The room was dim, lit only by the pale wash of moonlight slipping through the blinds. Music hummed low from a forgotten speaker, more a heartbeat than a song.
They sat close, knees brushing on the floor, the kind of closeness they had never explained but never pulled away from either. Laughter had already softened into silence, and silence into something heavier—an air thick enough to drown in.
“Just friends,” she had said earlier, the words tossed out like a shield, like a line in the sand. Just friends. The phrase echoed, sharp and hollow, in the air between them.
But now…… now her eyes wouldn’t look away. They lingered, trembling and wide, as if asking questions her mouth couldn’t shape.
One heartbeat. Two.
Then the kiss sudden, soft, devastating.
It wasn’t planned. It wasn’t supposed to happen. But it did. Her hand found the back of her neck, pulling her closer, while the other’s breath stuttered against her lips. They didn’t speak, didn’t dare because words would ruin it. Words would make it real.
Their shadows, thrown against the wall, didn’t lie. Two bodies tangled, caught in a truth they had been running from.
When they finally broke apart, the silence felt different thicker, sharper. Their lips were swollen, their hearts unsteady.
Her voice cracked when she whispered, “We’re still… just friends, right?”
But her eyes betrayed her, pleading for an answer she wasn’t brave enough to ask.
And for the first time, the word friends felt like a wound.
