It wasn’t supposed to happen. Or maybe it always was.
I’d known Liv for years — my best friend’s cousin, the one who always showed up at family parties with a new tattoo and a bottle of cheap red wine. She was the “cool” girl, the one I used to watch from the kitchen doorway while pretending I wasn’t watching at all.
So when my best friend invited her to stay over during our summer house rental, I tried to act normal. One guest room. One squeaky twin bed. One suitcase full of her black tank tops and ripped jeans. She said she’d crash on the couch. She didn’t.
The first night, we stayed up too late. Drank too much. Everyone else had passed out by the fire pit but we were still in the kitchen, giggling over cheap beer and old stories. She told me about the girl she’d hooked up with at a concert once, like it was nothing, like it was normal. I pretended my heart wasn’t hammering against my ribs when she said it.
At some point I asked if she’d ever wanted to kiss me. I swear I didn’t plan to say it — it just fell out, sloppy and tipsy and half-brave. She didn’t laugh. She just looked at me, head tilted, smirk twitching at the corner of her mouth like she’d been waiting for me to grow the courage for years.
“Yeah,” she said. “Have you?”
I didn’t answer. I just leaned forward and kissed her before I could chicken out.
It wasn’t soft. It wasn’t careful. She kissed me like she’d been keeping it inside too long, hands cupping my jaw, tongue slipping past my lips before I even remembered how to breathe. My legs bumped the counter. She pulled me closer until my hips pressed against hers and I felt her grin against my mouth when I gasped.
The guest room door barely clicked shut behind us. She pushed me back onto the twin bed that creaked loud enough to wake the dead. I should’ve cared if someone heard us. I didn’t. Her hand slid under my shirt — warm, callused, rough in the best way — palming my breast while her mouth moved down my neck.
I wanted to touch her back. Her skin was soft, her waist lean under my hands. When she tugged my shorts down, I forgot how to be shy. I spread my legs for her without thinking. She just laughed — low and wicked — and kissed her way down my stomach like she had nowhere else to be but right there between my thighs.
When her mouth finally found me, I had to bury my face in the pillow to keep from moaning too loud. Her tongue was slow at first, teasing circles that made my hips jerk off the bed. She looked up at me once, hair messy, lips wet, eyes glittering like she owned me now. Maybe she did.
When I came, I bit my knuckles to stay quiet. She didn’t stop until my thighs were shaking and my breath came in ragged gasps. When she crawled back up, her lips brushed mine again — soft this time, tasting like me.
She didn’t say anything. Neither did I. We just lay there tangled up on that tiny bed, skin sticky, heartbeat still thumping in my ears like the bass from that concert she’d told me about.
I don’t know when we fell asleep. In the morning, the door was still cracked open. I could hear someone making coffee in the kitchen, my best friend laughing at something on her phone, no clue what had happened a few feet away while she slept.
Liv stretched, kissed my shoulder, and whispered, “Next time, we’re not using the guest room.”
And just like that, I knew there’d be a next time. Maybe tonight. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe every night until summer ended and we had to pretend we were just friends again.
If we even wanted to pretend.
