#kmpac

“It’s so annoying,” you said, not answering his question. “I can’t even go to the gym yet, like what am I honestly supposed to do?”

“I don’t know,” he said sarcastically as he picked up your son and walked over to the mirror to stand directly behind you, “Give yourself a break, maybe?”

You laughed disgustedly at your reflection and continued to adjust your pants to try to get them to not make you look like you had a balloon inflated inside of them right at waist height.

“Easy for you to say, you have literally the perfect body.”

JK looked to the ground as if his outfit suddenly became very interesting, and thanked you for the compliment while also doing his level best to steer the conversation back to you.

“You are just getting adjusted to this big change in your life. I personally think you look great and you have nothing to worry about.”

“Are you kidding me? None of my clothes fit, my boobs are saggy, I have stretch marks and a saggy belly that I don’t know what to do with. Like do I tuck it into my pants, or let it hang out above, like honestly? I’m so lost. Seriously what do I do, JK?”

You ask with tears in your eyes and JK reads right through the noise like he always does, because after 10 years of being best friends he can read you like nobody else. He knows the words you are really asking. How do I raise a child by myself?

9 months or so ago found you on the floor of your bathroom crying into your bathroom rug for hours until JK came over and cradled you in his arms as he looked at the tiny plus sign on the pregnancy test indicator and you asked the same question then. What do I do?

You hadn’t expected to get pregnant at 25, or at least not when you were single. The father, unknown. You were always so careful to use protection when you had sex. And it’s not that you had a lot of partners, but you definitely didn’t keep a ledger of every time you had sex and at the time you had no idea how far along you were. You never did track your periods since they had been so regular for so many years. In the weeks after, when you went to see the doctor and were able to get a time frame of when you got pregnant, you were able to figure out exactly who it was and spoke with the father, but that hadn’t gone well. At this time though, all you knew was you were about to be a single mother. You couldn’t bear the idea of snuffing out the child’s life, even though you had no idea how you would raise a baby by yourself. But JK had been there and it seemed easier when he said “we will get through this” as though you wouldn’t be alone.

And sure enough you weren’t, Through the entire pregnancy, he was there for you. Through the morning sickness, the aches and pains, the pinched nerves, the braxton hicks contractions, and he was even there when you gave birth, though you resoundingly refused to let him stay in the room once it was actually time to push. According to your dad, he paced outside in the waiting room though.

He was a good friend always, a great one actually, but as you asked this same question all these months after the first question, he looked completely unfazed by your pouting lip.

“Just like everything in your life, you will smash it out of the park like the boss you are,” he said as he leaned forward and placed his chin on your shoulder. Seeing his face and your son’s face staring back at you in the mirror had the tears in your eyes falling, but you blinked them away and did your best to make light of the moment like you always do.

“Yes, but there is still the immediate problem of fitting into my clothes. I can’t go out naked.”

“You could, but it might definitely cause a stir.”

You laughed mockingly at your friend who had a goofy smile on his face. “I’m pretty sure I’d be arrested for indecent exposure.” You waved to your reflection indicating the parts of yourself that you thought looked awful now, “No one wants to see this naked. I don’t even want to.”

“I don’t know,” he responded as he bounced your son in his arms, “I think I can speak for most men and say that they still want to see you naked.”

“Bullshit, JK. I’m a boat.”

“No, you are not!” He said with a frustration in his voice that had you turning from your reflection to look directly into his serious eyes. “I’m telling you, you look hot.”

“What about this is hot?” you ask condescendingly, almost wanting to get naked just to prove a point, but the repercussions of such an action prevented you.

“Well for starters,” he said looking a bit red in the cheeks and trying to look away from you as he kissed your son’s head, “your boobs are huge.”

“No shit. Nursing has made them a whole 2 sizes bigger. But that isn’t hot!”

“Oh hell yes it is.” He says as his eyes sweep the front of your body as he slightly bites his bottom lip, probably unintentionally but you catch it all the same. You feel heat in your cheeks at the thought that this incredibly attractive man would actually call you hot. How preposterous.

“No way, dude. You are bluffing.”

