By the time late morning rolled around, the grin had turned into a frown.

My mind kept going back to the kiss. It had felt nice. Good, even. One of the best things I’d experienced in quite a while. I’d really enjoyed it.

There was just a slight hiccup: why had Nora, exactly, kissed me? I mean, we were friends, true, but that wasn’t really a friendly kiss. Far from it. (Do friends kiss each other on the lips, even?)

But then, if it hadn’t been a friendly kiss, did… Did it mean Nora liked me? Like, as in like liked me?

My first instinct was to dismiss the thought right away. After all, who would like someone like me? Someone who could barely hold it together at the best of times? Well, some people liked me at least: all my friends from the small queer group we’d accidentally gotten together. But they liked me as a friend. Not even that: they liked Lily as a friend – and I once again got a pang of guilt about the fact that I was just pretending.

No one would ever love me. That was a conclusion I’d come to much, much earlier in my life, when I was in high school, after years and years of trying and failing: every time I’d tried to get close to someone in a romantic way, every time I made advances, I’d invariably been rejected. And the few times I hadn’t been, nothing really came of it and they broke up with me after one or two dates – at most, when they didn’t break up with me even before the first date.

So that was the conclusion I’d circled back to.

But then, Nora’s actions – Nora kissing me – didn’t make any sense. On the one hand: that had been the kind of kiss you give to someone you really like. To someone you love, even. But on the other hand: it was clearly, plainly ridiculous. No one loved me, so Nora clearly didn’t love me.

But why had she kissed me, then? Why had she kissed me like that? What–

I took a deep breath, and shook my head to clear it: I was getting nowhere, my thoughts were getting wound up in a tight circle, which was starting to resemble a spiral with each passing second. There was clearly no way I could reason myself out of this.

I needed a second opinion. And maybe a third and a fourth.

I sat up in bed and grabbed my phone, which I’d plugged in to charge and left on my night stand: with a few deft taps I’d opened up the chat app, and added three people to a group chat – Anna, Vicky, and Elanor.

Hey, y’all, I typed out. Sorry to bother you, and sorry for the short notice, but can we meet for lunch? At the usual café. I have something to ask you.

The first one to respond was Elanor. Sure, what’s up? they replied. Is there a problem?

I don’t think so, I wrote. I just need to talk.

Sure, no prob, they wrote back. I’ll tell Anna, we’re together right now.

I’m good with it too, Vicky answered. Oh, Nora isn’t in the chat. Hold on, I’ll add her now.

No! I wrote, and immediately sent the message; then I took a deep breath, and, more calmly, continued, No, I don’t wanna talk to her for the time being. Just us four for now.

...Okay, Vicky replied. Alright, is noon fine?

Works for me, I wrote.

It’s okay with me and Anna too, Elanor replied.

See y’all in a few, I said, and closed up the chat; looking at my watch, I had just enough time to brush my teeth and wash my face – and change my clothes, of course: they were still the same I’d been wearing the previous day, and they were getting stuffy and uncomfortable – before heading out.

I was confident my friends would help me make sense of this all.

-----

“Hi,” I said, approaching my friends at a jog. “Sorry I’m late.” I’d gotten distracted picking out my clothes: since the shopping trip, a few weeks earlier, my wardrobe had significantly expanded, and sometimes I had trouble deciding what to wear. At the moment I was sporting a somewhat androgynous ensemble made up of a long-sleeved shirt and a pair of black pants; covered by my coat, of course – it was still late January.

“No worries,” Anna replied. “It’s only ten minutes, after all. So, what did you want to talk to us about?”

I smiled. “What do you say we talk about it in front of some food?” I asked. “I, for one, am famished.”

“Surprising, given how much you ate this morning,” Vicky said.

“I have a fast metabolism,” I said with a smirk. “I don’t gain weight, no matter how much I eat.”

“We’ll see about that,” she replied cryptically, but before I could ask what she meant she’d pushed the door to the café open and gone in, followed by Anna and Elanor. I too followed them, and we sat down at a table which was somewhat isolated – no one within earshot who could overhear our conversation. The waiter came over and took our order, and then it was time to talk.

“Okay,” Elanor said. “So?”

“So,” I said, and took a deep breath. “Okay. So, you all know what happened yesterday. How I got drunk, and slept on the couch at Vicky’s place.”

