Chapter Text
Natalie Scatorccio was fucked.
Not in the fun way. Not in the way that involved Zoey's hands or Zoey's mouth or any of the approximately seven hundred scenarios that had taken up permanent residence in her brain. No, she was fucked in the existential sense.
Pathetic didn't even begin to cover it.
The thing was, Natalie had survived her father. She'd survived growing up in a house where love came with bruises and apologies that meant nothing, survived watching her mother disappear into herself a little more each day, survived her own attempts to erase herself with whatever she could get her hands on. She'd looked death in the face more times than a seventeen-year-old should, flirted with it in bathroom stalls and backseats and empty parking lots. But Zoey? Zoey smiling at her, tucking her hair behind her ear in that unconscious way she did when she was concentrating on a story? That was going to be what finally killed her.
The universe had a sick sense of humor. Natalie could appreciate that, at least.
She'd tried everything—cigarettes, whiskey, deliberately picking fights with strangers, fucking people whose names she didn't bother learning. None of it worked. None of it made her stop thinking about the way Zoey's eyes crinkled at the corners when she really laughed, or how she always ordered the same thing at their regular diner but pretended to consider the menu every single time like this might be the day she'd branch out and get the turkey club instead of the grilled cheese.
It wouldn't be. Natalie knew this. She knew everything about Zoey, had catalogued every detail with the obsessive precision of someone who was definitely, absolutely, one hundred percent not in love with their best friend.
Except she was.
Fuck.
The worst part was that Natalie couldn't even blame Zoey. Zoey hadn't done anything wrong. She was just... herself. Existing. Being kind and funny and smart and so goddamn beautiful it made Natalie's chest physically ache sometimes. Zoey would touch her arm while they were talking, and Natalie's entire nervous system would light up like a fucking Christmas tree. And Zoey had no idea. None. Because why would she? Normal people didn't combust internally when their friends made physical contact. Normal people didn't memorize the exact shade of their best friend's eyes or the way her voice got softer when she talked about things that mattered to her.
But Natalie had never been normal. She'd been born broken, raised broken, and her own self-destruction had just perfected the job. She was all jagged edges and scar tissue, held together with spite and bad decisions. What the fuck was she supposed to do with something as fragile and terrifying as love?
Natalie was a black hole of need masked as indifference, and Zoey was the only person who'd ever bothered to look past the disguise.
That was the real knife twist. Zoey actually gave a shit. She showed up. She answered Natalie's 3 AM phone calls and didn't ask questions when Natalie showed up at her door looking like she'd gone ten rounds with her own demons and lost. She just made space on her bed and put on something mindless and sat there until Natalie could breathe again.
How was Natalie supposed to not fall in love with that?
The smart thing would be to put distance between them. Self-preservation 101: remove yourself from situations that cause pain. But Natalie had never been smart about the things that mattered. And losing Zoey—even just the friendship version of Zoey—would hurt worse than wanting her and never having her. At least this way, Natalie got to keep her. Got to hear her voice and see her smile and pretend that being Zoey's best friend was enough.
It wasn't. It would never be. But Natalie was used to making do with not enough. She'd been doing it her whole life.
She was good at suffering. Always had been. This was just a new flavor of it.
Yeah. She was definitely fucked.
"Sit still," Zoey commanded, and Natalie's brain short-circuited.
Because Zoey was straddling her. Actually straddling her, thighs bracketing Natalie's hips as she settled her weight onto Natalie's lap like this was normal, like this wasn't going to permanently rewire Natalie's neural pathways. She had an eyeliner pencil in one hand and that look of intense concentration on her face that made Natalie want to do something catastrophically stupid.
"I am sitting still," Natalie managed, which was a fucking lie because every muscle in her body had gone rigid with the effort of not reacting. Not grabbing. Not pulling Zoey closer and closing the six inches of space between their mouths.
Six inches. Natalie knew because she'd measured it with her eyes approximately four times in the last ten seconds. She could feel Zoey's breath against her lips, warm and smelling faintly of the cherry lollipops she was always sucking on. Could see the exact moment Zoey's tongue darted out to wet her bottom lip as she focused on creating the perfect wing of eyeliner.
"Close your eyes," Zoey murmured, and Natalie obeyed because what else could she do? Refuse? Explain that closing her eyes only made everything worse because now all she could focus on was the weight of Zoey on top of her, the heat of her thighs, the whisper-soft touch of her fingers cradling Natalie's jaw?
The eyeliner pencil dragged across her eyelid. Zoey's thumb followed, smudging the line to give it that grunge look Natalie usually did herself but had made the mistake of letting Zoey offer to do. She hadn't known it would involve this. This position. This proximity. This exquisite fucking torture.
Natalie didn't know what to do with her hands. They hovered uselessly at her sides for a moment before her body made the decision her brain couldn't—they settled on Zoey's thighs, just resting there, thumbs finding the strip of bare skin between where her skirt ended and her knee-highs began.
Soft. Jesus Christ, so soft. Warm and smooth and real under Natalie's fingers, and she had to actively stop herself from stroking, from exploring, from mapping every inch of skin Zoey was offering up so casually, so unconsciously.
