Never Just Friends

by Lily Craig

  "I've wanted this for so long," Madelyn said quietly. "Yes."

  "Sounds good," Georgie answered. Her voice was hushed, and the tone was filled with unabashed lust. But Madelyn thought she also heard emotion in it, real, passionate feeling that demonstrated she wasn't entirely wrong about confessing her love to Georgie. Maybe there was something worth exploring between them.

  If that could be the case...it felt too good to be true.

  Georgie's hands on Madelyn also felt good, but they were categorically, obviously there. No need for introspection to understand how they caused explosions of want inside her. Madelyn wanted Georgie more than she'd ever wanted anyone before.

  She did what her body screamed at her to do, she rid herself of every remaining stitch of clothing. The air wasn't as cold as she'd worried it would be. Not now, with lust crackling between them as vividly as the fire. Not when Georgie shed her clothes, too, and wrapped her arm around Madelyn, her free hand roving down to touch her.

  Georgie was tentative at first, though clearly skilled. It wasn't for lack of sexual experience that she seemed to hesitate. Madelyn hoped, perhaps illogically, that this meant as much to Georgie as it did to her. That could explain the way Georgie's fingers danced on her skin like they were afraid to leave any sign of their presence.

  "Harder is ok," whispered Madelyn. "Pressure works for me."

  They made eye contact while Georgie listened to Madelyn's instruction, and then followed suit, gauging her reaction until she found the perfect stroke. Then Madelyn's attention faltered, and she found her eyelids fluttering closed against her wishes. It felt too good; she had no choice.

  She grasped Georgie, kissing her when she could rally the strength to focus on something other than her own pleasure, but Madelyn's body had begun to shiver and buck with delight at what was occurring. Before long, Georgie let fingers slide into Madelyn's eager, waiting opening.

  A gasp.

  "Too soon?" asked Georgie. The care she showed Madelyn made new sparks tingle down Madelyn’s spine. This was no ordinary hook-up. Something was shifting between them, sands blowing from one dune to another that reformed into a completely different landscape.

  Madelyn shook her head and smiled. "Just soon enough."

  She relaxed into the feeling and allowed herself to make as much noise as she wanted. They were, after all, stranded. Alone. Completely muffled by huge drifts of snow, insulation as beautiful and picturesque as it could be deadly. Georgie’s tongue joined her hands in concert and she focused entirely on Madelyn.

  Without another thought surfacing, Madelyn sank into a deep, thigh-shaking satisfaction that rolled through her like a thunderstorm. Georgie guided her, watched her, held her. It was an orgasm like no other.

  Madelyn was surprised she'd come so quickly, given she normally had to coax pleasure out of herself with a carefully arranged set of prerequisites. Georgie must have connected with her on a completely different level.

  Of course she had.

  It was another sign, thought Madelyn. Of how they belonged.

  With this possibility in her mind, Madelyn rolled over to switch places with Georgie and brought blankets with her.

  Georgie laughed. "You need a cocoon?"

  "I'm cold."

  "Maybe should have thought of that before you got naked."

  "Mmm, no," said Madelyn, nuzzling Georgie's neck. She traced lines along the hipbones rising from Georgie's torso. "Because then I don't know if I would have. And that was amazing."

  Rather than answer with words, Georgie pulled Madelyn down into another kiss. They tumbled together, lips ravenous for each other, thighs intertwined and fingers grasping with such a need Madelyn surprised herself. She'd never believed her animal nature could feel so apparent.

  Wrestling, it felt like. The best kind. One of them would push the other to the brink, hold back for a second, and then dive in again to hear shouts of pleasure ring out in the vaulted log ceiling. Time passed like a floating cloud.

  Madelyn was lost in Georgie's firm stomach, deliberating over the structure of her ab muscles, when she should have heard it. Another kiss deepened her denial to what was happening. Fever, heat, and utter disregard for anything but sex, Georgie, and the present kept Madelyn unaware.

  Her senses were filled with Georgie, with the absolute, lightheaded bliss of being able to enjoy her body and her attention this way. So Madelyn didn't notice the footsteps on the front deck, muffled as they were by the heaps of snow. Voices should have been audible, too, but a moan was a curious thing that dampened everything else in the air.

