It wasn’t a specific look, or anything she said exactly. It was the things she didn’t do that gave it away. The way that she didn’t automatically include me in the conversation, the way she didn’t look to me when something funny happened, the way she didn’t move up to get more space but stayed, leg pressed against mine, reminding me that she was there.
All the instincts we’d developed about one another over the many years we had been friends were now kicking into gear and compensating for all the things we couldn’t say, not with all these people around. There was the guy I had known half my life and had been known to hook up with, we were special to one another, that was an unspoken truth, but we weren’t the type of friends to talk about things too far below the surface. He didn’t know about my dad’s drinking, I didn’t find out about his brother’s death till a year and a half later. There were the girlfriends I had spent hours talking with about all the lighter things in life and all the heartbreaks, they knew all the signs as well, but they were too busy having fun themselves to want to see any more than the smile on my face or the flirting in my actions. I couldn't blame them for that, the last thing I needed was to bring anyone else into my shadowy little corner.
But she knew, my very best friend in the whole world, she saw the way my grin faltered, the way my eyes reverted back to staring absent-mindedly at the floor when I paused for breath, she saw. She knew how I was feeling without asking and she knew that I would talk about it when I was ready.
She just knew, unquestionably that I was faking it, faking being happy, faking being fine. I, the girl who called people out on their crap, was tonight the biggest fake in the crowd.
She knew it and still she stayed, her leg against mine, her hand within reach, her friendship, unwavering.