Three Miles to the Electric Kiss

The problem with having a crush on your best friend is that eventually, you have to bear witness to your own cowardice.

"You coming, or what?" Maya yelled from the sidewalk, already stretching her calves like she hadn't just spent three hours at the diner}"reorganizing" her fries instead of actually eating them.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm coming." I grabbed my phone. "Just had to—"{"respond to a text" | "finish a text" | "send something"}

"Save it." She grinned. "Three miles. Same bet as always."

The bet: loser buys bubble tea. The stakes: my dignity, because Maya had been varsity track since freshman year and I only started running because I thought it might make me less invisible. Spoiler: it didn't.

We took off at a light jog, Maya's ponytail swinging like it had its own rhythm. We'd been friends since seventh period English sophomore year, when she'd caught me doodling in my notebook instead of analyzing Gatsby's green light.

"So," she said, keeping pace easily, "you gonna tell me what's actually up with you lately, or am I supposed to guess?"{"_"}

"What do you mean?"{

"You've been weird since Jake's party. And don't say you haven't, because I noticed. I always notice."

My stomach did that thing where it forgets how to stomach. Jake's party. Where I'd almost told her. Where I'd stood there while some random guy from North talked to her for forty minutes straight and she'd laughed at his terrible jokes and I'd borne witness to that too, like a champ.

"I'm fine," I said, which was the most teenage thing I'd ever said.

"You're the worst liar," she said, but she let it drop.

We were approaching the old tree line when the sky opened up—not rain, not yet, but that pressure you feel before a storm, like the atmosphere's holding its breath. Then lightning cracked, a white-hot line stitching the sky in half, closer than I'd ever seen it.

"Whoa," Maya breathed, slowing down. "Did you see that?"{

"Yeah," I said, but I was looking at her. The way the afterglow caught in her eyes. The fact that she'd stopped running completely.

"We should probably head back," she said, but she didn't move.

"Probably."

"Lena?"{

"Yeah?"{

"At Jake's party, you looked like you wanted to tell me something."

My heart was running faster than my legs ever had. "Yeah."{"_"}

"What was it?"{

Another flash of lightning, and this time I saw it—saw her watching me, actually waiting. Not just Maya being Maya, but something else. Something that looked like courage.

"I was gonna say," I said, my voice barely above the whisper that thunder wouldn't even bother noticing, "that I think I'm in love with you."

The storm chose that exact moment to break.

We ran the whole way back in the downpour, neither of us saying anything else, but Maya's hand found mine in the dark and didn't let go, and somewhere between the tree line and her driveway, the three miles didn't seem so long anymore.