  Then she heard something. They talked about it briefly, interrupting their bliss with heart-pounding uncertainty. Too late.

  The door was opening—the front door—and people spilled inside, friends. Faces she recognized. “Hi!” she said, before her brain could process what was happening.

  Georgie clutched the blankets around her body, suddenly shy like her childhood self. Madelyn's mind struggled to keep up with what was happening, still crying out angrily that pleasures had been taken from it.

  "Oh my god!" yelled Hannah. She pointed at the two naked figures with obvious glee. "I fucking knew it!"

  "You know, we rushed up here to make sure you two weren't stranded without food or help or whatever, but it doesn't look like you were struggling at all," said Nadia. She set down a box of supplies and opened the door to speak to some other person. "No rush, they're just fucking."

  "Seriously? Don't pretend you're not happy about this," said Hannah. "Is this just cause I bet you $20 that one time they'd hook up?"

  Georgie scrambled into her shirt and pants, the disheveled hair at the back of her head all the more endearing when clothed. "You had a bet going?"

  "Yeah, that's not cool," Madelyn said. She clung to the blanket hiding her naked body from their friends. Embarrassment radiated off Georgie, but though Madelyn wished they hadn't been caught in the act, she was still glad it had happened.

  "Did everyone except me think this was an inevitability?" asked Georgie. The edge to her voice wiped the smile off Hannah's face.

  "It was a long time ago. Like a bet you make over beers one night, not serious," said Nadia. As if her matter-of-fact explanation could quell all of Georgie's fears.

  But Madelyn saw that Georgie's muscles were tensing even more. She edged closer to Georgie, reaching out a hand to touch her arm, and Georgie shrugged her off violently.

  "I don't mean the bet, I mean the whole thing. If you all thought this for so long why didn't you tell me?"

  Another tromping set of footsteps drew closer and the door to the cabin opened. It was a man, who dusted the snow from his jeans and looked with surprise at the scenario unfolding.

  "Cold in here, jeez. Everything ok, folks?” he asked Hannah.

  "Fine, thanks,” hissed Hannah. “Thank you again for the ride up here.”

  "Who’s he?" Madelyn said, still reeling from the sudden change of everything she'd pictured happening that night. One minute she'd been sure that she and Georgie would spend the evening wrapped in each other's arms, talking about feelings between sessions of lovemaking. The next, their friends had burst in and thrown everything off.

  "We hitched a ride with the guy driving the snowplow up the road here. Left the car in town because the mountain roads are still so bad," Nadia answered. “but we’re good now. Thanks.” The man backed out of the cabin, his face a hilarious picture of having wandered into drama he didn’t ask for.

  "Is no one going to answer my question?" Georgie looked accusingly at the faces surrounding her, moving from one to the next with a furrowed brow and searching eyes.

  "I'm sure they didn't mean it that way, Georgie," said Madelyn. "More just, you know, that we've been close for forever. Sometimes people ship best friends."

  "You can't 'ship' real people!" Georgie said, her exasperated sigh causing an immediate pang to rise up in Madelyn's throat. Their bubble of intimacy had been resoundingly pierced.

/>   "Sure you can," piped up Nadia. "People do it all the time with celebrities."

  "Well, I'd appreciate not being treated like someone who asked to be in the public eye. Keep your shit to yourselves. I'm going back to Banff with the plow driver—don't let him leave before I've gotten my things."

  Georgie started grabbing belongings desperately, flinging them into a makeshift pile in front of her boots while the rest of them looked on in surprise. Her mood had shifted so suddenly that no one else could keep up.

  "Woah, Georgie, we didn't mean anything serious by it," Hannah said. "I'm sorry."

  "Yeah, we just got here. Don't let us ruin things for you," added Nadia.

  Madelyn walked closer, her bare feet tingling on the cold floor. "Georgie," she said, her voice soft so that only Georgie could hear her. "You're obviously hurt. Can you stay so we can talk about this? Please?"

