My leg is draped over the edge of someone else’s bed. I haven’t opened my eyes yet, but the hush of your breathing tickles my ear. We said we were friends. Just friends. Honestly, just friends. ‘What excuse will I use this morning?’
Words that slipped through locked lips
I knew from the very start. Every drunken night, when you pulled my hand down the hallway and into your room, that threadbare line—“we’re just friends”—stretched thinner and thinner. The thread neither crushed us nor let us go. We simply let it slacken, then measured each other’s warmth by its sag.
“Are we really friends?”
“Sure. Just the extra-warm kind.”
Each time the words were spoken, a corner of my chest ripened and bruised. We knew each other’s bodies so well that we also knew where the wounds were. That made them easier to reopen.
The moment it wasn’t our first kiss
Do-yoon was draining his third beer when he couldn’t take his hand out of Su-yeon’s hair. They had met as college classmates and had already shared seven birthdays, mocking each other’s love lives while pretending to be single. That night was no different.
Su-yeon lifted one brow. “Did you kiss her?”
“I did.”
“So that’s why it ended?”
Do-yoon looked away. Under the bar’s reflection, Su-yeon’s nape glowed damply. At that instant he saw not Su-yeon but the clinging curve of her neck. The beer was to blame—or perhaps it had stopped being beer long before.
That night Su-yeon lay in Do-yoon’s bed. At first they said nothing; only their toes brushed. Then she whispered, “Are we sure this is the right thing?” Do-yoon answered by taking one of her fingers and guiding it, slowly, across his chest. After that, the word friend became a running joke.
Second story: alcohol never begs forgiveness
Jin-sol and Jae-min had been “gym buddies” for five years. They met at the pool, shared a trainer, sweated together, and “accidentally” bumped into each other in the showers. Jin-sol felt Jae-min’s gaze keep sliding to his lower stomach. Jae-min always said, “I’m relaxed with you, hyung,” and tapped Jin-sol’s shoulder.
One Friday they walked into Jin-sol’s studio with a can of beer each. Jae-min popped the tab.
“Hyung, honestly, I feel weird today.”
“About what?”
“Touching myself feels pointless.”
Jin-sol laughed, then stopped. Jae-min’s eyes were too close. A hand landed on Jin-sol’s thigh, hot as a brand.
“Should we try it—just once?”
Before the sentence finished, Jin-sol sealed Jae-min’s mouth with his own. The taste of workout clothes, lager, and long silence mingled. After that day they spoke no word of it; they only nodded when they passed at the pool. Secrets always leave the hotter body heat behind.
Why we’re drawn to this liaison
The thrill of stealing glances when no one is watching. It is like slipping out the school’s back gate—illicit, electric. The safety rail called friendship makes us braver. “Even if it ends we can stay friends” is the cruelest contract, and we know it.
Psychologists call it the firewall theory: without the status of lovers, we can tunnel deeper. We lie to ourselves—“we’re just borrowing each other now and then”—but every loan leaves a bigger debt, an odor we can no longer hide.
Whose hand were you holding last night?
Even while you slept, your hand naturally circled my waist. When we open our eyes, must we say we’re friends again? Or shall we simply let our feet touch at the edge of the bed and confirm each other’s warmth in silence?
“Still, we’re friends—right?”
No one has answered that yet.
Are you, right now, in love with the person who lay in your bed last night?