Falling For My Best Friend

Chapter 5

So this is it. I swallow the sad little lump in my throat that must be my pride.

Pearl insisted that I needed to talk to Peridot, because it's been made abundantly clear that she won't initiate any conversation. So here I am, no note cards, no plan, and only half an idea about how this will turn out.

If I had to place my bets, I would say not well.

Granted confronting Peridot during her least favorite class isn't the best idea, but gym is the only time where I actually get any chance to talk to her at school.

Her disgust towards physical education is one of the only things she's vocal about, but to be honest, I think it's a good thing that it's a required course. Unfortunately, I think Peridot has to disagree. She acts like she's a cyborg and her own sweat shorts out her wires.

It definitely doesn't help that it's the swimming semester.

Every year, we take two semesters of gym- track and field, and swimming. I don't know what it is about Peridot, but she sinks like a stone. And since I'm the swim team captain, the coach has entrusted me to tutor the 'less physically adapted students' as my credit.

On the upside, I don't have to do two classes worth of laps, and on the downside, my grade rests on the improvement of the kids I'm training. And since my spot on the swim team depends on me getting a 2.5 GPA, I have to kick it into high gear before the end of the semester. I feel kind of bad about drilling these poor kids everyday, but I'm already teetering on a weak 2.7, and I can't risk it dropping even more.

Lots of girls claim that the locker rooms are the worst part of gym, but after a year of hanging out nude with your buddies from the swim team, you sort of lose your modesty.

I switch into my bathing suit while looking someone in the eye and explaining the butterfly stroke. They seem a little flustered by my unabashed body, (what can I say? I'm irresistible) but I don't care much. I don't even mind that their gaze flickers down to my chest and lower still as I strip my school clothes.

From the corner of my eye, I see Peridot peer around the bathroom stalls with some other girls who are too self-conscious to show skin around the rest of us.

I'm worried that she's insecure about her body. She constantly hides it behind long jeans and baggy sweatshirts- which is unfortunate because confidence would look good on her. It's not like she's got a horrible physique either. Her hips and chest are full enough to notice, and the small amount of pudge on her stomach is almost cute. Despite, I see her skitter into the stall and lock the door.

When she comes out, she's wearing the required one piece with the optional bathing shorts. I repress a groan. Those things make swimming so much more difficult. Yet she insists on wearing them because she likes to have pockets to shove her hands into, and something to cover her thighs.

The bell tolls, and our batch of students flood out into the pool deck. Our school's swimming pool is a privilege, really. It's a half a football field in length and wider than two buses nose to tail. Maybe it's the fact that we're located right by the beach, but our pool is disproportionately large. Whatever it is, I'm not complaining.

The deck smells like thick chlorine and humidity. A big box fan whirs gently by the lifeguard chair, and we can hear the fat droplets of water as they fall from the ceiling. I take a deep breath and smile. This is home.

There's nothing more familiar to me than the feeling of smooth water rolling over my shoulder blades or the pungent scent of chlorine. Even my youngest memories with my parents were hazy summer days swimming at the city pool until it closed. The water is my place.

I collect my batch of sinkers while the more adept swimmers get their drills from the teacher. We head to the back half of the pool, close to the huge windows, and I shove my kids into the cold water one by one. One whimpers and rubs their drenched shoulders, and others send me dirty looks. Unfortunately, the shallowest part of our pool is also the coldest.

I hover by Peridot. Usually I shove her in just like the rest of them, but I'm too afraid of freaking her out to touch her. Drawing my eyebrows together, I get close behind her and order her to get in. She doesn't protest, easing herself into the water and suppressing a shiver.

Now it's my turn. Because I'm a bit of a show off, I hurl myself into the icy liquid arms first in a perfect dive. We're not supposed to go head first into the shallow end (in fact, we even have those little 'NO DIVING' signs with the cartoon diver getting a concussion on the pool deck), but I have enough control to just skim the top and curve upwards before slamming against the bottom. When I breach the surface, the sinkers glare at me. I shrug. It's not my fault that they're so easy to upstage.

My band of bad swimmers includes two underclassmen, Peridot, and a senior who skipped gym her entire highschool career and is paying for it now.

"Alright!" I yell, gathering their attention. "Let's get going! I want to see you paddle from here to the halfway mark and back!"

Being in a leadership position never really bothered me. I've always been naturally good at keeping control among others. Peridot says I'm naturally charismatic, but in this case, my scowl is stronger than my grin.

The underclassmen smile at each other and propose a race before kicking off and performing the sloppiest excuse of a breast stroke that I've ever seen. I can't complain, though. They're still improving far better than the others, and some days they even have the courtesy to pretend to like gym class.