  Judging by the way Georgie fumed, Madelyn wasn't confident her words had any effect. The plea was earnest, verging on desperate, but she couldn't lose Georgie's attention just as she was gaining it. Everything else about the cabin rental had gone awry; she couldn't handle it if the most important part of her plans completely backfired.

  “Fine. I’m going to bed," muttered Georgie. She strode upstairs and sequestered herself in the bedroom she'd claimed when she first arrived at the cabin. When the door shut, loudly, a sputtering noise hummed through the building for a brief second. And then the power flickered on.

  As the lights began to shine again, the stove clock blinked its fluorescent numbers in an even pace, and other appliances began to chirp and beep their way back into life. Madelyn stood, smiling despite herself, wondering at the bizarre and sometimes agonizing turns to this Banff trip.

  She knew trying to talk to Georgie now would only infuriate her. Though Madelyn craved to fix all Georgie’s problems, space was likely what her friend needed. With Nadia and Hannah here, they could return to the normal pace of things. So she stalled her urges and tried to calm down.

  "Anyone else need a drink?" she asked Nadia and Hannah. When they laughed and nodded, Madelyn excused herself for a moment to get dressed, and then returned to crack open a bottle of Prosecco.

  13

  After a few hours of catching up with Nadia and Hannah, discussing the power outage, her hurt ankle, and some, though not all, of the events with Georgie, Madelyn returned upstairs to her bedroom drowsily. Sleep called to her so loudly that she flung herself into the bed without taking off her clothes.

  She was unconscious and resting for a few hours, her body claiming its much-needed downtime to mend her ankle. Perhaps it also needed to recuperate from expending so much energy during sex. But in the middle of the night, Madelyn's eyes fluttered open. The darkness was still complete, the cabin forest-nestled and wintry.

  She'd had a dream, though, that roused her from sleep. Upon waking, Madelyn didn't remember what had happened. She only knew that she had to talk to Georgie. Ideally, now. Even she could tell, though, that waking her in the dark, trapping her into a conversation yet again, wasn't a good idea.

  Madelyn stayed in her bedroom, composing thoughts into sentences, and then paragraphs, that she could speak out loud when morning came. If she'd bungled the first 'love' discussion, she'd be damn sure she didn't mess up the second. Especially not with Georgie's feelings so tender from the others arriving, amused by the situation they'd found them in.

  When the darkness shifted to a purple-toned steely first light, Madelyn stretched, exploring the range of motion she could manage with her ankle. It wasn’t as sore as yesterday now. From her bed, she heard the day beginning, with subtle sounds creeping into being.

  A few seemed to come from inside the cabin. It took Madelyn longer than it should have to identify that the noises were that of someone sneaking out of a room, quietly down the stairs, and out the door. When she heard the latch click in the front, she leapt out of bed and hobbled herself into the hall.

  "Georgie?" she called out quietly.

  She could see a figure outside, surrounded by the early morning darkness of winter. Though vision alone couldn't confirm that it was Georgie, her heart knew that it was. She was trying to escape. Just as Georgie had run to Edmonton, away from Calgary, away from her, she was now using her favorite method to avoid deeper conversation.

  Or maybe it was just to avoid the humiliation of having their friends know they were working on something emotional and non-platonic.

  Whatever the reason, the figure waded down the snowy front steps while Madelyn staggered along the indoor staircase. She would have moved faster, could probably have caught her, if she hadn't had a hurt ankle. Pain keened at her now, but she pushed it down.

  She hadn't come all this way, gone through all the tumult of the last few days, to lose her shot. Madelyn needed Georgie to know that she wanted to be with her, whatever their friends thought. Underneath the harrowing anxiety of watching her best friend, her love, run away from difficult interactions, Madelyn suspected that Georgie felt the same way.

  If not the same, at least similar.

  Hopefully similar.

  Madelyn shook her head. To be honest with herself, she had no idea how Georgie felt. For all she knew, their tryst in the cabin yesterday had been the product of boredom and garden variety lust on Georgie's part. She hadn't said anything about love.

  That had all been Madelyn.

