You and Sarah always had this thing.

You never talked about it not really. But it was there. In the way you’d sleep tangled together when she stayed over. In the way she’d look at your lips when you laughed too hard. In the way her pinky would brush yours and stay there, just enough to mean something.

You joked about kissing all the time. “If no one kisses me by senior year, I’m making you do it.” “As if you’re not dying to kiss me already.” “Shut up, you love me.”

You’d laugh. She’d laugh. And then you’d both go quiet for a second too long.

There was no deal. No written promise. But there was a kind of understanding. Unspoken. Untouchable. Yours.

So when you saw her with him mouth on his, fingers in his hair something inside you didn’t just break.

Now you’re sitting next to her, watching her legs swing from the porch ledge like she’s still your best friend. Like she didn’t ruin something fragile just hours ago. Her voice is light, like nothing’s changed.

But everything has.

And you say it not because you planned to, but because you can’t carry it anymore:

“I saved my first kiss for you.”

She freezes.

“And you gave yours to him.”

The silence that follows is dense. Unbreathable.

She looks at you slowly, blinking like she didn’t hear you right but you know she did. Her throat tightens. She opens her mouth and closes it again.

“I didn’t know we were… waiting,” she says, voice small.

You almost laugh. “We weren’t? Then what were we doing?”

She doesn’t answer. Because she knows what you were doing. You were circling each other. Testing boundaries you both wanted to cross but were too afraid to. You were building something real in the space between friendship and something else something that was never labeled, but was always there.

And she kissed him.

Not because he meant more.

But because he was easier.