Claire is talking to me. I love our casual, comfortable friendship; we aren't especially close but we like and trust each other immensely. On paper it doesn't make much sense.
Claire is talking to me. We're sitting facing each other with her desk between us, and for once it's not hot. The ceiling fan is going whoop-whoop-whoop and gusts of air lazily circulate. My pinafore is not biting in at my waist. The sun is shining outside and the light that filters into the classroom lights up Claire's pretty face. I fancy that it even lights up her voice. If there is such a thing.
I am paying attention to Claire, but at the same time my eyes are drawn away from her face. His hand. Long artist's fingers connecting into a masculine, sun-brown palm. Long, artist's fingers that are gently, affectionately, tracing the parting in her hair. Back and forth, back and forth. It doesn't mess up her neatly parted hair, and all the while, Claire is talking to me.
I break the trance I can feel myself entering. They must never suspect. And so I forcefully direct my eyes back at Claire. I hope she doesn't notice that my voice is cracking slightly. I hope they don't notice that my heart is cracking slightly. But only slightly, and only at the edges. Because I know that this isn't Adult (Ever After) Love. Just a silly little crush.
My eyes can't help it. They flick downwards--but it's safe, because I keep my features arranged so it looks like a casual conversation's "look away, look back again" flit.
They aren't joined at the hip. They are sitting on separate chairs, and he's angled himself towards her--only their knees are touching lightly. They aren't using honeybunch voices, or making cow-eyes at each other. She's still one person, and she's talking to me. He is listening in, and unobstrusively radiating affection.
I marvel at the perfection of this moment. A beautiful snapshot in time, immortalised, as my mind freezeframes it and files it away. Funny how we do that, even for insignificant things.
There is a bitterish, panicky, sad taste in my mouth: I am confronted with the fact that yes, you can fancy yourself in love with a friend's boyfriend, and yet feel no jealousy...or even envy. An oxymoron, but true in this instant. And this anomaly, perhaps due to the lack of bitterness in the heart, brings forth the aforementioned physical sensorial bitterness in the mouth. Accompanied by the cracking of a voice mid-conversation, and the cracking (edges only) of a heart.
To love but not covet. There is such a thing--but it doesn't make much sense on paper.
