“Friends.” Her laugh is a heavy exhale, a shake of her head. The sound makes me nervous, and she looks at the floor instead of at me. “I’m starting to hate that word.” “Did I do something to make you think you’re not my friend?” “No.” Slowly, hesitantly, she looks back at me. Her eyes are wide with a scorch of heat behind the brown. “When you call us friends, it makes the things I’m thinking about you—the things I’m feeling for you—seem wrong.”