There was nodding all around.

“Then this morning, I woke up, ate breakfast–”

“Nora cooked for her,” Vicky interjected. “The Nora Hangover Special, she called it.”

“She cooked for all of us,” I said; Vicky just looked at me and tilted her head to the side, but didn’t say anything, so I continued, “And after that, Nora and I left to go home. She walked me back to my dorm, and…”

I paused. I gulped a few times. The silence stretched.

The waiter came back with our food, set the plates down on the table, and left again.

The silence stretched further.

“…And?” Anna queried. “What happened then?”

I gulped again, and took a deep breath.

“And Nora kissed me.”

There was a brief moment of silence as my friends digested the words I’d just said.

“Hey, that’s really–” Elanor began, but they stopped talking when Vicky held up her hand sharply: she had a frown on her face.

She took a deep breath.

“And?” she asked. “You wouldn’t have called us here if there wasn’t a problem, so what’s the problem?”

I gulped yet again.

“And… And I don’t know what that meant. What the kiss meant,” I said. “After all… It clearly wasn’t a friendly kiss. I mean, there was tongue and all.”

“Bragging, are we?” Anna said under her breath; Elanor swatted lightly at her.

“But… but if it wasn’t a friendly kiss, what was it, then? I…” I looked down at the table, and started to carefully study the wood grain. “I mean, Nora hadn’t shown any interest in me before, right? And besides, she can’t be in love with me. That’s just impossible. No one can be in love with me, because… Well, who would like me? I mean, you like me obviously, but as a friend. You’re not in love with me. That’s just impossible. So if Nora isn’t in love with me, what did that kiss mean? Because…”

I stopped talking as I realised I was rambling. There was dead silence, punctuated only by the far-off noise of conversation taking place at other tables, the hissing of the coffee machines, and crockery being moved around.

I looked up at my friends.

Elanor was looking at me wide-eyed, in clear disbelief, and Vicky sported a similar expression, only her mouth had fallen open. Anna, on the other hand, had put her face in her hands, and was mumbling softly to herself.

“Uh… What?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”

“Ooooooooooh God,” Anna said. “Oh. My. God. Lily! You’re just…”

“I’m just what?”

“You’re so dumb!” Anna shouted, face still in her hands. “I mean, holy shit, girl. Seriously.”

Elanor started shaking their head. “Yeah, seriously. Like. Wow.”

I frowned. “I don’t get it,” I said. “What’s wrong?”

Vicky seemed to shake herself; she closed her mouth, and looked at me for a moment, piercing me with a stare.

Then she sighed.

“Nope. No, absolutely not,” she said, and she started rooting in her purse. “Absolutely not. I’m not dealing with this. I’m nipping this in the butt right now.”

She pulled out her cellphone from her purse, unlocked it, and tapped the screen a few times, then held it to her ear. It took only a few moments for the other side to answer.

“Yes, hi, it’s Vicky. Yeah, hi,” Vicky said into the phone. “Sorry to bother you. Okay, you see, I’m at our usual café, I’m having lunch with the others. Yeah, Elanor, Anna, and Lily. Yeah. You see, Lily told us what happened this morning. Yep, she did. Okay, the point is, Lily is being a dumb baby and her brain is bullying her, so can you maybe come over and talk to her? I feel you really should. Okay.” She moved the phone away, and tapped at the screen to end the call. “Nora will be here ASAP.”

I blinked. “That was Nora?”

“Yep,” Vicky replied.

I hesitated for a moment, and then started to get up from my chair. “I’m sorry, I have to–”

“Oh no you don’t, missy,” Anna said, reaching clear across the table and grabbing my wrist to prevent me from escaping. “You ain’t going nowhere.”

I looked at her, then at Vicky and Elanor. “I know it’s scary,” Vicky said, “but this is when you get your big girl pants on, and talk to Nora.”

Elanor nodded in agreement. “Sit down, eat your food, and prepare yourself,” they said. “This is a conversation you need to have.”

I hesitated again, but in the end I sat back down; after a few moments, when she was sure I wasn’t going to bolt, Anna let go of my wrist.

We ate our meals in silence, and I chewed on each mouthful as I chewed on my thoughts. What was I even going to say to Nora? Were we going to talk about the kiss? Yes, of course we were going to talk about the kiss, don’t be dumb, Lily. And then, what else were we going to talk about? The reason she’d kissed me? Then why had she kissed me?

