‘Whit, the more I think about it, the more it makes sense,’ she continues. ‘I’ve seen the way he looks at you. He spends all his time with you. He must fancy you if he asked you out initially.’
‘You’re imagining it,’ I tell her with a nervous laugh. She is, right?
‘Am I?’ she says. ‘Who helped you when you were sick after that disastrous bottomless brunch?’
‘Lots of people,’ I say.
‘But who carried you home and put you to bed?’ she adds. ‘Not me, you were too pukey. And who turned up with chocolate and booze when you got your first rejection letter? Who reads every single version of your book without complaining?’
‘You should be doing that,’ I can’t help but interject.
‘I mean, who does it for love, not money?’ she replies. ‘Who always sits next to you at dinner parties? Who drives you to visit your parents when you don’t want to get the train?’
‘Andy,’ I say simply.
‘In fact, who made a pity pact with you?’ she adds. ‘If you’re not married by forty, you’ll marry each other or whatever. Who does that, Whit?’
‘We were drunk. It was a joke,’ I pointed out.
‘Jokes are just facts that don’t want to get their feelings hurt,’ she says.
I laugh but then a silence settles between us.
‘Okay,’ she says gently after a few seconds. ‘Let’s flip the script. How do you feel about him?’
‘He’s my best friend,’ I say immediately. ‘He’s the person I call when anything happens. Good, bad, funny. He’s my emergency contact. He’s my…’
‘He’s your person,’ JJ says.
‘Well, yeah, but…’
‘No buts,’ she says, her voice softening. ‘That sounds a lot like love.’
‘Friend love,’ I practically plead. ‘Platonic love. Not?—’
‘Would you be jealous if he started seeing someone?’ she cuts in. ‘Like really, properly, committed kind of dating. She’s always at the flat, she’s taking all his time, you don’t get to see him or speak to him as much.’
I open my mouth to say no but nothing comes out.
I mean, I have missed him while he’s been away, and that’s him being busy with work. When I think about him having a girl at the flat, the two of us having less time to hang out, to play games – yikes. I can feel an uncomfortable knot in my stomach.
‘Oh,’ I say quietly.
JJ smiles.
‘Yeah – oh,’ she replies. ‘As in “oh my God, you’re in love with your best friend”.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I ask.
‘Why didn’t you know?’ she claps back.
‘I suppose I did, deep down, but we’ve forged such a wonderful friendship, and I never wanted to ruin it,’ I confess. ‘I never looked at it the other way – what if such a good friendship is ruining my relationships, because no one is as perfect for me as Andy is?’
I grip the stem of my wine glass a little too tightly.
‘It’s just that we’ve been friends for so long,’ I continue. ‘It felt too late all of a sudden. Like I could lose my friend if I took a chance.’
‘So you protected the friendship,’ she says.
