"Sapphic Friendsgiving"
College student Claire is forced to swallow her feelings for her best friend in this festive story from Karis Rogerson.
Hannah says:
Around the turkey last night, I was thinking about what I’m thankful for: the ability to celebrate with my family IRL this year, our health, cranberry sauce, the exquisite mess that is Season 3 of Love Is Blind, and among other things, Heartbeat. I love sharing these bite-sized romances with you! Georgia and I are grateful to you for reading, commenting, liking, sharing, etc. You’re the best.
This week, writer Karis Rogerson serves up a festive story that is jam-packed with tropes. Friends-to-lovers? Check. Enemies-to-lovers? Also check. Forced proximity? You got it. This campus romance is full of hijinks and made me smile. Enjoy!
“Sapphic Friendsgiving”
“You — we — what?” Claire sputtered.
She was sure she wasn’t hearing correctly. Because it sounded like Serena had agreed to cook a turkey and bake two pies with her for Friendsgiving. But that was surely wrong. Not only because Claire could hardly boil water, but also because Serena had been giving her the silent treatment since Monday, when Claire had told her she was bailing on their “stay at college for Thanksgiving break” plans. Serena had even gone so far as to slam the door to her room in Claire’s face when she’d shown up early Wednesday morning with an “I’m so sorry” Pumpkin Spice Latte.
Claire almost found herself wishing she had followed through on going home for Thanksgiving. At least then she wouldn’t be in this terribly awkward situation.
Serena rolled her eyes. “I didn’t really have a choice,” she said. “We were assigned the turkey, an apple pie, and a pumpkin pie. It’ll be a breeze.”
“Oh, sure,” Claire said mockingly. “A breeze. Yeah.”
She realized her mistake when Serena’s lips pursed into a hard, thin line. She’d pissed her best friend off again. She wracked her brain for something to say to stave off the fight brewing behind Serena’s eyes, but unfortunately, she was too late.
“Would you rather bail on me and leave me to do this all by myself? Just like you were gonna leave me alone for the holiday?” Serena and Claire had spent the whole first half of the semester planning their Thanksgiving extravaganza, when the campus would be half-empty and they could have the run of the dorm kitchens. They would film there, with Claire directing and Serena cooking. It was supposed to be the start of their YouTube cooking show that they both hoped would kick off their respective careers.
Claire grit her teeth and tried not to let her annoyance show. It wasn’t her fault she’d tried to bail on Thanksgiving! She’d seen Serena canoodling with a senior girl and just snapped, convinced she couldn’t bear to spend five days straight listening to Serena wax poetic about her new conquest. It was one thing to have a crush on your best friend; it was quite another to paste on a smile and pretend she didn’t. Serena had a firm “no dating friends” policy. To respect her desires, Claire had harbored her crush in secret for years. But that didn’t mean she had to torture herself for the sake of a holiday dinner.
But she couldn’t say any of that to Serena. Instead, she forced a smile. “Nope! We can do this. Just…I’ll be your soos chef, you tell me what to do.”
“You’ll be my what?”
“You know, like your second-in-command.”
Serena rolled her eyes dramatically. “It’s sous chef, but fine. Be that way. And hey, no filming, okay? I’m just not up for it anymore.”
And then she was gone, leaving Claire muttering to herself about how French words are always the absolute worst.
♥
Claire knew she wasn’t going to win any awards for chef-ery, but she was still surprised when the oven burst into flames shortly after she turned it on.
“Shit,” she whispered, crouching to peer at the fire. She hadn’t even put anything into the oven yet, she’d just set it to preheat — exactly what Serena had told her to do!
Okay, this was fine. She could fix this. She grabbed the pitcher of water from the fridge and took a deep breath, steeling herself to open the door and douse the flames. Just as she had a good grip on the oven door, Serena’s hand dropped on top of hers and pushed. Claire’s skin felt like it sizzled at the contact.