"You're tense," Zoey observed, pulling back slightly to examine her work. Her eyes met Natalie's, and there was nothing there but friendly concern. No awareness of what she was doing. No recognition of the fact that Natalie was currently experiencing what could only be described as a full-system meltdown.
"I'm not," Natalie said, which was possibly the least convincing lie she'd ever told.
Zoey's lips curved into a dimpled smile—that smile, the one that made Natalie's chest feel like it was caving in—and she leaned in again, closer this time. "Other eye. And actually hold still this time."
Natalie's thumbs pressed slightly harder against Zoey's thighs, an involuntary response she couldn't control. Zoey didn't seem to notice. Or maybe she did and didn't care, didn't read anything into it beyond normal friendly touching because that's what this was to her. Normal. Platonic. Meaningless.
The eyeliner pencil returned, and Natalie closed her eyes again, drowning in vanilla body spray and the weight of wanting and the absolute certainty that she was never going to survive this.
With her eyes squeezed shut, Natalie's mind spiraled into the abyss of her deepest cravings, the ones she'd buried under layers of denial and friendship for far too long. She imagined flipping their positions in one swift motion, pinning Zoey beneath her on the bed, those confident thighs splayed wide as Natalie tore at the hem of her skirt, shoving it up to expose the damp heat between her legs. God, she'd start there—diving in without hesitation, her mouth latching onto Zoey, tongue plunging deep to lap at the slick folds, tasting the salty-sweet essence that would flood her senses. She'd suck on that swollen clit, until Zoey arched and gasped, fingers twisting in Natalie's hair, begging for more even as her body trembled from the overload.
But it wouldn't stop there. No, Natalie would crawl up Zoey's body, capturing her mouth in a bruising kiss, letting her taste herself on Natalie's lips. Fingers would follow—two, then three, curling to hit that spot that made her cry out, walls clenching around the invasion as Natalie fucked her hard, matching the rhythm of her hips rolling down to claim every shudder.
And the sounds—fuck, the sounds Zoey would make. Those dimpled smiles twisting into moans, her voice breaking on Natalie's name as she came undone.
The fantasy burned through her like wildfire, making her pulse throb between her legs, her grip on Zoey's thighs tightening involuntarily. She could almost feel it—the way Zoey's body would yield, no more platonic barriers, just raw, filthy need. But reality crashed back as the eyeliner pencil lifted from her lid, Zoey's breath ghosting over her cheek.
"All done," Zoey said softly, her voice laced with that affectionate warmth that twisted the knife deeper. She didn't move off Natalie's lap right away, tilting her head to admire her handiwork, oblivious to the storm raging inside her friend. "You look hot. Like, punk-rock hot."
Natalie's eyes fluttered open, locking onto Zoey's gaze. Her thumbs stroked once, just once, along that bare strip of skin, a ghost of the exploration her mind had just devoured.
"Thanks," she whispered, voice husky, praying Zoey chalked it up to the tension in her muscles rather than the fire pooling low in her belly.
Then Zoey was sliding off her lap, and Natalie's hands fell away, suddenly cold and empty. She watched—because of course she fucking watched, she was pathetic like that—as Zoey crossed to her closet, hips swaying in a way that was completely unconscious and completely devastating.
The curve of her spine as she bent to rifle through the bottom rack. The way her auburn hair fell forward, exposing the nape of her neck. Natalie catalogued it all with the obsessive precision of someone who knew she'd be replaying this later, alone in her bed, hating herself.
"Oh my god," Zoey said, triumphant, pulling out a red plaid dress. "We can match!"
And there it was. The knife, twisting.
Because Zoey was excited about this. Genuinely, sweetly excited about coordinating their outfits like they were going to prom together or some shit. She held the dress up against herself, grinning at Natalie with that open, affectionate expression that meant best friends and we're so cute together and absolutely nothing more.
And then Zoey was pulling her shirt over her head.
Natalie's brain flatlined.
She should look away. That's what a good friend would do, what a normal person would do. But Natalie had never been good or normal, and her eyes traced the line of Zoey's ribs, the black lace of her bra, the soft curve of her breasts as she reached for the dress.
Stop looking stop looking stop looking—
But she didn't stop. Couldn't stop. Watched as Zoey shimmied out of her skirt, standing there in her underwear like it was nothing, like Natalie wasn't currently experiencing what could only be described as a religious crisis. The dress slid over Zoey's head, red plaid falling into place, and she smoothed it down over her hips with both hands.
"How do I look?" Zoey asked, spinning once.
Like everything Natalie wanted and could never have. Like a fantasy and a nightmare wrapped in matching fabric. Like the cruelest joke the universe had ever played.
"Perfect," Natalie said, and meant it in every terrible way. "We look perfect together."
Zoey beamed, completely missing the weight behind those words, the double meaning Natalie had packed into them like a suicide note. She grabbed Natalie's hand, pulling her up from the bed.
“Let’s blow this popsicle stand, we got a party to get to.”