Beneath the Surface

The first time Ben kissed me, I was holding a bag of frozen peas against my eye.

"Hold still," he said, and then he did it, casual as anything, like he was reaching across me for the remote. His mouth was warm and tasted like the cheap beer we'd been drinking on his couch. I dropped the peas.

That was three weeks ago. We haven't talked about it since, which is fine. It's fine. We're fine.

Here's the thing about Ben: he's been my best friend since sophomore year of college, when we both got stuck in the same terrible dorm and bonded over our shared hatred of the communal bathroom. He's seen me cry over guys who weren't worth it, held my hair back when I drank too much at his birthday party two years ago, and once drove four hours to pick me up when my car broke down outside of Bakersfield. He's the person I call first when something good happens and the person I call first when something bad happens. He knows my coffee order, my irrational fear of escalators, and the exact tone of voice I use when I'm pretending to be okay but I'm not.

So yeah. We're fine.

Except now I can't stop thinking about his mouth.

I'm at work when it happens, mid-afternoon on a Tuesday, staring at a spreadsheet that's supposed to tell me something about quarterly projections. The numbers blur. I'm thinking about the way his jaw felt under my palm, the scratch of stubble against my fingers. The sound he made, low in his throat, when I kissed him back.

"Earth to Maya."

I blink. Priya is standing at my desk, holding a coffee cup and looking at me like I've grown a second head.

"Sorry," I say. "What?"

"I asked if you wanted to grab lunch. You've been staring at that screen for ten minutes."

"Just zoned out." I save the spreadsheet, even though I haven't changed anything. "Lunch sounds good."

We go to the sandwich place around the corner, the one with the sourdough that's actually worth the fifteen-minute wait. Priya talks about her date last weekend, some guy she met on an app who spent the entire dinner talking about his startup. I nod in the right places, laugh when she gets to the part about him trying to expense the meal.

"So what's going on with you?" she asks, halfway through her turkey club. "You've been weird all week."

"I haven't been weird."

"You've been weird. You forgot to CC me on the Henderson email yesterday. You never forget to CC me."

I take a bite of my sandwich to buy time. Priya and I have worked together for four years. She knows me almost as well as Ben does, which is a problem, because she's also the most perceptive person I've ever met. If anyone's going to figure out that something happened, it's her.

"Just tired," I say. "Didn't sleep great."

"Uh-huh." She doesn't believe me. I can tell by the way she's looking at me, like she's trying to read my mind. "You know you can tell me anything, right?"

"I know."

"Because you've been acting like someone who's hiding something."

"I'm not hiding anything."

She lets it go, but I can feel her watching me for the rest of lunch. I change the subject to her sister's wedding, which is coming up in two months and has been a source of drama for the entire time I've known her. Priya's sister is a bridezilla, and Priya is the maid of honor, and the stories are endless. It's a safe topic. It gets me through the rest of the meal without having to lie again.

Back at my desk, I check my phone. Ben texted me an hour ago: *you around later?*

I stare at the message for longer than I should. We hang out all the time. This is normal. This is what we do. But something about the phrasing feels different, like there's a question underneath the question.

*Yeah,* I type back. *Usual time?*

*Usual time.*

The usual time is seven o'clock, after I've gone home and changed out of my work clothes and pretended to be a functioning adult for a few hours. The usual time is when Ben shows up at my apartment with takeout and we watch whatever show we're currently binge-watching and argue about whether the characters are making good decisions. The usual time is comfortable and familiar and has never once involved his tongue in my mouth.

Until three weeks ago.

I leave work at five, stop at the grocery store for wine because I'm out, and spend twenty minutes trying to decide if buying wine is a signal. It's not. We always drink wine. This is nothing.

He knocks at seven exactly. I open the door and there he is, in his usual uniform of jeans and a t-shirt, holding a bag of Thai food and looking at me like nothing's changed.

"Hey," he says.

"Hey."

He comes in, kicks off his shoes, heads straight for the kitchen like he lives here. He doesn't live here. He has his own apartment, a nice one in Silver Lake with a view of the reservoir and a couch that's way more comfortable than mine. But he's spent so much time in my place over the years that it's become his too. His mug is in my cabinet. His phone charger is plugged into the outlet by my bed. I stopped noticing these things a long time ago.

We eat on the couch, plates balanced on our knees, the TV playing some documentary about deep sea creatures that neither of us is really watching. Ben tells me about his day, some drama with a client who can't make up their mind about a logo. I tell him about Priya's interrogation at lunch.

"She knows something's up," I say.

"She's always known something's up. She's like a bloodhound."

"It's annoying."

"It's useful. If you ever go missing, she'll find you in an hour."

I laugh, and it feels normal. This feels normal. Maybe that's the problem.

After we eat, Ben takes our plates to the kitchen and comes back with two glasses of wine. He hands me one and sits down, closer than he usually does. His knee bumps mine. He doesn't move it.

"So," he says.

"So."

"I've been thinking."

"About?"

He takes a sip of wine, and I watch his throat move, and I hate myself for watching his throat move.

"About the other night," he says.

My heart does something complicated in my chest. "Oh."

"Yeah." He sets his glass down on the coffee table, turns to face me. "I don't want to make it weird."

"It's not weird."

"It's a little weird."

"Okay, it's a little weird."

He smiles, that crooked smile that's gotten me through a hundred bad days. "I just wanted to say, if you want to pretend it didn't happen, I'm fine with that. But if you don't want to pretend, I'm also fine with that."

The documentary is showing something with tentacles. I can't look away from Ben's face.

"What does 'not pretend' mean?" I ask.

He shrugs. "I don't know. Whatever we want it to mean."

The wine is making my head warm. Or maybe it's him. I've never been good at telling the difference.

"I don't want to pretend," I say.

He nods, slow, like he's thinking about it. Then he leans in and kisses me again, and this time I don't drop anything. This time I kiss him back.