The senior groans before lazily dunking her head and kicking her legs behind her. I'd like to command her to pick up the pace, but she can't hear me underwater and she knows it. Maybe she isn't a strong swimmer, but when it comes to pissing me off, she can hold her breath for a full minute.

Since our first week of class, she's been open with her contempt for me. She hates how bold I am, and she hates how snugly I fit into my superiority role. But I don't care. As long as she can swim from one side of the pool to the next, I don't give a damn what she thinks about me.

My eyes turn to Peridot, who sighs and kicks off, hardly keeping her nose above the water as she struggles to paddle.

"Come on, come on!" I snap, pursuing her. My strokes are long and lazy, but they're practiced enough to take me to her without strain. I swim in pace with her and correct her as we go.

"Stop swimming vertically. Come on, use your upper arms." I instruct. I have a habit of picking on her because she's my friend, but more so because she's the weakest swimmer here. And if anyone's taking my grade down, it's her.

The two underclassmen pass us going back. They're still racing at an underwhelming speed, but I shoot them some encouragement anyways.

"Nice job! Hey, keep your legs under!"

They tuck their legs beneath the water at my instruction and put on a burst of speed till the end. I don't look to see who wins, but judging by the cheer of victory, I can make an educated guess.

"Come on, Peridot. You're getting upstaged by freshmen." I groan.

"What a tragedy," Peridot snaps back between grunts of effort. I sigh. At least she's talking to me now. The week before she would hardly offer me a grunt of acknowledgement. We're getting somewhere here.

I want to talk to her about the incident, but it's clogged in my throat like the hair at the bottom of the shower drain, and Peridot's shitty disposition certainly isn't helping.

With her permanent scowl and sharp tongue, Peridot is more or less unapproachable. Intimidating, almost. Not physically- more so in the way that a well-versed lawyer's voice echoes about a courtroom. She has a talent of putting people at a power imbalance from impressions. She knows what makes others tick.

Whether she realizes it or not, she has the potential to really hurt people. And because her infinitely complex clockwork is masked by her smart mouth and dismissal of other's feelings, she can keep from getting hurt herself.

And that's why I'm so scared of confronting her.

I lead her back to the edge of the pool. She takes five full minutes to make what should be a thirty second trip, and I can already tell the others are getting impatient with her. I'm not surprised- the daily exasperation with Peridot's poor athletic ability is prominent even along the worst swimmers.

Easing her to the edge, I place my hands on my hips. My students look at me with a bitter expectancy- like they already hate my orders, but know that they're lost without them. I wonder if this is how it feels to be a teacher.

I clear my throat.

"Good job, guys. Now do some laps. Freestyle. I'm gonna help Peridot. Don't stop until I tell you to." I demand.

The senior rolls her eyes. "Seriously?"

"Do you have a problem?" I question, raising my brow.

Arguing is a daily thing between us, because we're both trying to fit into the dominant side of an unspoken dynamic. It's exhausting because tension from the day before always manages to roll over into the next. And I'm already on edge enough today without her trouble.

She glares daggers into my skull, locking her jaw. "No, it's just annoying that you cater to Peridot all the time because she's your girlfriend or whatever."

I clench my fists and glower at her, pressing down on my knuckles under the water and cracking them with my thumb.

"Oh, shut up," I hiss, eyes narrowed. "Look, I don't give a damn about what you do in this class as long as you can keep my grade above a 2.5. Unfortunately she-," I gesture to Peridot with an exaggerated motion. "-is not as up there as you, meaning I need to help her sometimes. And before you accuse me of playing favorites, consider that I already have a girlfriend, and it's not her."

I stress those last words especially, the creases between my brow deepening as I lock our eyes and wait for her to look away. She relents after a few seconds, and I turn back to the others.

"Get going."

The senior growls as she shoves her nose into the water and starts to ease herself around the pool. The two underclassmen shoot me wary glances of silent submission as they follow suit, whispering to amongst each other.

Peridot looks thoroughly humiliated, although I wouldn't know why. Her eyes have a glassy quality, and she focuses on the ripples in the water that lap at her skin. And because I'm sick and tired of being careful around the feelings she never expresses, I only harden my expression as I glare at her.

"Don't be like that," I snap, "let's go."

Peridot doesn't move for a little bit, save for a stiff nod. Eventually, she submerges her chest and begins to wade through the water. I feel just a tad guilty for embarrassing her like that, but I brush it off. She's just being overdramatic over nothing, I tell myself.

Now's my best shot at talking to her, since we're in as about as private of a location as humanely possible in school, and she can't escape me to avoid the confrontation.

Thankfully, the air is too clogged with the sounds of splashing water for others to tune into my conversations. With a deep breath, I follow her, lazily reverting to a front stroke.

"Are you okay? I lashed out," I apologize, correcting her posture and thoughtlessly grabbing her thighs to push them up. She whimpers and goes tense.

