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“Are you gonna eat that?”
Asher’s tanned finger points towards Vada’s slice of slimy pizza greased up with cheese and dots of pepperoni that sits untouched on her metal, arcade styled plate, and her eyes deadpan at his starved expressions, despite the fact that he previously devoured two slices of his own.
“All yours.” She flashes him a quick lipped dry smile, and turns away from the sight of him scarfing down his meal before adding a muffled ‘thanks’ in between his open mouthed chews.
Thankfully, Mia comes back from the line of people she had been standing in to order her milkshake, and the awkward tension is sealed closed with the glue of her presence.
“Jesus, that line was so long,” She utters to herself, and swipes a strand of blonde off the field of her damp forehead.
“I thought I was gonna have to wrestle a lady over the last cup, too.” Vada’s amused smile stifles behind the plasticity of her straw as she plays with it in between her lips, her teeth grazing and bending the substance into a crunched form of what it once was.
“Anyway, now that that’s over with,” She looks up to the both of them, a newfound light of excitement dangling behind her eyes, “Do you guys wanna play some games after this? We still have a lot of tickets.”
“Of course,” Asher swallows his food before speaking, “Let me just finish this first.” He sinks his teeth in for another bite, and the gruesome sight of it sends a struggling shiver down Vada’s fragile spine, causing her to recoil into her corner of the booth.
“Wait, you’re not eating, Vada?” Mia asks her with doe eyes and soft eyebrows, and she shakes her head with nonchalance.
“I lost my appetite.” She states loud and clear, and then mumbles underneath her breath, “Which your slob of a boyfriend ruined for me.”
There’s a looming silence that overshadows the trio in their respective seats, and growing repetition of slot machine and or first person shooter games consume the dark quietness, and it isn’t until Vada glances up that she notices her insult was heard.
“What?”
Mia holds an agonizing gaze of annoyance and competes in a staring competition with Vada, who shrinks her height lower with the scrutinized intensity. Asher, on the other hand, sits there awkwardly with a sheepish smile.
“She’s probably right,” He admits foolishly, a chuckle stumbling from his lips.
“I should go to the bathroom to wash my hands… They’re kinda dirty.” He motions towards his greased hands, and then points Mia away from the outside of the booth, signaling her to scoot out so he could make his rounds to the public sink.
Once he’s gone, Vada shows no heartfelt remorse for her negativity, and returns back to peacefully sipping on her iced coke.
“What was that?”
Mia’s rigid tone and sudden shove to make conversation pulls Vada out of her head, and she looks across the table, wondering how a slab of wood feels like more separation than the previous oceans she was across before.
“Nothing,” She shrugs her shoulders, “I was just saying.”
“No, Vada, you weren’t just saying. You’ve been mopey all day, and now you’re being rude to my boyfriend, too?” There’s clear conflict and anger sticking to the corners of her throat, and her edged voice brings Vada back to a time when their friendship was more than just abandoned promises and forgotten memories.
She remembers the time before the distance happened, and before Mia relocated thousands of miles away and left Vada to collect dust in the process.
She remembered how equally broken they were over it, and how so much had clearly changed since then.
“Well, maybe I didn’t wanna third wheel today. Have you ever thought of that?” She sounds hesitant when she admits it, but only for the known fact that she’s been trying to spare Mia’s feelings since day one, which has only ruined her in the process.
“Like,” She starts, a ramble incoming, “This is your first day back in almost a year, and you wanted to spend it with both of us ? Why couldn’t you have broken it up into two parts? Why couldn’t it be me today, and him tomorrow?”
Mia laughs dryly, a sound that once used to be music to Vada’s ears is now the sound of a heart unraveling and breaking.
“You wanted it to be just you and me today?” There’s sarcastic amusement hinted at in her words, but it sorely flies over Vada’s head.
Slightly confused and profoundly rushed with adrenaline from the sudden start of the argument, she crosses her arms over her chest, and nods tightly.
“Yes, actually, I did.”
“Okay, and why?” Mia’s lips curl with disdain in every sentence, and the look of anger on her face matches the expression before a bully pummels a younger kid for his lunch money.
