What Happens To The Friend With Benefits Who Doesn’t Fall

By

I wish I had kissed you more.  I always wish that the morning after.  I wish I’d kissed your collarbones for longer because it made you sigh, and I wish I traced my finger around the edges of the new tattoo on your back.  You showed it to me during one of our “friends” moments, so I could not reach out and touch the blurred blue ink.  Touching is for our “benefits” moments.  An unspoken, unbreakable rule.

I would sleep with you without the obligatory haze of midnight and alcohol.  I’m not sure you know that.  Maybe you would be too honorable to do so while not in a relationship with me.  Maybe you would be too emotional to do so when I don’t care as much for you as you do for me.  I wish I could try.  You’re the sort of lover I picture having sober sex with care, a deliberate and studious look on your face.

It rained yesterday, and I smiled and wished you were here.  And I hate rain.  It’s crazy—I went so far as to wish it had rained during your visit despite the fact that it would’ve cut that mountain hike in half.  All because I’d like to kiss someone in the rain.  I’d like to kiss you standing up, sometime.  Just a peck, a little careless surprise.  When you first get off the train.  At a busy intersection while we wait for the light to change.  A brush of lips against the stubble on your cheek.

I can’t do these things.  I know you’d like these things, but that, my friend, is what they call “leading someone on”.  I’m afraid I’d do it to feel beautiful and charming and tangle your heart further in mine.  I’d love the thrill of it all, the romance of the moment, but none of the memories I’d make would involve your face.  You’re already whispering sweet everythings in my ear, telling me that I am beautiful.  And I haven’t even complimented you.  Can’t compliment you.  It might be presumptuous to assume that if I do, you’ll fall too far for me.  But maybe you will.  And you are, first and foremost, my friend.  A good enough friend that I know the solution to this is the complete opposite of all those wishes.

Even the most delicious things can end up poisoning a person.  So quick, before you taste the bitterness—