“Seriously, it just means more to grab!’

“You are crazy!--”

“And!” He exclaimed, cutting you off, as he started to get more into the spirit of the exercise, “And, your hips got wider.”

“No they didn’t!” you said as you looked at yourself in the mirror more critically.

“Oh yes they did!”

“No they didn’t”

“Yes they freaking did!”

“They are not any bigger than before, you are just distracted by my fat.”

“You are out of your mind y/n, you aren't fat and your hips DID get bigger, I would know-” 

At that JK suddenly slammed his mouth shut and his face started to heat up. You would have called his bluff but the unmistakable embarrassment on his face was staring you right back in the mirror as he coughed to hide his face as much as he could.

He turned around to put your son in his playpen to distract himself as he asked if you were ready to go. It was after all your first night going out since your son was born and you would hate to be late to the restaurant where your friends were awaiting you, but you were not being distracted. What had just happened?

“What does that mean, JK?” You asked with a laugh awkwardly because you didn’t know what else to say or do. His eyes were directed into the playpen and trying to avoid your eye entirely, but you felt so uncomfortable you had to do something, because you were never good at letting things lie.

“Please, just leave it.”

“Leave it? I don’t even know what I’m leaving? What do you mean that you would know?”

While the tone in the room seemed to change drastically, you were still fired up and just HAD to know why things had suddenly shifted. Your thoughts were whirling. Half of the thoughts being too far fetched to even entertain… right?

“Last time I checked you’ve never seen me naked and unless you mean you would notice, because you were around me more than anyone else or something like that, I can’t seem to make sense of that statement,” you babbled, “because the only other alternative is that you look at my body more than anyone else and that is ridiculous because that implies you have looked at me as more than just a friend, because friends don’t look at each other’s bodies like that, and there is no way that that can be true, right?” you ask with a laugh to try to dissolve some of the tension and because you can’t stop rambling like an idiot. It is a well known fact that JK is one of the most gorgeous men of your acquaintance but you never looked his way twice because even at 15 you knew he was so far out of your league that you never even allowed yourself to see him as anything but a potential friend.

“It was a slip of the tongue, y/n. We better get going or we are going to be late. You look good, you don’t need to change. Let’s just take the little guy over to your mom’s house and head to the restaurant-”

“No, JK, I’m not letting this go!” You laugh again, nervously. The awkwardness that has descended on your conversation is so different than any other conversation in your relationship that you don’t really know how to take all of this. 

“What do you mean it is a slip of the tongue anyway?” He wasn’t even denying your last assumption, which you were certain he would do immediately. “You cannot mean what I think you mean?” 

He stops and turns completely away from you, wiping his hand across his face and sighing loudly. Your eyes follow the movement along his broad shoulders that raise and fall at his actions, but he doesn’t turn around to answer your question.

Your son is wiggling and making baby noises in the playpen as you continue to wait in silence for your best friend to explain himself.

“You used to have the perfect body without even trying, y/n, but now, I can’t even believe I’m saying this out loud, but you need to stop this crazy self-deprecating line of thought, so I’m saying it - your body has just gotten more beautiful. YOU are beautiful. You always have been and you always will be.”

“Excuse me?”

He turns around suddenly to make eye contact with you and what you see has you frozen in time.

“I mean,” he takes a deep breath as if steeling himself for something, “I mean, you are beautiful… to me. To me, specifically. Though I’m certain plenty of men would agree with me.”

“...What?”

“I’ve always thought so.” He continued. Now that he had begun there was no stopping him.

“So you mean…”

“I’m in love with you y/n”

And just like that, the bottom fell out. You know that feeling you get on a rollercoaster? That’s how you felt right in that moment. You were frozen and the swoop feeling took over your whole body. You felt like your whole world had just been uprooted and flipped on its side.

“I HAVE been, actually, since we were like 16,” he laughed and then must have noticed your facial reaction, because he started back pedaling. “I’m sorry, just forget I said anything. I’m such an idiot, let’s just go to the restaurant and pretend this didn’t happen…”

As he talked he was running around the room picking up the car seat to put it on the bed and grabbing the baby’s diaper bag and then hefting your son into his arms to place him in the car seat.

