Heart to Hart ✔️

5. Catching rays not feelings

Late Sunday morning, Sian pulled up outside mine in her newly fixed car and promised to spend the day lounging around in my garden. Alec couldn't join us as he was on babysitting duties for his parents and had to keep an eye on his three younger siblings.

Hidden behind the swing seat and our overgrown hedges, we spread our towels in the grass and stripped down to our bikinis. Sian lowered the straps on her top and closed her eyes behind her Audrey Hepburn style sunglasses.

"So who picked you up yesterday?" I asked while squeezing copious amounts of sun cream onto my shoulders.

She stayed quiet for a second too long, thinking about her answer. If they were only a friend as she claimed, she would have told me straight away, but her delayed response wasn't natural. Over the last few months, my suspicions about Sian seeing someone had only grown stronger. Why wouldn't she tell me? We never kept secrets, so I'd have to ask Alec if he suspected something.

Whenever we spoke last year, she would leave out details from her nights out and would let certain things slip without meaning to. Her stories would change slightly, each time she had to retell them. Just enough to notice she was hiding something, but not enough for me to call her out on it. If I did, I knew she would get all defensive and deny everything.

I would have to trust that she would divulge it when she was ready.

"Oh, a friend from work. You don't know them."

"Really, just a friend?" I peered down at her, wiping my sticky fingers on the corner of my towel.

"Just a friend," She insisted, turning her head away. "Talking about just friends, what did you and Alec do once I left?"

"We came back here and chatted about things."

"Things?" She faced me again with a cheeky grin on her face.

"Yes, things. I asked what he'd been up to at Uni. He asked about my time away. About how he missed me and I missed him. Those kinds of things." My belly flipped thinking about him. I covered my bare stomach with my hand, uneasy with this unfamiliar sensation.

"I'm warning you now, Nat, keep those hormones in check and stop saying Alec is hot. It sounds weird."

I feigned shock. "Excuse me! You're as bad as me most of the time. And besides, Alec has got seriously hot!"

"Gross! He's like our brother. Can you not! My breakfast might come back up." She grimaced.

I let out a fake laugh, hoping Sian wouldn't pick up on the fact the conversation made me giddy. Because the thought of Alec's body didn't make me want to be sick. Quite the opposite.

"But seriously Nat, don't do anything you'll regret. You have known him for too long to start making it awkward between you both. Plus, I'm not becoming a third wheel."

My throat tightened and my anxiousness twisted into disappointment. She was right. I had known him for far too long and had so much to lose if things turned sour.

"Whoa, back up a bit. I said he was hot, and that's about it. No one's doing anything they will regret. Have you gone mad? Aren't you the girl who lives by the motto: 'I can admire without having to touch'," I stated in a high-pitched voice to mock her and mask my true feelings.

"Ha ha, very funny! Poor Alec is so deep into the friend zone," she snickered.

"Yeah, poor Alec," I mumbled, slightly deflated. The lines of that friend zone were blurring.

"Wonder why he has no serious girlfriends?"

"I always wonder the same about you," I answered.

"I don't want a girlfriend. You're all high maintenance," she giggled as I swatted her arm.