“Are you gonna say it’s because you want it to be like ‘when we were kids again’? Or are you gonna make up some stupid shit about how you missed me every day?”
Vada’s hardening exterior crumbles at the hands of her words, and she feels her soul fall to her knees, kneeling to the inevitable power Mia holds over her.
Her face saddens with blue and pent up emotion, and the weight of her unintentional insults spread through her skin and touch her nerves like wildfire upon the branches of sycamore trees.
She feels pained, and blindsided with a deep love she can’t reverse.
“What do you mean ‘make up some stupid shit’?” She asks, her tone low and warm with bleeding pores.
“I did miss you every day. I still miss you every day.” She’s barely above a whisper, and Mia’s cynical laugh overpowers it anyway.
Vada’s eyebrows furrow into bubbling defensiveness, and she purses her lips together at the undenying rudeness hovering over her aura.
“Why are you laughing?” She calls her out, her tone molding into something harder and less pliable than before.
“What about this is funny to you?” She speaks again, although there’s a coated layer of mocking betrayal that sits at the surface level of her silent aggravation.
“Because you didn’t miss me, Vada!” She exclaims, “What you’re doing right now- what you just did to my boyfriend, isn’t what a friend does when they ‘miss’ their other friend. You’ve barely spoken a word to me today, and anytime I try to offer you to join us in playing a game you totally ignore me like I’m not even there.”
Vada’s fingers twitch against her knees under the table, and her tongue sweeps across her bottom lip in dreadful anxiety at the truth buried in a coffin beneath the dirt of her lies.
“Because I-” She tries, falling short of a confession, realizing before it was too late that she doesn’t have the strength nor capability to deal with the aftermath of being rejected.
She glances away from the girl sitting across from her, her eyes panning to the retro themed design embedded into the black carpet before looking up again, but not directly at her.
“Because,” She breathes out, her body language lighter and more languid this time, “I’m not exactly… boy positive and you know it.” She tries for a worn out, sorry excuse instead of the truth, and Mia discovers the poorly weaved mask the second the words escape her mouth.
“Are you serious?” She asks rhetorically with sternness, “Are we seriously back to this?”
Vada looks back down to the covered ground beneath them, her lips sealed shut by a magnetizing force invisible to Mia.
“You can’t just diss my boyfriend all day and then excuse it with the fact that you don’t get along with men. That’s not how it works, Vada. And if you were truly my friend, you wouldn’t even be making a big deal out of this anyway. I don’t need to have separate days to hang out with you and then with him, just cause you don’t like that I’m with him.”
She slows her roll, her trail fiery and hot as she chases Vada relentlessly, their first in depth conversation in months spinning full circle back to their initial issue.
“It’s really not my fault that you don’t like boys.”
When Mia says it, it means one thing, but when Vada hears it, it means a completely different thing in itself.
And it hurts her more than she’ll ever be able to fathom.
Her words feel like a piercing stab through the arteries of her throat, and the blade makes it through the front and into the back. Then it stands still inside of her body as she looks back into Mia’s blue orbs, a newfound quiver added to her bottom lip.
The irrevocable feeling of calculated pain and messy emotions feels all consuming inside the skeletons of her body.
“You’re not even my friend anymore.” She spits, hoping her dart would land in the bullseye and it would be a wake up call for her ignorance and stupidity.
In compliance to her wishes, Mia’s eyes fall curiously, and she looks taken aback more steps than she would’ve considered.
“What are you even talking about?” She sounds exhausted and irritated when she speaks, like Vada’s a child and she’s just the babysitter who wants her parents to come home so she can get paid her check and leave.
“You know what I’m talking about.” She sharply reminds her, her eyes deadly and washed up with dangerous need for vengeance.
“You say we’re friends, right?” She asks bluntly, “I want you to count how many times you’ve called me within this past year.” She leans forward, patronizing her because she knows the answer isn’t going to win Mia’s case.
“Go on,” She motions towards her, “Please. Tell me how many times you’ve called me. How many times you’ve wished me a happy holiday, or even checked up on me just to say what’s up.” Mia’s stunned with silence, even if it doesn’t visibly show on her face.
