Never Kiss your Best friend

"This is wrong, this is wrong!" I muttered to myself, pacing the length of the club's corridor while music blasted around me, but nothing felt happy; everything was suddenly weighing me down. 

I touched my lips again, but all my happiness had evaporated, realization had dawned on me, a sharp twist of thoughts had made me realize that I could never win his love, never would my best friend love me. 

Why did that idiot have to take up the dare; why was he so impulsive? Why had he not thought that him just walking up to me, requesting me for a kiss, and then leaning in and kissing would affect me! Idiot! Jerk face! I want to murder him. Tears welled up in my eyes as I looked back at the door, where people were probably laughing at my expense.

Was it so easy for them to dare a straight man to kiss a gay man; without thinking of the consequences, and why did Rudra do that? After whatever had happened with Virat, why would he do that? 

I drove back home, with my thoughts going back to the best kiss I had ever, the kiss I shared with my first crush, with my best friend, and as I just realized, with the man I genuinely was falling in love with!

I avoided Rudra as much I could for the whole week after the reunion party. It was easy because I am an HR and he is a publisher, so unless it's the weekend, we don’t meet, but with Rishi joining my office as an intern, it was a tad bit awkward.

Rudra had not told Rishi of the kiss, of course, so it was kind of weird for Rishi when I chose not to stay in the same room as him; I knew it, but I could not meet Rishi. He reminded me of Rudra, and with me slowly sinking into depression, that was the last thing I needed. I could not understand why the kiss was affecting me so much apart from realizing my feelings for Rudra; the kiss had not done anything earth-shattering for me, but then, that’s emotions, they are effing messed up.

“May I come in?” Rishi's huge brown eyes peeked in my cabin and I nodded.

“Bro, I hope I am seeing you this weekend for FIFA night, you missed it last weekend, Bhai was damn upset, and you wouldn’t receive his call, so he almost had a panic attack scaring me and Ananya, but then Ananya pushed me out of the room and spoke to him, but then yelled at him for six minutes straight and then calmed down and after a long time left the room,”

I stared at him in confusion, trying to process the information and figure out what to prioritize more, Rudra missing me, having a panic attack, Ananya(the calmest girl to walk the Earth’s surface) yelling or form an excuse to skip the FIFA night.

“I…cannot make it, actually, sorry, I have a date!” I hit myself mentally. Everyone knew that it had two years since I had gone out with someone, fearing rejection. But there it was, a date, of all the excuses in the universe.

Rishi bought it, had it been Rudra, he would have known I was lying.

“Cool,” He sank into the chair as if it was his cabin, but he was family, and I was always soft on him in my cabin.

“How is he? I hope he is not like Virat,” He made a disgusted face, reminding me of my ex, who had broken up with me and married a girl, even though he was into men, to ward off his family. He had suggested that we could continue our relationship, post the marriage. But I had refused; I could not lie to anyone, not to the poor girl, and definitely not myself. I had gotten crazy drunk and had yelled out the whole truth to my family and Rishi’s family and everyone knew about it, so they were all very protective of me.

He looked at me expectantly, waiting for an answer and I sighed.

“I don’t know exactly, it’s, umm, it’s a blind date,” My own eyes shot up at the nonsense I had just said. Fanfiction writers would have a field day with the stuff that was happening with me for the last few days.

“Oh, cool,” Rishi’s eyes lit up. 

“And?”

Why is Rishi such a gossipmonger? I should tell him to stay away from Tisha, his girlfriend is influencing him.

“And what,” I faked a blush, “We are meeting at our pub this Saturday, he’d be wearing a black turtleneck,”

“Who wears turtleneck in Mumbai,” He pulled off another disgusted face. I simply faked a smile, wanting to jump off a cliff.

“Anyway, good for you, bro,” He smiled and left.

So, to summarize, my best friend, whom I had a crush some seventeen years ago, kisses me because he is dared to do so by my school friends, making me realize my feelings for him, so I avoid him and his brother makes me churn out a blind date lie. Fanfiction writers, write a book on this and cast Arjun Kapoor in the movie based on it, or maybe Aparshakti Khuranna because he looks like me.

Saturday came more quickly than I expected. I had passed the whole lying in the bed, watching The Witcher for the six hundred and eighth time now, but Mom, being that amazing woman that she is, had organized a jagrata at my house, so I was forced to leave the house.

Having no place to be, I decided to go to the pub and have a few beers before crashing into the car.

I walked into the pub and my eyebrows shot up in my hairline. Rudra was there. "Run," my guts yelled at me and I turned to leave when Rudra called me. I turned to look at him and he was wearing a turtleneck black T-shirt!

“Hey man!” He yelled over the music. I sighed and walked up to him. Was the entrance this close to the bar? The distance fell too short.

“I wanted to say sorry for the kiss,” He said before even greeting properly. I felt my heart break into pieces.

“No worries,” I faked a smile.

“No, I was wrong to kiss you like that, the kiss was,”

“The worst mistake?” I completed the sentence for him, not wanting him to break my heart anymore. Rudra looked at me in confusion for a few seconds and shook his head.

“What? No! It was the best thing ever,”

I felt the floor slip beneath my feet and threw myself on the stool, not wanting to fall.

“Rudra, it’s not funny,” I muttered, tears brimming in my eyes. But I didn’t care. This was a cruel joke and I wouldn’t have any of it, anymore.

Rudra ran his hand in his hair and walked out, signing me to do so when he neared the door. “Don’t go,” I heard my own head whisper. 

“What if he is there outside, laughing at you?” The voice continued, but I followed him. We both stared at each other for a few seconds and then looked everywhere but at each other.

“Ok, so remember I had kissed you and you walked out? I felt as if it was incomplete, I wished you kissed me back,” I hadn’t, because my whole body had just frozen then. I opened my mouth, but words failed me. Rudra didn’t seem to care about the absence of a reply. He had a knack for not letting people around him speak when he wanted to confess something or when he was nervous.

“You began avoiding me and you not talking to me hurt really bad. Rishi told me you are avoiding him too and I realized that you were really upset, but I thought you won’t ditch the FIFA night, at least not for Ananya, because you both love annoying me. So, when you didn’t turn up, I told the whole thing to Ananya, who yelled at me like crazy, but then calmed down,”

“Why were you so affected?" I asked, surprised to hear myself speak.

“Ananya made me realize that I have never been like this about anyone since Maya,” Remembering his super-hot ex-girlfriend, with whom he had broken up on good terms, hurt me again.

“She suggested that I should take a sexual orientation test, and I found out I was pansexual*,” 

“The online tests aren’t reliable,”

“But it made sense,” Rudra dismissed my doubt.

“I realized that what I felt for Maya, what I feel for you, it started making sense then,”

“Rudra, you don’t have to,” I whispered, because believing this didn’t make sense. 

“Rajeev, don’t you get it, you idiot!” He yelled, “I love you man,” He whispered, stepping closer.

I felt my heartbeat inside my rib cage, wanting to jump outm and my brain felt like it was freezing. Before I knew it, our lips met, and I kissed him. I KISSED HIM! It was so amazing that I could write books on it. 

We broke the kiss, and both started laughing, feeling silly about ourselves.

“Should we play FIFA? Tisha is joining us, too.”

“Oh, God! No, I hate her!” I whined as he laughed and threw his arm around my neck, his height towering over me, making me feel at home.

~~~~~~~~~

Pansexual person- person who is romantically/sexually attracted to another person irrespective of their gender/sex.

Pansexual people differ from bisexuals as they are attracted to all genders and not multiple genders.

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