  Doubt sapped the last of Madelyn's resolve at the same time as the sound of an engine sputtering to life met Madelyn's ears. Georgie's truck's lights cut into the darkness, suddenly illuminating the trees with grotesque shadows, the cast of light as cold as the winter's air. Madelyn reached the main floor and watched, exhausted, as Georgie took out her emergency gear shovel and began to excavate the truck enough to move it.

  For a minute, Madelyn stood watching Georgie work. Her shovel scooped piles of heavy snow at a pace that revealed Georgie's desperation to leave this place. It made Madelyn wonder whether she should intervene at all. Perhaps it would be best to finally stop meddling.

  But that's never been me, thought Madelyn.

  And with stakes sky-high, she wasn't about to become someone new. Not now. Not with Georgie on the line.

  Madelyn shrugged on a coat, leaving the front unzipped, and stepped into a pair of boots that didn't belong to her. Ownership didn't matter before 9:00 a.m. when love was at risk. Especially not in the dead of winter.

  "Georgie!" said Madelyn. She had to raise her voice to speak over the drone of Georgie's engine, the hefting shovelfuls of snow adding to the noise periodically.

  Georgie looked up, her cheeks and nose flushed with exertion, while her truck kept rumbling. She'd dug out a good trench along the driver's side now, and the departure of the plow driver’s vehicle last night had left tracks behind her where she could escape.

  Madelyn couldn't let that happen.

  "What are you doing awake right now?" asked Georgie.

  "I could say the same to you, G."

  "Gotta dig this out. I can't stay."

  "Why not?" Madelyn said, edging closer. If she moved too quickly, her ankle might buckle. She wanted to appear strong. Composed. Something rational that Georgie could respect. So she shuffled, her heart rate elevated from the work of making her way through snow.

  There were only a few more steps to go before Madelyn would be on level ground. Only a few feet after that to get to Georgie, who braced herself with shoulders hunched to scoop another shovel's worth of snow.

  "Georgie, I said why not?"

  Georgie pushed the shovel into the drift near her truck's back tire aggressively, the action venting a thick burst of emotion.

  "Why not? Madelyn, come on. I can't do this. You know me, I'm not a public, touchy-feely kind of person. It's bad enough to get snowed in on our vacation, but bad takes on another level when I've gotta think about spending another few days with those ones gossiping about me."

  Georgie nodded towards the cabin as she spoke, her eyebrows furrow
ed so that you wouldn't have guessed she was talking about friends. Good friends, ones she'd known for years.

  "They're not the ones I need you to stay for. Please, I need to talk to you. We need to talk. Work through things," said Madelyn.

  "What's there to say?"

  Madelyn gripped the coat around herself tighter, wishing she'd brought mittens outside. The raw pink chill of her fingers began to numb far deeper than the skin.

  "You know that I care about you. And what happened yesterday, it wasn't how it should have gone, maybe, but I'm still glad it happened. Even if Nadia and Hannah interrupted us, I can't tell you how much it means to—"

  "Maybe? Of course it's not how it should have gone. You think every little girl grows up dreaming about how her first time with someone will be on the floor? Will be witnessed by people laughing about it?"

  "Your first time? I thought you'd had lots of sex before... you told me about it when it happened." Madelyn chewed on her lip. A pit of abject fear had begun growing in her belly. There was so much she hadn't seen, hadn't known. It might be too late now.

  "Jesus, Mads! I'm not a virgin. I just mean, the first time with someone new. It's supposed to be special. Supposed to, I don't know, fuck it. I'm going home to get over myself. We can talk later." Georgie finished shoveling the snow out from around the truck and threw the shovel back into the rear cab seats.

  Madelyn was running out of time.

  "You're angry. I get that, Georgie. Really, I do. It wasn't cool of them to laugh and act like it's all so predictable. If I'd known years ago that this was how I felt, it would have saved so much time and heartbreak."

  "Too bad you're late to the big gay party, right?"

  "No!"

  "I can't do this, Mads. I'm sorry," Georgie said. She hopped into the front seat of the truck in a swift motion. Before she could close the door, before all hope of reconciliation was lost, Madelyn managed to shout:

  "I'm not late to the party, I'm just late to you. Please—"