Page 2 of Best Friend Burden

It’s true, his voice sounded different, almost stilted, as he adopted the accent of the region he was currently living in.

“Maybe it wouldn’t be the worst thing,” he said, his voice now just a bit deeper and having that flavor of East Texas. If he’d been singing like that, I would have recognized him instantly.

The voice immediately brought back a recollection of the one night the two of us made out in a game of Truth or Dare at a party. His strong hands on my cheek as our lips touched and he gave me just a little bit of tongue, showing restraint. My God, I don’t think I’d ever been kissed like that before or since. I was sure he'd long forgotten that, though.

Because other than that, we were just friends. Good friends, though. As close as friends could get. But I had such a hard crush on him that it would keep me up at night, wishing and hoping on every star in the sky for something that never actually came to be.

Although for one moment, in that silly little game, I got just a taste of what I was missing.

“What are you doing now?” I asked.

“Session musician for Cleopatra Records. I'm a bassist by trade, but bass isn't as much fun to play for strangers at the park.”

He’d ended up a professional musician, just like he said he would. I couldn’t believe it. Or maybe I could. He and his band were pretty badass.

“You're a rock star, then? Drugs, sex, and rock and roll?”

That he laughed at, though it felt forced. “No,” he said. There was a wistfulness in his voice that sounded like I may have struck a nerve. “Just trying to make ends meet and be a responsible adult. No partying for Kiefer anymore.”

Kiefer opened up his guitar case and put the instrument back inside.

“You need to head back?”

“Yeah,” he said, closing the case and picking it up, “but...”

He stepped closer to me, close enough that we were almost touching. I wondered if he was going to give me another perfect kiss like the one I remembered, along with a confession that he felt just as strongly about me as I did about him. Or, if not a kiss, he could at least ask me for my number so we could get dinner or something.

Neither happened.

“...do you know you have ketchup on your shirt?”

“What?!”

I looked down, and he was right. In squirting ketchup on the shitty fries, I must have gotten it all over me, and to boot, the smear looked a little like a small dick with balls, again just my luck.

“No, no, no!” I said, trying to rub it out, which only made it stain deeper into the white cloth, and it now looked like I was diddling a fiddle. “Do you have any water or...?”

He shook his head.

“I have a meeting I need to get to in about 30 minutes...” I told him. “It’s very important.”

I could try and make it back to the truck where my clothes were, but I had to park it pretty far away. If I ran, I could probably make it, but I'd come back to the meeting covered in sweat.

"Look,” he said, cool as a cucumber, “there's a vintage clothes shop right around the corner. I bet we can find you something there.”

There wasn’t time to come up with a different plan.

“Let's go,” I said.

* * *

Luck must have been on my side because we found a perfect white blouse almost instantly when entering the store. All I needed was a little bit more luck so it would fit well enough for me not to look like a complete clown in front of the investors. Because deep down, I feared they'd see right through me. I'd be a little girl in my mom's high heels, much too big for my feet, pretending to be a grown up.

Confidence, I reminded myself.You can wear whatever you want, but without confidence, it's worthless.

“Do you have a changing room?” I asked a teenager who worked there.

He gestured towards the back of the store without saying anything, then kept walking, not taking the two seconds to bother making sure I heard him and understood.

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