“Come on, dude. Go ahead. Enlighten me. ”
“Why are you acting like this?” She shortly cuts her off with stone cold eyes, her tone unclear and her head unsteady.
“I’m not acting like anything, Mia.” She shakes her head in the wake of her rebuttal.
“I’m just making you understand that if you wanna pull the ‘friends don’t do this to each other’ card, I feel it’s fair you realize it’s a two way street.”
She falls back into the cushioned hardness of the booth, her eye never disconnecting from Mia’s gaze.
“Because whatever you call this?” She wags her finger in between the two of their bodies, “Isn’t a friendship.”
She rolls her eyes, her disconnection from her stubbornness to understand her mistakes growing apparent as the seconds continue ticking by.
“We are friends, Vada.”
“No, we’re not! We’re clearly not! Asher lives in the same place as me on the same street, and yet somehow, you manage to text and call him every day, and every night! I haven’t gotten a single phone call or even facetime since you moved to New York.”
“That’s because he’s my boyfriend, Vada! I’m obviously gonna talk to him as much as I can!” Her evident feelings of potentially scarring hurt rise as Vada continues pursuing her.
“And us??”
Mia pushes out a frustrated sigh, like she’s explained the answer to this question in multiple universes before this one in every theoretical way imaginable, and she’s still not getting it.
“I already told you what we are! We’re friends! We are friends !”
“And we used to be best friends!” She retorts with upset momentum, the inner corners of her eyes stinging with poisonous tears.
“And I don’t know about you anymore,” She exhales delicately, “But the Mia I knew would’ve never missed my birthday last month.”
Her gilded armor of careful defense falters, and it melts into something softer and more real, and something that reminds Vada of a romance she wishes would have died with distance and timing.
And instead of dealing with the harsh reality of it, she climbs out of her end of the booth, and walks towards the double doors to escape the hellhole she got dragged into.
- > -
She sits outside of the well known arcade pressed against the simmering wooden bench that basks in the Summer sunlight, and waits with disappointment for Mia and her boyfriend to finish their date so they can drive her home and she’ll never have to see her former best friend again.
Her hand is propped up against the slim armrest, and the corner of her chin sits in the middle of her palm while she toes her sneaker into the ant infested cement beneath her.
She’s devastated and soberly melancholy, which seemed to be a twinning factor of the whirlwinding effect of Mia’s destruction.
She learned that when she first left.
She’s convinced herself entirely that she’s going to be sitting here in the burdening company of her thoughts for the rest of the evening before Asher walks out of those glass doors with Mia clinging to his arm, and somehow, she feels fine with that.
She believes now that the presence of no one is better than the presence of someone who couldn’t give a shit about you.
So she sits and waits, passerbyers on the sidewalk walking in front of her every so often.
That is until the doors push open and a flood of pop music comes gushing out from the inside of the arcade, and she gives the incomer a slow side glance before she realizes who it is, and her eyes drop back to the ground.
She crawls back into the hermit shell of herself while Mia delicately sits herself down next to her, three to four inches separating the inevitable from making their legs brisk and touch.
There’s uncomfortable silence followed by an unsure sigh, and to Vada, it feels like she’s working up her own personal courage to say the things she wants to say without ruining her chance at an apology.
Or at least, that’s what she hopes she’s here for.
“You were right,” She finally admits, her tone collected with calmness alongside a soft dose of care and love.
“You know, how I’ve been treating you…” She looks down into the empty space in her lap, “It’s inexcusable. And it’s definitely not a friendship.” She licks her lips, her pondering flowing with a sense of ease that it didn’t have before.
“And I’m sorry. I really am. Because we were best friends. And how I started acting once I moved… How I distanced myself…” She shakes her head, “It wasn’t okay.”
“But it wasn’t for nothing.” Vada sits up properly now, her eyes glancing over to her as her intriguing words recapture her attention.
“...I was just, I was so-” She pauses for a tight inhale, “I was so distracted, and-and overwhelmed with the fact that we were separated. The fact that our friendship would be collateral damage to the move you know?” She looks over to Vada, and a rebellious fleet of butterflies invade her stomach with effortless wings that flutter and spin.
