It was a couple of weeks ago, when I had a sleepover with my best friend, Julie. It was two in the morning, we were both laying on my aunts’ old bed with the blankets removed because of the summer heat. The window was open, there was small crickets chirping and little sounds from my grandmother’s dog down stairs. We held our heads in our hands and giggled about boys and asked each other questions we already knew the answer to. Out of the blue, I tell her, “There is nobody I would rather share the bed with, than you.”
And she laughed, and snorted. Of course she would, it was a ridiculous thing to say to your best friend. We had been friends for six years, but I never stopped loving her hilarious laugh where she snorts and she surprises herself. Although it was dark, I could still make out the goofy smile spread widely across her face when she finally asked why.
Her eyebrows were raised and she was still wearing the same shirt that she had been wearing all day. I rolled my eyes and responded, with a serious face, “Well, I know that if I wake in the morning and everybody hates me, you would stand by my side,” I paused, and added, “Plus, if you get a letter to Hogwarts tomorrow morning I can rely on you to pack me in your luggage and secretly take me with you. And, let’s just say there’s an apocalypse and everyone is a zombie, you can be my adventure buddy.”
She laughed again, but even harder this time. She covered her face with her hands and snorted extremely loud. I shushed her, reminding her that my grandfather is sleeping, and my grandmother and brother were camping in the yard outside. We both sighed, and reminisced about our first sleepover when we had a fake marriage way back in fifth grade. Since I had short hair, I had pretended that I was her crush that she used to have on this cute boy. She wore a white dress and I wore black pants and wore a scarf to represent a tie. We had wedding music and everything, and I think we smashed a handful of whipped cream in each other’s faces.
After many memories and talks about our past sleepovers, we eventually fell asleep around four or five, and woke up around nine. We headed down stairs and greeted my grandmother, she smiled at us as we giggled about our conversations from the night before. She then made us some coffee and gave us permission to get the captain crunch cereal out of the pantry, a treat for me since I never eat cereal.
The rest of the morning was pretty unproductive, I put on Princess Mononoke and we both sat on the couch in silence, trying to get out of the since-its-morning-I-feel-tired-and-gross feeling. She had to leave around twelve, her mom was going to pick her up so they could go shopping. I knew she couldn’t say no to that, she only saw her mother once in a while and this was important to her.
When she left, I waved to her from the wooden porch as the van left the gravel driveway. I suddenly felt like crying. I had just realized what I had done. I had confessed my love to my best friend, but not in the I-want-to-kiss-you way. Its that feeling when you know that your best friend will be coming soon and that you are going to see her face. Its that feeling when you know your going to have fun and you’re going to laugh all day. Its that feeling when you know that you can fully trust someone with your time and energy because they trust you with theirs. And that is the definition of a best friend.