"Just fine." Peridot remarks, although her body language tells me the exact opposite. She doesn't even offer me a side-eye, opting to stare straight ahead. Her brows are furrowed, and she paddles hard and strong, as if she hopes to evade me.

"Look, about last week," I begin, trailing off.

"Forget about it. I panicked. I don't know what came over me. Sorry," Peridot hisses.

"That's it?"

"That's it."

Something tells me that there's more going on in Peridot's head than she'd like to admit. I hate how I can never tell what she's thinking. I just want to know what I did wrong so that we can go back to being best friends again.

"I don't want things to be awkward between us," I confess.

"It's not. Can't you see? I'm completely at ease."

Scowling, I swim closer to her and run my hand down her spine, resting it at her hip. I've done this countless times before to correct her movements, but this time she freaks. Peridot shoves me with as much of her strength as possible, nearly drowning herself in a frantic attempt to get away from me.

"Don't touch me!" She snarls.

I frown matter-of-factly and sigh. "See? Something's up."

Peridot shakes her head as if to say no, but once she sees my hands creeping over for another touch, she yelps and relents.

"f**k you," she mumbles, her face glowing. I almost laugh- she looks like she mistook a bottle of Tabasco sauce for ketchup. Yet something about this situation tells me that laughing is probably not going to make things better, so I resist. Peridot shoves her face into the water to clear her blush.

"Look I don't know what I did, but-,"

Peridot interrupts me. "Nothing. You're infallible," she grumbles, venom lacing her words like hash.

"What's wrong?" I sigh, trying to keep my voice low. The senior laps us and purposely kicks water in my face. I wipe it off with a grimace.

"I'm overreacting, obviously," Peridot laughs, wearing the bastardization of a grin on her face. "Ignore me."

I knit my brows and ball my fists as I swim. "Is this about Pearl?" I ask, my voice hardening into a sneer.

"No!" Peridot breaks off into another cutting laugh. "Why would I care about that-,"

"Don't say it!"

"What? w***e? Slut?" Peridot spits, accentuating each slur with a wolfish tug at her lips. "Look, Lapis. I know you're thoroughly whipped by her highness, but if I want to call the princess a b***h, then I will."

"Why do you hate the idea of us together so much?" I struggle to keep my voice low. The last thing I need is to get yelled at by the gym coach for discussing my personal matters when I should be discussing the front stroke.

"She's bad for you." Peridot states simply, like it's a fact she's reading from an outdated science book.

I lock my jaw, digging my fingernails into the palms of my fist. Pearl was right about Peridot being irrational about us. Peridot's never even seen us together! How can she know if Pearl is bad for me?

She doesn't know how Pearl makes me feel. She doesn't know that Pearl comforted me for hours when I was torn up over this stupid fight because I thought I'd done something wrong. She doesn't know how much we've been through.

She doesn't know anything.

"She's not bad for me," I snarl, tensing my muscles, and forcing myself to keep Peridot's slow pace. I want to jet the f**k out of here, but I started this, and I plan on ending it.

I snag her leg, rougher than before and ignore her strained yelp as I adjust it. Peridot rips away, using a hand to rub her thigh and struggling to get back into her position.

Because I'm in a mindset beyond caring about hurting her, I don't hold back when I retort, "She makes me happy, and you're just sad and jealous because she's the best thing that ever happened to me."

"Oh?" Peridot asks with an air of incredulous tension. "Well then. If she's the best damn thing that happened to you, then what the hell am I?"

She turns and tries to swim away from me, yet finds it fruitless as I effortlessly follow behind. Her lower lip trembles slightly enough to miss, but it's made prominent as the rest of her body is stiff as a board.

"You're my-,"

"Best friend, right?" Peridot cuts in, catching focus on the opposite edge of the pool deck. "Because you've made that so abundantly clear."

It's silent for a long time. I feel the compulsion to adjust her posture because it's obvious she's overexerting herself, but she's making my job an increasingly difficult task, so I let her struggle. It's almost satisfying to watch her slap at the water in a vain attempt to keep her nose above the surface.

There's a thought in the back of my mind telling me that she's my best friend, but it diminishes with every passing moment. And since it's the only thing keeping my cool, I try to hang on to it with both hands before it's gone. And it's because of that nagging thought that I find the humor to try and fix this pathetic excuse of a mess even though my body is strung tight with agitation, and my throat is contracting in upon itself.

"Look," I say, anger bubbling on the undertones of my voice. "Pearl makes me happy, okay? What do we have to do to make you see that? What do I have to do to make you accept us?"

God, I feel like I'm coming out to my parents again.

Peridot stops swimming to tread the water next to me. Honestly, I'm too shocked by the fact that she can tread water at all to tell her to keep swimming.

