Page 65 of Accidentally Falling For My Best Friend
“What? No! The opposite actually. Why would you think that?” he rushes to reassure me, and the monitor stops alarming. It’s embarrassing to have such obvious proof of the effect he has on me.
“I just thought that maybe you met someone while I was gone…” I trail off.
“No. We were apart for less than forty-eight hours. Jesus, how am I fucking this up already?” His eyes are wide, pleading with me for something I don’t yet understand as he runs a hand through his hair, messing up the usually styled strands. He only manages to look hotter the less put-together he is, though, and I have to force myself to ignore my lust for him and focus on his words as he continues.
“Parker, I came here because I never should have been away from you in the first place. We should both be in Chicago right now, enjoying Christmas with our familiestogetherlike we always have. And you sure as shit shouldn’t be in the fucking hospital! I don’t know exactly what happened to land you here, but I should have been there to prevent this from happening. I broke my promise. I wasn’t there when you needed me, and I’ll never forgivemyself?—”
“Hey, calm down. It’s okay,” I hurry to interrupt his rant before he can continue any further with that completely wrong line of thinking. “I’m fine, and you didn’t do anything wrong. There’s nothing you could have done.” I don’t want him to feel guilty in any way. I think we’re both struggling not to assume the worst right now, so I try to reassure him and explain what actually happened. “It’s no one’s fault that I’m here but my own. There were a lot of things that went wrong; forgotten supplies, my continuous glucose monitor got ripped off, and I guess my pump’s insertion site was in scar tissue so I wasn’t absorbing any of the insulin it was trying to give me. But I ignored how bad it all really was until it was too late. You couldn’t have fixed any of that.”
“Well, if we were together, I would have packed extra supplies like I always do and you would have been okay,” he insists.
My jaw drops in shock. “You do what?”
He looks away, biting his lip, clearly hesitant to expand on his admission, but after a moment of me staring at him expectantly, he goes on. “I’ve never said anything because I don’t want you to think it’s a big deal, or like I don’t trust that you can take care of yourself, but whenever we travel, I bring an extra glucose monitor and a backup of all of your supplies.”
“Always?” I ask, completely surprised by the quiet support I’ve never known he’s given me.What else has he done for me without expecting any acknowledgment or thanks?
“Um, yeah. It’s not a big deal. I asked your mom for extra supplies, the first trip we took together back in high school when you came with me to visit Beck at college. I’ve been to doctor’s appointments with you before, and Dr.Martin loves me. She wrote a note for me to carry explaining why I would have insulin with someone else’s name on it just in case, but no one’s ever questioned it before. They always have to go through your stuffanyway at the airport, you’ve never noticed them going through mine?”
“No, I have not.”Apparently, I haven’t noticed a lot of things.
“Well, I’ll be there next time. I won’t let this happen again,” he says seriously, taking my hand in his and holding my gaze.
“Oakley, it isn’t your job to take care of me,” I try to point out.
He rolls his damn eyes again, and I’m not sure what I’ve done to frustrate him this time. Even though a part of me wants to scold him, I can’t get past how much I hate the idea of being a burden.
His expression grows more serious before he finally softly asks, “What if I want it to be?”
I think I’m lost again, not following what he’s really trying to say. “What do you mean?”
“What if I want to take care of you?”
“Oak, you already do. You’re the best friend anyone could ask for. I had no idea you were that prepared to help me if I needed it. I just don’t want you to feel obligated?—”
“Fuck, Parker, just let me talk,” he interrupts. “The whole way here, I was preparing a big declaration, and I feel like I’m just making it worse. I don’t feel obligated to help you because you’re my best friend. Iwantto help you because I want to be so much more than that!”
He’s squeezing my hand now, like he’s afraid I’ll pull back or try to break the connection with him, but I’m gripping him back just as tightly.
Could he really be saying what I think he is?
His shoulders rise as he inhales deeply, seeming to hold his breath for a moment as he continues to stare at me, searching my face for something. Whatever it is, he must find it, because he nods sharply before finally letting it out. He continues, his voice more confident than before. “I can’t keep pretending like I’m not in love with you, Parker. It’s alright if you don’tfeel the same way, and I really hope that I haven’t just ruined everything by telling you, but you’re my person, you always have been. I’ve never had to filter myself around you before, and I can’t do it any longer.”
I feel like someone’s replaced my IV fluids with helium, like if Oakley let go, I might just float away. I’m overwhelmed by the different emotions racing through me: happiness, disbelief, fear. I can’t believe he’s really telling me this, that Oakley could actually feel the same way about me that I do him. I’ve been so convinced that this thing between us was purely physical for him, that he still saw me as his best friend, and that I was just a convenient experiment—someone he was comfortable exploring his sexuality with.
He’s always been so excited about the idea of getting married one day, of having a wife and family, and maybe I have some ingrained homophobia or biphobia or something else that I was ignoring, but I had just assumed that meant he would still want that exact situation in the future. That he would never consider anything more with me than what we’ve already been doing.
“It’s okay if you don’t feel the same way,” he murmurs, sounding defeated. “But I needed to tell you how I really feel. I can’t keep pretending you aren’t everything.”
He looks so sad as he tries to pull away, but I don’t let him. I use my grip on his hand to tug him even closer, and at the horrible angle, his upper half practically falls onto me. He steadies himself with his other hand on my chest, a questioning gaze in his eyes as he finally looks at me. I want to kiss the wrinkle of worry that’s in-between his eyes, smooth it out so that he never looks so unsure again.
“Of course I’m in love with you, Oak. How could I not be?” I can’t help my smirk at the way his entire body seems to light up at my confession.
Before I can say anything else, he’s leaning in and his soft lipsare back on mine. He moves one hand to cup my jaw, the other to tangle in my hair, controlling the angle of the kiss as he deepens it. There’s something so freeing about kissing him like this, knowing that it isn’t leading to sex, that we both just want the connection. I feel so content just kissing him, finally being together in this casually intimate way that started it all so many months ago, but that we’ve only allowed ourselves in the private moments of our hookups more recently.
He nips at my bottom lip when he finally pulls back for air, only to move down my jaw, covering it with kisses and continuing down my neck like he wants to claim every inch of my skin with his mouth.
As much as I would love for him to keep going south, I’m in a hospital bed, and I’m shocked we’ve gone this long without a nurse to come in here to check on us with how erratic my heart rate has probably been over the last few minutes.