“Are you serious?” Serena demanded. Her huffed breath stirred the short hairs on the back of Claire’s neck and she repressed a shiver. She spun around to face Serena but moved too quickly and wound up off-balance. She would have fallen over if Serena hadn’t steadied her, reaching out quickly to grab her hand.
Again, the contact nearly took Claire’s breath away.
Then Serena yanked her hand out of Claire’s and glared. “You don’t open the oven after you set fire to it, Claire!” she said. “Haven’t you ever heard of oxygen?”
Claire scoffed. “What does that have to do with the fire, though?”
Serena rolled her eyes and reached behind Claire to turn the oven off, then busied herself unplugging all the appliances near the oven. “Oxygen feeds fire, Claire! With the door shut, it should go out on its own.”
“Okay,” Claire said, measuring her words carefully. She didn’t want to make Serena angrier, because once again, this was really all her fault. “I’m sorry.”
Serena took a deep breath and then deflated. She shook her head. “No, you’re fine. I’m just…it’s fine.” She gave Claire a weak smile, then turned around and started bashing the dough on the table with the rolling pin, bringing it up and slamming it down, rolling it across the table, then repeating the motions.
Serena was just absolutely going to town on the dough and the flour and the — Claire wasn’t entirely sure what the intent was, but the effect was deafening noise and flour everywhere. She’d never seen Serena act so aggressively. Without thinking about it, she reached out and put a hand on top of Serena’s from behind her.
And when her friend froze and sucked in a sharp breath, Claire didn’t stop to consider whether she was making smart decisions, because she was so caught up in the feeling of Serena, who was warm under her hand. For more than two years, she’d been lovesick over Serena, and yet every time she touched her, it still sent jolts of shock up and down her spine.
They stood like that for a few moments, not looking at each other at all, simply breathing in unison, their hands touching, before Serena cleared her throat and Claire hastily withdrew her hand. In doing so, she accidentally knocked over the bowl of flour, creating a large, white cloud that exploded in Serena’s face.
Claire took a quick step backward. Serena glared, but there was flour stuck to her eyelashes and tongue, and she looked so ridiculous that Claire couldn’t help herself — she laughed.
The two girls froze for a split second, before Serena said, “Oh, no, you don’t,” and Claire had the briefest of moments to try to duck before Serena tossed a fistful of flour in her face.
“Ack!” Claire screamed, and Serena laughed her uninhibited laugh, the one that sounded kind of like a donkey braying, the one that Claire loved, and then it was just chaos as the two girls darted toward the table, each scooping up handfuls of flour and blowing them in each other’s faces.
When that got out of control, they started batting at each other with flour-filled hands. Claire was choking on laughter and flour, tears sliding down her cheeks and leaving pasty tracks. Serena was cackling, and Claire shoved her, and Serena shoved her back, and then they were both laughing and leaning on each other like they had since the moment they’d first met during freshman year orientation and had an instant connection.
God, Claire had missed this.
♥
They took turns showering off the flour. Claire sighed as she toweled off her hair, slipping into the cute dress she'd picked up at the mall the weekend before to wear to today’s festivities, and headed back downstairs. The dress was a dusty orange.She’d thought it would work well with the Friendsgiving vibes, but it was also exceedingly flattering to her figure and there had been a part of her (there still was, honestly) that hoped she could take Serena’s breath away with it.
She walked into the kitchen and saw Serena, who was crouched in front of the oven inspecting the two pies. Serena had been busy while she showered.
“Wow,” she said. Then again, “wow.” Then finally, actual words: “These look great.”
She was impressed by most things Serena did, from the Italian culinary internship she’d scored as a high school senior to her ability to whip her hair into perfect French braids without looking in a mirror.
Serena twisted around to face her and flashed her a bright smile. “Thanks,” she said. “You know my mom would’ve had my head if I didn’t come up with some aesthetically-pleasing pies for Thanksgiving. Especially after I told her I was staying here with you instead of celebrating with them.”
