MB Saucy Side: River in Egypt (Featuring Sally)

Sally Alavidze was not in love.

Occasionally, maybe, she stared at you in your bathing suit for a slightly longer duration than what might strictly be platonic. So what? You were hot.

The fact that Sally had only found five people “hot” in her entire life was irrelevant.

Sometimes, perhaps, she developed a bitter taste in her mouth when you laughed at one of Grayson’s dumb jokes. It wasn’t possessiveness—she was simply disgusted by Gray’s expression of smug self-satisfaction. Could his ego get any bigger?

The fact that Sally had, up until this trip to Hawaii, considered Grayson Black to be among the best humanity had to offer (“obnoxiously humble,” she had once called him) was also irrelevant.

Also irrelevant: Sally’s constantly accelerated heartbeat, her inability to focus whenever you weren’t in the room due to wondering if you were laughing at another one of Grayson Black’s atrocious jokes, and that her fingers still tingled from you having casually grabbed her hand half an hour ago while you both were sunbathing by the vortex pool.

No, Sally Alavidze was definitely not in love.

(Denial was a different story.)

Make no mistake: Sally knew that she loved you. Thoroughly and eternally, until death did you two part. But being in love with you? Romance risked the other, safer love that had developed over the course of the last decade. Your relationship was, Sally deemed, the Platonic Ideal of Friendship, perfect in its form and unmarred by confused confessions.

If, secretly, she intermittently became preoccupied wondering how your lips might taste . . . well, that was Sally’s personal business and it wasn’t as if she could control the direction of her daydreams. (She was an artist! Daydreaming was a habit and meant nothing!) If she had, accidentally, found herself sketching the outline of your form on her notepad instead of the local flora like she intended, it wasn’t because she’d been staring longingly at your back (as you’d once again laughed at Gray’s story about the first time he’d tried surfing, which wasn't at all amusing even if the thought of Gray potentially drowning filled Sally with grim satisfaction).

Sally’s pencil had been compelled by affection—amicable, non-sexual affection—to trace out the curve of your neck and lines of your chest. Her fascination with your body was nothing more than an artist’s appreciation of a finely shaped model. Nothing more.

(Really, what the hell was so hilarious? “Funny” had never been one of Gray’s main personality traits.)

Sally Alavidze was definitely not in love with you.

If placed under oath, her testimony would vehemently denied having ever wondered what it would be like to wrap herself around you like an octopus climbing a rock. No, Your Honor, Sally would never fantasize about repurposing the treehouse in her backyard, nor had she ever contemplated the logistics of intimacy beneath a roof only four feet high. Lying down would be required, she supposed. Not that she had thought about it, except in self-denial that she had thought about it.

Everything was changing so quickly. That’s why she felt confused. Next year, you and her would be enrolled at Aeon. You would both be employed—albeit as student trainees, but the concept still felt uncomfortably adult. Taxes would be required.

And what would come next? You’d meet someone, someone great and way better than Grayson Black (who was smiling a little too brightly at you right now, if you asked Sally’s opinion), and Sally would become a Dreaded Third Wheel.

Aha! There was the epiphany. Sally wasn’t in love with you—that would jeopardize the status quo. She was just afraid. Afraid of things evolving, of your relationship becoming less important as you both got older and developed new connections.

Sally glanced at you from beneath her lashes.

Fear, not desire. That was the reason she couldn’t get you out of her mind lately, the reason for sleepless nights and sweaty tossing and dreams that had no right to be so sweetly intoxicating that she resented their end.

Sally Alavidze certainly, absolutely, unquestionably, and categorically did not desire you. Kissing you would be like . . .

Sally let out a small gasp at the . . . the ludicrousness of such an image. You and her, alone, oblivious to everything but each other. Lips devouring, nuzzling, tasting, probing, needing more and more until . . .

“You alright, Sally?”

Sally looked up to find you gazing over at her with concern. She forced a smile.

“Peachy as pie,” she said.

It was true. It had to be true, because Sally Alavidze cherished you too deeply to ever do something as foolish as fall in love.