Your brain had stopped functioning for a time, but as everything sunk in you started to realize who JK really was for you. The flashbacks to moments on the school bus when JK had threatened Jimmy Wilkinson because he called you a nerd and “4 eyes” when you got your first pair of glasses. Flashbacks to Prom where JK and you ditched your respective dates to dance all night on the dance floor together. And then there was graduation, clutching each other with tears in your eyes as you promised each other that nothing would change, and it hadn’t. You had gone to neighboring colleges in town and you probably saw the inside of JK’s dorm more than your own aside from sleeping. You studied together, ate meals together, walked each other to class. You helped each other apply for jobs and prep for interviews and when you got out of college you had resolved to never live more than 10 minutes away from each other, even when either of you were in serious relationships, because you couldn’t live without each other. 

And then you had gotten pregnant and he had been there for you. He had ALWAYS been there for you. He was your best friend, your confidant, and your firm foundation. 

Your rock.

And now he was confessing to loving you for nearly half his life and though you had never even thought it could be possible, you now were connecting the dots to so many late night movie nights and lingering glances, but what astonished you most, is though you had never been aware of it, you realized you had loved him all this time too. If you hadn’t already been in love with him before you got pregnant, it certainly solidified his place in your heart after that moment. You had denied yourself for years, taking only what you thought he was willing to give, all the while harboring those same feelings in your heart.

And now he had just told you he loved you.

As your brain caught up to your heart, tears started to pour down your face, and when JK stopped for more than 5 minutes to recognize what was happening, he practically crumbled. 

Thinking you were devastated and completely misinterpreting your tears, he started to apologize profusely and swear that nothing between you would change.

“Please just forget I said anything, y/n. I’m so sorry, I should have just kept it to myself. First and foremost you are my best friend and nothing, and I MEAN nothing will ever get in the way of that, ok? And I’ll always be here for the little man, I swear. Please just don’t cry.”

His repeated attempts to make you feel better had you crying more, but you couldn’t articulate speech yet to tell him he had it all wrong. You wanted to confess that you loved him too. That you didn’t care about the restaurant anymore, that you wanted to curl up with him in bed and kiss him like you had wanted to do when you first met him at the age of 15 and thought you had never seen anyone so beautiful in your entire life, with his big doe eyes and silly bunny teeth that only managed to make his smile that much more endearing. You wanted to tell him that you were jealous of every girlfriend he had ever had and that you had always thought of him as your son’s dad in your head, even when you never believed you would ever have the reciprocation of feelings from him. You had long accepted your friendship and that was enough for you because a shred of JK’s heart was worth 100% of any other man’s heart as far as you were concerned.

And you wanted to tell him that he was the best of men. Kind, compassionate, and not just to you. He was such a good man and you wanted to be with him forever in whatever way he saw fit.

But you didn’t say any of that as your throat was still tight and he was still looking at you like he had just made the biggest mistake of his life. As if being in love with you for nearly 10 years and keeping his mouth shut in order to keep you in his life was just a normal thing. As if self sacrificing himself was worth it just to be in your presence. And you felt the same for him.

So instead, you leaned forward and placed your wet lips against his chapped ones and told him through that one kiss everything he needed to know.

He returned it wholeheartedly after a moment of hesitation where he must have frozen as his 16 year old past self caught up to his 25 year old body. 

And before you knew it you were wrapped in his strong arms that had wrapped around you so many times before, but this time in a desperate plea for the action to be solidified as proof of your reciprocation. You made sure not to disappoint, either. 

It felt like years later that you pulled away to stare into his eyes. His were wet now too, and you both looked on the verge of something unknown to you. How do you completely change in the blink of an eye with a person you knew better than anyone else in the world?

“So what you are saying is you are biased about how I look and I shouldn’t trust you that I look good enough to leave the house?” You teased some time later when you both had returned to your default mode.

“Oh my god, y/n, stop!” he said with a laugh as he fake tore his hair out and then proceeded to rush out the door with your son in tow.