Was I just overthinking all of this?

I kept eating, staring down at the plate, waiting for Nora to arrive. Which didn’t take long: less than fifteen minutes later there was a loud noise, and looking up I saw her burst through the café’s door, red in the face, hair unkempt: it was obvious she’d run all the way there from wherever she’d been when Vicky had called her.

Nora frantically looked around, until her gaze landed on us: she seemed to hesitate, and then she straightened up. She ran her hand over her hair, putting it back into place (a little bit, at least), and inhaled sharply – so sharply I swear I could hear her breathe in from all the way across the café. Suddenly she was the confident Nora I was used to seeing: she strode across the room to our table, and absolutely beamed a smile down at me.

“Lily. Hi,” she said, breathlessly. “Fancy finding you here. What an amazing coincidence.”

Despite my feelings being in a turmoil, I couldn’t help but giggle. “Oh, come on, no need to pretend,” I replied. “I know she,” I jerked a thumb towards Vicky, “called you here.”

Nora nodded. “Figured as much.” Then, after a moment, she continued, “Vicky said you wanted to talk to me?”

“Hmm, not wanted to talk, really. But I think we kinda have to talk.”

“Alright,” Nora said, nodding again; she pulled a chair out from a nearby table and sat down. “Let’s talk.”

“And that, I think, is our cue,” Vicky said, standing up from the table and turning towards Anna and Elanor. “Come on, you two, let’s go.”

The three of them – Anna quite reluctantly, it looked like she really wanted to listen in to what Nora and I would say to each other – left the café, pausing only briefly to pay their share of the bill. Once they’d disappeared out of the door, Nora turned back to me.

“Okay. So, what did you want to talk about?” she asked.

“Well,” I began. I paused for a moment, to gather my thoughts, and then continued, “I wanted to talk to you about… About the kiss.”

Nora nodded. “Okay,” she said again.

“What I wanted to ask is… What did that kiss mean, exactly? Was it a friendly kiss? Because–”

“Lily,” Nora cut me off. “Come on. It wasn’t a friendly kiss. Not at all.” She paused. “I mean, did it feel like a friendly kiss? There was tongue. If that’s a friendly kiss to you, I really wanna know what a passionate kiss looks like in your mind.”

“I…” I said, blushing a bit at the memory. “Okay. Next question, I guess is… What did it mean? If it wasn’t a friendly kiss…?”

Nora smirked. “What do you think? It means I like you, Lily. I like you a lot. I don’t kiss just anyone like that, you should know.”

My blush intensified. “I would hope not. How many girls have you kissed like that anyway?”

“Not that many,” she replied, waving a hand dismissively. “And that’s not the point in any case: the point is, the only girls I kiss like that are girls I can see myself dating.” She took a deep breath and, suddenly nervous, looked me in the eye. “And I wanna date you, Lily. I seriously do.”

I just stared at her, losing myself a bit deep into her eyes. Nora was beautiful, and I…

“So,” she continued. “Do you want to date?” She smiled at me again – there was a bit of unsteadiness behind her smile, but it was still her charming, irresistible smile. “I mean, you know. Go out together, see places, hang out… That kind of stuff.”

Unexpectedly, I found myself smiling. “Weren’t we already doing that in the first place?” I asked.

“Yes, actually,” she replied. “But this would be different.” She leaned forward, grabbed my hands, and whispered conspiratorially: “This would involve more kissing.”

I giggled. “Well, if it means more kissing, I’m in. Absolutely.”

“Good,” Nora said. She leaned forward a bit more, and our lips met.

This kiss was different. It wasn’t anything like the passionate kiss she’d given me that morning: our tongues weren’t involved, it was more chaste but much more passionate. And I enjoyed it a lot.

“So this is it?” I asked, after we’d separated. “We’re officially dating then?”

“Yep,” Nora replied. “We’re together, an item, and all that jazz. But don’t worry, if you’re not comfortable with something, you just tell me. We’ll take it slow. I can wait for as long as you need. I care about you, Lily.”

She reached out with her hand, squeezed my shoulder, and smiled at me; I smiled back.

Well. I’d gotten myself a girlfriend, apparently? And a pretty amazing one, at that.

I still couldn’t tell why she would want to date me.