“I didn’t handle it well, because I didn’t know how to. My dads were still traveling a lot, and I couldn’t talk to anybody about it. I just- for some reason, I thought if I stopped talking to you, the pain of it all would hurt a lot less.”
She sucks in her teeth, her eyes trained on her skinny jeans.
“I’ve been upset over it for a while. I’ve been upset over it since I left. Which is… why I’ve been acting like such an asshole to you today.” She twists the rings looped through her fingers, and Vada watches and listens.
“I just hated the fact that there was a chance you could start the rest of your life without me. We…” She trails off quietly, “We promised we would always do everything together. And I was the first one to break that promise. So I was just…” She shakes her head in her own drowning disappointment, “I was just really mad at myself for a long time.”
Vada scoots in closer, closing the gap as they begin to sit thigh to thigh. She looks out into the open parking lot in front of them, the cars reversing out and pulling in, and the mindless chatter outside in the passing crowds that she can hear faintly.
In the midst of it all, in the midst of life- she tries to find the right words.
She knows the right words, but she also knows that the ‘right words’ could give away the wrong things at any given moment.
And she wasn’t too fond of losing the only control she had over her feelings.
“Yeah, but,” She shrugs, her eyes squinting in a battle against the sun’s rays, “What can you do about it?”
She shrugs again, looking over to Mia who already seems to be staring at her.
“Yeah you moved and yeah that sucks, but, maybe we don’t have to do everything together.” Her heart races, her half confession ripe and ready.
“Maybe, we don’t have to live beside each other, but we can do everything else together. And it doesn’t always have to be something big, like deciding which college to go to together. Sometimes,” She releases a dead weight off of her shoulders with these words, “Existing is just fine.”
Mia processes her response with the scrunch of her eyebrows, and then her eyes mirror Vada’s squint, and a thick sensitivity hides behind her blue circles.
“Isn’t that like, against the rules of our promise?”
Vada smiles.
“So what?”
The corner of Mia’s lip curves into a smirk, and she’s quietly pleased with the expectancy of her answer.
“I didn’t know you were a rule breaker now.”
Vada scoffs, and waves her off dramatically.
“Of course I’m a rule breaker.”
They laugh together, their first joint action in a long time.
“Hey, if I’m being honest,” Mia cuts through their fit of giggles, “I did miss that.”
Vada’s giggling slows to a teetering stop before she looks at Mia, her smile floundering with a happiness she hasn’t felt in a long time; a happiness that she once revoked.
“Missed what?”
Mia smiles back at her, “Hearing your laugh.”
There’s a moment of something she can’t depict, a moment of something she understands wholeheartedly and wants to immediately forget about it, and she’s sure her thoughts translate onto her face when Mia’s smile grows wider.
“And I missed you too. Every day. Even though that’s… Probably hard to believe.” She ends her sentence with a rightful laugh, which lets the both of them know that Mia’s previous shitty behavior hasn’t gone undetected on her own watch, and she’s definitely going to begin to correct that in the future of her mistakes.
But Vada’s not focusing on what she’s saying anymore.
She’s hooked onto her lips, and the way they move as she talks, and the fact that she’s done everything and anything in her power to lock them onto Asher’s every second they’ve spent here.
She’s thinking about how many dreams she’s developed in her sleep where she’s kissed them over and over again, and how they tasted from a variety of strawberry to vanilla under the varying circumstances.
She’s thinking about how she’ll never not want to kiss them, and that desiring hunger has only grown in a place where it should’ve died.
“So, let’s start over. This morning, we were friends. Now, we’re best friends.” Even when she offers the possibility of a renewed friendship, it feels like a gut punch to her instinct when she realizes what she wants, and what she’ll never have.
And she realizes where it leaves her.
She can’t be just ‘best friends’ with Mia Reed anymore.
She tried for the past four years of her life, and it left her in many blackholes than a friendship should.
She held herself back from confessing the painstakingly beautiful truth in fear of what may be the outcome, yet something inside of her right now is pushing her in every direction she doesn’t want to be heading in.
The love she has for her devours her one last time, shoving her into doing something she’d never believe had someone told her she would be doing it a year ago.
And she kisses her.
She leans forward, surprising herself, and connects their lips in a snug fit that feels like a glove.