She locks me in with those emotionless gray eyes and purses her lips. Her intensity would typically throw me off, but not now. Not when I'm clenching and unclenching my fists and spitting every word through grit teeth. Not when my breathing is short and shallow like I'm suffocating with my head above the water.

Peridot seems to think for a long time about her answer. I almost get my hopes up thinking that she'll give a damn about how somebody else feels for once and apologize for the shitty way she's been acting.

But she's Peridot. And unfortunately, having the decency to apologize isn't really her thing.

"Break up with her," Peridot hisses finally. "I'll approve of your disgusting relationship when it's broken up and over with."

That's it.

I can feel something in the back of my head snap, the last tendrils of my self control splitting in rage.

I hardly know what I'm doing as my eyes shoot open and I grab Peridot by her arm, dragging her to the poolside. She yells for me to stop and tries to wriggle out of my grip, but my hands hold fast. I hardly hear her choke as a sob catches in her throat. I hardly care as she dunks under the water and emerges again with a desperate gasp.

Red fills my eyes, and I'd be lying if I said I don't feel a rush as I rip her through the water like a child playing rough with a toy.

I slam her against the poolside wall, and I can't tell if I'm hearing the water or my own blood roaring in my ears.

Peridot's eyes are rimmed with red, and her body shakes as she clings to the tiled edge. She coughs up chlorine water on the pool deck.

I don't care. I don't care at all.

"What the f**k is your problem?" I roar, loud enough for it to echo off of every damn wall in the school.

An entire class' worth of eyes are on us in a moment, watching in reserved interest as if we're the new exhibit in a zoo.

I feel like we're trapped in a glass cage that only gets smaller and smaller.

My eyes trained on her, I try to stop myself from pulling more attention in our direction. As if the whole f*****g gym class isn't already staring at us. The coach looks away and tells his kids to do some relays. They do, and for the first time in their lives, everybody's feet stay under the water so that they can hear me without the excess splashing.

"Well?" I ask again, my voice only lowering slightly in volume. I step closer so that only a few inches separate our bodies.

It's dead silent on the pool deck.

Peridot's eyes flash.

And then she's smashing our lips together, holding the back of my head firmly to keep me from pulling away. My breath is knocked out of me like I got slammed against the ground, and I choke as Peridot fills my lungs. I can't move. I can't even close my eyes. I can't do a damn thing.

Sometimes when I kiss Pearl I can understand what she's feeling- passion, love, sadness. But kissing Peridot is a white hot conglomerate of emotion that rips at my chest, and I'm the farthest I've ever been from understanding her.

To say that the kiss is anything but raw would be a cruel romanticization. It's animalistic and rough, and there is nothing pretty about the way Peridot clings to me like I'm her last lifeline. There's nothing pretty about the way her face corrupts into an expression almost agonized, or the way her blunt fingernails dig into my neck.

It's desperate and hateful, and it sends a quiver down my spine and wrings my heart out like a dishrag.

And in the same instant it started, it ends. Peridot leaves with her teeth on my bottom lip, pulling on it as she rips away. There's a sting, and I feel hot blood trickle down my chin.

Peridot climbs out of the pool and spits my flesh out onto the pool deck, making a show of wiping her lips with her hand. Then, locking our eyes, she raises her middle finger in defiance.

"I f*****g hate you, Lapis Lazuli," she says, just loud enough for her voice to echo off the deck walls and project into the ears of every listening student.

Peridot storms off with an agitated growl, swinging open the locker room door and slamming it. The gym coach chases her in hot pursuit, his too-short shorts riding up his blindingly white thighs.

All eyes are on me. I know they are. I can feel them, bearing into my skin. The water locks me in place like ice, seizing my muscles. The glass box shrinks around me, constricting against my skin and crushing my lungs.

I force myself to breathe.

I find the strength to turn around. Upon doing so, the regular class gets back to their exercises. At least they have the decency to pretend not to care. My group isn't so sympathetic. They only stare at me, awaiting command. The senior has a s**t eating grin that I'd just love to beat off of her piggish, smug, face.

"Did I tell you to stop?" I holler, my mind going blank for just a moment to allow my mental autopilot to activate. "Go!"

I'm not entirely sure what I just said, but everyone dunks their heads under the surface and starts paddling again, so I'm sure I did something right.

I need to relieve the boiling core in my gut, so I dive back in and swim along with them, propelling myself through the water without thought and hitting the edges of the pool in record time. My strokes send wakes of poisonous chlorine behind me and I hit the senior with a torrent of ice water as I pass.

But no matter how fast I go, or how strong I swim, I can't escape the whispers that infest the pool deck. They're all around me, slamming into my skull and embedding themselves into my skin. And suddenly, I can't tell if I'm swimming to drown the noise, or to drown myself.

I settle on the latter.