makes him wrong because it’s full of greed and unfairness
She doesn’t listen. She can’t.
Her eyes are caught on his hand, his finger, the place where that cursed ring used to be but now there is only a slightly whiter ring of skin around his finger.
“Your ring”
She hears herself whisper and hates the vulnerability on her voice, the cracks in her armor starting to fill the empty space between them
He clears his throat and answers with that tone of voice he gets when he is nervous but trying to sound serious and confident.
Helen bites her lips, nervous, and doesn’t dare to look at his eyes, afraid it’s going to be something foolish and ridiculous, a new disappointment that she will have to ignore with a smile and witty comment
He takes a step closer to her, and he is so close she can feel his presence even though he isn’t touching her
She can feel herself starting to hope, and hates it, how easy is for her to fall, how easy is for him to trap her again and again and again
“I thought it’s time”
And that is. What she has been waiting to hear for so long.
The silence is too long, too heavy between them, and she knows he is waiting for her to say something, anything. She just doesn't know what.
She has tried so hard to dull all her hopes and dreams that now they've become true she doesn't know what to do, what to say
Finally, she dares herself to look up.
His gaze on her, she can feel the heat and the lust coming from him as a real, tangible thing, and she knows this really is it, that this time he is giving her what she has always wanted.
So now it’s her turn.
She steps towards him, trying to convey her answer with her movements and her eyes and she for a split of second panics because it occurs to her she doesn’t want their first kiss to be in an elevator, like one cheesy soap opera but then he is holding her face with his hands and looking at her as if she were the most valuable thing in the world and she can’t think anymore.