Vada’s eyes flutter close, the warmth of her mouth takes over, and tingling sensations prick holes into her lips while her uncontrollable confession finally slips from the grasps of her daunting hands that had been run raw and red from holding on to it so tightly for so long.
They fit together with incredible perfection, and it’s a feeling Vada swears she’ll never be able to retell with words.
The darkness behind her eyelids enhance the softness of the moment, and it isn’t until Mia suddenly jerks away that the connection’s severed forever.
Mia stares back at her with flushed lips and hesitant confusion, wondering where her monologue misled her to believe they had something other than a friendship.
“Why did you do that?” She says softly and carefully, the tightrope she’s walking on straining with every step she makes.
Vada stammers with the sentences inside her mouth, not able to get it out past her lips in a way that explains why she just willingly ruined everything.
“I-” She tries, realizing that nothing’s ever going to suffice her explanation except for a formal apology.
“I-I didn’t,” She feels droplets of heated anxiety splatter onto the back of her neck, “I didn’t mean to do that. I mean, I’ve been wanting to do that, but- shit,” She curses under her breath as she digs herself a deeper hole.
“I’ve been wanting to do that, but I didn’t mean to do that. I… I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have even said any of that.” She whispers with doused shame, her head hanging low and depressingly.
Mia’s eyebrows pinch, like she’s taking in the given information, but stands clearly opposed to it.
“Well… Yeah, it’s okay. I just…” She tilts her head apologetically, “Well- you know, I have a boyfriend.”
The truth is deafening.
But hearing it come out of the mouth of the girl she had been trying to avoid it from, is soul crushing.
“Right.”
She manages to squeak out, readjusting her position so she’s facing the parking lot once again with her hands on the tip of her knees.
“Right.” She repeats, this time leaving a different impact on the conversation with the tone of her words.
“Right, um… I should go.” She stands to her feet, Mia’s voice already protesting behind her before she can venture out through the weaving of cars.
“No, stay,” She tries to convince her with the grappling grab of her wrist, and as much as Vada hates to admit it, her touch still lights a certain fire to her skin in the most awestruck way.
“I don’t think I should.”
“No, you should.” Mia tugs her back gently, which spins her head back around to see the soft nature of determination in her eyes that had gone unseen until now.
“You should stay because I love you, and you just should.”
Vada’s heart reaches out from the vast emptiness pouring into her chest, and she links with Mia’s reassurance in an attaching way she shouldn’t.
“You love me.” She reiterates under her breath, a surge of insecurity cracking through her chest like a freshly broken egg.
“I do.” Mia quietly admits, her thumb pressing into the pulse point in the center of Vada’s wrist.
Vada’s eyes wander across the other half of the street beside her, and her throat pulls into a close when Mia’s skin meshes into hers like it’s the only feeling she’s ever known.
Like it’s the only feeling she ever wants to know.
“Just not like that, right?”
She says it to remind herself, but she also says it to remind Mia that she can’t give her what she wants, and she’ll never be able to; which gives all the more reason to let go of her wrist now, instead of putting it off till later.
Mia’s head tilts to the side again like it did before she rejected her nicely, and her hold on her wrist becomes limp under the pressure of answering.
“Vada…” She finally whispers with delicate sympathy, and the brunette takes this opportunity to tear away from her and walk into the parking lot and through the raging cars to take the city bus and get the hell out of here, and away from this failed day.
“Vada!” Mia calls after her, only to get up from her sitting position and to follow her into the dark.
Vada just keeps walking.
“Vada, I love you,” She says again, a hint of desperation cowering with dangling cobwebs of fear in her voice.
“And it may not be- like that ,” Mia catches her breath as she keeps up her pace to match the speed she’s walking at, and Vada catches the tears in her eyes from falling any further.
“But I do love you . Hey,” She finds a way to grip onto her wrist again, and she pulls her back from escaping, their bodies unnecessarily close.
“Vada, I love you.”
“Yeah, I kinda heard you the first time.” She snaps back, the only way to prevent her shallow teardrops from collecting at the bottom of her chin.
