Fighting For You

Shayne sat on the couch in his and Ayla’s shared apartment. The other resident was sitting at the kitchen island, texting someone on her phone. Shayne pointedly avoided staring at her for too long and tried to focus on the book in his hand. The silence was heavy, and it only became heavier as he thought about it.

“We need to talk, don’t we?” Ayla appeared right beside him and Shayne jumped. He’d been too absorbed in not looking at her that he never heard her approach. With her arms crossed, she looked smaller than normal, and Shayne felt the immediate urge to gather her up in his arms.

Instead, he let out a nervous chuckle and forced himself to put his book aside. “Ah… about what?” Even if he tried to school his features into nonchalance, he knew she’d be able to tell exactly what he was thinking. It was what made his dumb crush so unfortunate.

Ayla sighed and stared at him with the saddest, but most knowing look he’d ever seen. “Come on, Shayne, you know.”

He froze, confused for only a second. As he watched her fingers incessantly tapping her opposite arm, though, in a moment he detected an undercurrent to her sadness that he truly hadn’t noticed before. Shayne’s eyes widened. “Holy shit.”

She sighed again and slowly lowered herself onto the couch beside him. She placed herself far enough away that there was no way they could accidentally brush up against each other.

*Smart*, he thought, adjusting his own position. He wasn’t entirely sure what he’d do if she touched him now.

“I, uh…” she began, but then fell back into silence. She looked up at him, a palpable sort of fear in her dark brown eyes. Shayne’s heart broke at the sight of it.

As much as he, too, was terrified to speak, Shayne took a deep breath and braced himself for the fallout of saying his feelings aloud. “I’m in love with you, Ayla.” The releasing of those words felt like a physical sensation and his shoulders slumped with the sudden absence. “But you already knew that.” He looked up at her after a moment, hoping, praying that she’d tell him he was wrong. At least then they could do something about that.

But no. Her face crumpled with pain and she covered it with her hands. “You know we can’t.”

He nodded. No extra words were needed.

“I can barely look at you without wanting to kiss you.” She shook her head and peeked at him through her fingers. “Asshole.”

They laughed together, half-hysterically. Shayne hadn’t realized how much he’d been dying to hear those words from her lips, but now that it happened, all he wanted was for her to take them back. He hadn’t checked up on their company’s policy for dating coworkers recently, but he was pretty sure the practice was heavily frowned upon. Shayne could’ve lived the rest of his life in the fantasy, imagining what her lips would taste like, how it would feel to have her arms around him. He thought it would’ve faded in time and they could both move on, but now that the words had been spoken aloud, there was no going back.

“You’re really distracting, you know,” he said half-heartedly trying to make it into a joke.

“Sorry, man. You know how unaware I am when it comes to flirting.” Her joke also fell flat. With the shake of her head, he knew she was thinking the same thing.

“You said it: we can’t,” Shayne murmured. “And we’d get in a world of shit if we tried and got found out.”

“Damn HR department.”

When he looked up again, her eyes were already locked on his. She had a sad tilt to her lips, the corners of her eyes scrunched up in hurt. Almost automatically, he reached out and took her hand in his. He felt the smooth brown skin, the delicate bones of her fingers, a scar on her knuckle he’d never noticed before. Ayla was staring at him in a sort of wonder. She brought her other hand to rest on top of his and suddenly his world narrowed to the sensation of her fingertips tracing idle circles on the back of his hand.

Shayne leaned forward instinctively, watching as she worked her bottom lip with her teeth. They were inches apart now, but neither of them dared to close the final gap. He sighed and leaned his forehead against hers. Closing his eyes, he whispered, “If I kissed you now, I don’t think I’d be able to stop.”

He felt her shake her head. “This is too dangerous, Shay.”

He opened his eyes, watched her black lashes beat against her cheek. She’d never used that nickname before and he almost cried with how gently she’d said it, almost screamed with how much he liked it.

His elation was crushed almost immediately when she continued, “I should move out.”

He pushed back slightly and gave a curt nod. “Remove the temptation for both of us, right?” He squeezed her hand and smiled sadly. “Would you find your own place, or…?”

“I’ll ask Keith if he can accommodate another hungry-ass person in his house. If he can’t, my parents’ place isn’t *too* far away from work.” She smiled, but it fell pretty quickly. She looked down at the pair’s joined hands and her eyes filled with tears. Shayne saw how much she was fighting it, but eventually she gave in and a sob escaped her throat.

He’d never seen her cry before.

Shayne dropped her hand, but quickly gathered her up in his arms. His chest ached with the longing and suppression of his own sobs. He rubbed Ayla’s back as she cried, burying his face in her hair.

“I don’t want this to ruin what we’ve already built, Ay. You’re my friend first, okay? Nothing can ever change that,” he said quietly. It was the only thing he was sure of at that moment.

Ayla pulled away and wiped her eyes. Shayne felt the absence like a punch in the gut. She nodded and sat up straight, conviction marking every angle of her body. “Never. Eight years don’t just disappear.” She ran a hand through her short Neapolitan hair and smirked. “You mean so much to me. And I’m serious when I say that in the future, after we get our shit together, I’m ready to fight for us.”

Shayne nodded with an equal amount of fervor. “Me too, Ayla. Me too.”