Fine Lines

There’s a fine line between friendship and love. She never meant to cross that line. She never meant to go anywhere near it, to be perfectly honest. The first time she saw him, he was a patient, nothing else. And that is how it should have stayed. A purely professional, platonic relationship. If she had kept it at that, then she would be happy now. But she didn’t. She was flattered by the way he made her feel, the fact that whenever he looked at her, she knew that he thought she was beautiful. And so she let him chase her. She was teasing him, letting him get just close enough, and then pushing him away.

She was playing with fire, she’d known that all along. She was playing with his emotions, enjoying seeing him squirm. She was using her position as the psychiatrist, as the one person who knew him better than he knew himself. And she was using the fact that he fancied her. She was taking more of an effort with her looks, knowing that she might bump into him, not wanting to look anything less than perfect to him.

And she had been so scared when Columbia asked her to go there. New York. America. It was so far away, so far from what she knew. From him. He had been the one thing that she could count on in her life. He didn’t know that, and she had no intention of telling him, but she had come to depend on seeing him, once or twice a day. Those were the highlights of her day, seeing him, exchanging a few words with him. It made her feel wanted. She had nothing else. Every night, she went home to an empty house, endless evenings in front of the TV, and endless nights alone in an empty bed. She barely knew anyone at the hospital. So it was… pleasant… to know him. To be able to talk to him.

And then, she had realised that it would be her last chance. So she’d agreed to a date. She had strung him along for long enough… and, although the game playing was fun, she could see that he was starting to tire of it. So she’d told him that she was going away, and agreed to a date. She’d set a time limit – she was being in control. And, when relationships have time limits, they aren’t relationships. She wasn’t going to be giving her heart away anytime soon. It was just going to be a fling. And so she had stopped him taking her to a restaurant that first night. They had spent the night together and she had gone home in the morning, expecting him to ignore her, to be like other men.

But she hadn’t counted on how he would treat her. And soon, she was thinking of him, not as a friend, but as a lover. He hadn’t ignored her after their first date. It hadn’t been flowers and chocolates until he got her into bed, and then leaving without a phone call. If anything, he’d been more attentive to her since then. And it all made her feel so terrible because she was leaving. And so she took the opportunity to argue with him, wanting desperately to push him farther away. But it didn’t work, because the moment that he spoke to her, she felt her heart melting and she wanted to forgive him. But she was leaving. And it would hurt so much to leave him.

But he told her to go. He told her not to give up his career for him. But what if she wanted to? What if her heart told her that she should stay? And so, on the spur of the moment, she told him that she loved him. It was true. She didn’t know where, when, how it had happened. But it had. And when he hadn’t responded, she had realised just what she had done. She had put herself on the line, left herself vulnerable, let her guard down. How had it happened?

But there’s a fine line between friendship and love. And, somehow, she’d crossed that line. Without realising it. And she wanted to back. It was easier on the other side of the line. But once you’ve gone over the line, it’s not so easy to go back.