“Then why won’t you stay?” She sounds exasperated and at her last resort, like the past front she’s put up for her has all been a tired act, and she just wants to let her guard fall back down again so she can have her best friend back.
“Why won’t I stay?” She scoffs in a mocking tone, a bubbling laugh following afterwards.
“Because I’m in love with you, and you’re in love with Asher. It’s as simple as that.” She tries to leave again, until Mia’s palm collides with the softness of her hand and pulls her back into her body, their heat sliding against each other.
She’s breathing heavily as her chest heaves, and the desperate look in her eye feels like a begging plea for one last chance.
“If I kiss you,” She continues breathing with a rapid heartbeat, “Will you stay?”
Vada flinches, the severity of her words feeling like a bandaid getting ripped off of blistered skin.
“If I kiss you,” She repeats, this time with more vigor, “And if I kiss you whenever you want, wherever you want, will you stay?”
And it’s then that she understands her words are groveling last attempts to savor and mend a forever broken friendship, not of romantic sincerity.
And that kills her.
“Vada,” Her eyes are shaky with her own tears when she inhales her words, “Please. I don’t wanna lose you again.”
She shakes her head, her hair curtaining her eyes and protecting her from what she loves the most.
“You can kiss me all you want,” She chokes it out with an intense pain she never thought she’d ever achieve in this lifetime, “But it still wouldn’t make me stay.”
She rips apart from her as their final act, and sheds her old skin like a growing snake as she leaves her behind.
“So let’s just,” She can’t look her in the eyes, so she looks anywhere but.
“Let’s just go back to pretending we’re friends.”
The thought alone strangles her, but saying the physical sentence destroys her.
“It worked for us for a year, right?” She sucks in her bottom lip to stop the jittery quivering, and to save herself any further embarrassment.
“So let’s just do that again.”
Mia refuses, her head shaking while two teardrops race down her face on both sides of her cheeks.
“No, no. No, we’re not doing that.” She sounds like she’s speaking to herself, like she’s trying to convince herself of a reality that has yet to exist in this multiverse.
“I can’t. I won’t .”
She swipes her fingers across the left side of her cheek, killing the tear that took revenge on her and slipped past her hold and down her skin.
“I’ve gone enough days in my life pretending I don’t want you. I’m done pretending.” Her voice is cracked with unstable fissures, and the white in her eyes flush with a soft redness that only the tears are to blame.
“I want you, and I don’t care how many times I have to say it.” She points an accusatory finger into her chest, jabbing the middle of her t-shirt.
“I want you , and I’ll keep saying it until you stay.”
By now, there’s a crackling crowd of close chatter that births from the corners of the parking lot, and the mall continues to grow in capacity as it reaches its rush hour.
Vada tunes into the white noise of it all, and wishes she could lose herself in it instead of face the actuality of this conversation.
“You want me in a different way than I want you.” She whispers softly, her lips parting and touching while she speaks.
“That’s why I can’t stay.”
She looks up to her, planning on turning around before she jumps the gun and tries to coax her into changing her mind with words she’ll never find herself truthfully saying.
“What if I do love you like that?” She’s desperate and deniably grieving, a combination deathly to those it encounters.
Her lips are wobbly and touched with tears, and she’s reached a peaking point of trying that leads her nowhere but a brick wall.
“What if,” She starts, her heart heavy and unsure, “What if I do love you like that, and I just don’t know it yet?”
At this moment, she wonders which person is the least convinced in this situation.
Vada, or Mia herself.
“What if I want you to stay because I love you like that?”
Vada’s lips remain shut, her brown pouring into Mia’s blue while they stare and watch, their mutual hesitancy and contrasting feelings combatting together like two balls of devious energy.
The pushing and pulling attempts make it harder for her to leave.
“You want me in a different way than I want you.” She reminds her, grounding herself and pulling her away from the ledge in a way she hasn’t had to do to other people before.
“That’s why I can’t stay.”
She whispers it soulfully, her spirit tugging her away from the crime scene when she glances down at the ground, her watering eyeline a sign of her processing her decisions.
And then she turns her back to her, pausing to breathe, waiting to see if she has any fight left in her.
And when she realizes she doesn’t, she puts one foot forward, then the next, and keeps walking without looking back.