Scenario: He zips up her dress
I wasn’t the girl you normally found in a dress. Even more rare, that you would find a girl like me in a dress like this. Deep, almost midnight blue intricately detailed lace laid on top of a nude-colored body contoured slip that hugged each and every curve on my body, of which there were plenty. The lace dangled beyond the edge of the nude slip, coming to delicate points just above my knees.
I’d had to go out shopping with Hailey just to find something even remotely fancy enough to accompany him, but he was my best friend. I couldn’t say no. My hair was loosely curled, swept to the side in a low french knot with tendrils falling out from the sides, framing my face. As I looked in the mirror, even I had to admit it - I looked good. Good enough? That was the question that always haunted me.
The door creaked open then and he bounded in with an air of ease I didn’t know if I would ever experience. The suit he wore fit him like a glove, sending a deliciously terrifying spark through my heart. That’s the thing about being in love with your best friend. It’s simultaneously never enough and always too much, but the faint promise of finding that just right spot in the middle kept you hanging on. At least, it kept me hanging on. Through 14 years, a revolving door of girlfriends and one broken engagement (his, not mine), it kept me hanging on.
I spun around quickly, realizing my dress, as tight-fitting as it was, wasn’t yet zipped up. His face contorted into something I didn’t recognize. He looked almost in awe, but I shook it off.
“Well, I can’t very well embarrass you in front of all your co-workers now, can I?”
“Oh, please. You ready to go?” his voice was softer than normal, though it still carried that a-little-too-confident timbre that I could hear in my sleep.
“Actually, um,” I paused.
Over a decade of friendship that spanned the years just before puberty to now meant that when it came to him, we held essentially no secrets. I’d seen him in his boxers. Hell, I’d see him without his boxers on. He’d seen me in my underwear countless times. Somehow, I didn’t think the internal reactions we both had in those situations were even on the same planet.
And yet, I was hesitant to ask him to zip up my dress. Something about those six inches of exposed skin above my strapless bra closure and between my shoulder blades, leading up to the nape of my neck where the clasp for my small chain of pearls was secured, seemed infinitely more intimate.
He must have caught me glancing in the mirror at the undone back of my dress because I didn’t have to ask.
“Turn around,” he said, and I acquiesced.
He stepped closer, I swear I could feel his body heat next to me. He reached up, I watched his movements in the mirror. As his hand brushed away stray hairs from the back of my neck, I worked hard to hold in a delighted shudder.
He reached for the zipper and I felt a slight tremor in his hand as he pulled it up, much more slowly than was necessary. The whole thing felt terribly, wonderfully sensual. Internally, I begged him to kiss me on that place where my shoulder met my neck, though I knew the idea of his lips on my skin was a fantasy farther off than any bedtime story you would tell a child.
Instead, he patted my shoulders lightly and locked eyes with me in the mirror, his signature playful grin spreading wide across his face. I tried to push the lust I felt in my eyes away as quickly as I could, matching his smile with one of my own.
“Let’s go watch you win some awards, huh?” I said, restoring my internal equilibrium to the best friend center I clung to to survive moments like this.
“We don’t know if I’m going to win,” he said with faux humility. I rolled my eyes at him pointedly. He laughed. “Yeah, yeah, ok. Let’s go watch me win some awards!” his enthusiasm peaked and he pumped his fists in the air.
He kissed me on the cheek and placed a hand on the small of my back as we exited my apartment. Another thrill shook through me and I felt myself leaning into it. Clearly my resistance was weakening. I blamed it on the suit.
God let there be an open bar and let his co-workers be hot, I thought to myself as we hopped in the car. Distraction, you’ll find, is key. Chapter one of the “I’m in love with my best friend” handbook explicitly says: “Be distracted, pretty much always.”