She’d said it offhandedly, but as soon as the words were out of Serena’s mouth, Claire could have sworn the temperature in the room dropped by 10 degrees. Suddenly there was tension in the air between them again. Serena’s spine stiffened and her lips pressed into a thin line and she turned back to stare intently at the oven.
Claire decided she was done with this. “Serena, I only tried to bail because…” she trailed off. She’d never given Serena a reason for trying to bail last-minute, and she wasn’t a quick enough thinker to come up with one now. Serena stared at her, waiting. When Claire couldn’t come up with an answer, she shook her head dismissively.
“I don’t get it, Claire,” she said. “We’ve been talking about this all semester. I thought you were excited about the video series. You’d get practice behind the camera, and I’d get content to start a cooking channel. It’s a win-win and it honestly really hurts that you tried to bail like that.”
“I only did that because I saw you and — ” Claire cut herself off, breathing heavily, right before admitting what was weighing on her mind and heart. Her throat felt tight, like she couldn’t get air — where was oxygen when you needed it, right?
“You saw me and what?” Serena asked. Unlike Claire, she was calm, collected. Incredibly, infuriatingly composed.
Maybe that’s why Claire said it. Or maybe it was because she was tired of feeling stifled. She said, “I saw you and that senior girl, and sorry if I didn’t want to spend Thanksgiving hearing the girl I’ve been in love with for two years wax poetic about someone else!”
Serena’s mouth dropped open. It would have been comical if Claire weren’t spiraling over confessing her feelings to her best friend. “You’ve been in love with me for two years and you never said anything?” Serena demanded.
Claire blinked. That wasn’t the response she’d expected. “I mean…yeah?” she said, and Serena scoffed and turned her back on her. After a second, she whirled back around, glaring at Claire.
“Why?” she demanded.
“I didn’t want to ruin our friendship?” Claire answered, but the rationale that had kept her silent for so long was looking foolish now in the face of Serena’s annoyance and anger. It was almost enough to make her wonder if Serena didn’t have non-platonic feelings for her, too.
She couldn’t really focus on that at the moment, though, because Serena was advancing on her with a strange look in her eyes. It was part murderous challenge, part seduction, and it made Claire’s legs weak.
“What are you — ” she began, but didn’t finish her question because Serena’s face was suddenly inches away, her pupils blown wide, her tongue darting out to moisten her lower lip, and Claire couldn’t stop looking at her tongue, her mouth, her —
She choked back a gasp as Serena pressed her lips to hers, a gasp that quickly turned into a moan.
And then it was over, and Claire was breathing panting and clutching the door jamb to hold herself upright. When had she backed into the door? She didn’t know, all she knew was that Serena had kissed her and it had been everything but ended too soon. She leaned forward, chasing Serena’s lips, but the other girl put a finger to Claire’s mouth and shook her head.
“Not yet,” she whispered. “Not until you tell me why you didn’t confess your feelings for me sooner.”
“I told you,” Claire panted. “I didn’t want to ruin our friendship. I didn’t think you liked me…”
“And now?” Serena was half-smirking and Claire wanted to wipe that self-satisfied grin off her face, wanted to leave Serena feeling as boneless and wanting and breathless as she was.
“And now I think our friendship will be ruined if you don’t let me kiss you again and erase that smug look from your face.”
If anything, Serena looked even more smug at that. “Good,” she said, and then she was kissing Claire. Claire’s brain was short-circuiting because this was everything she hadn’t dared to hope for: her best friend kissing her and doing that thing with her tongue and her hands were sliding down Claire's torso, brushing the sides of her breasts, skimming her ribs, settling on her hips with a possessiveness that would have taken Claire’s breath away. If she’d had any breath to spare, that is.
They broke apart, both gasping for air, and Claire caught sight of Serena’s phone flashing on the counter with the timer for the turkey going off. “I think — ” she said.
“Stop thinking,” Serena demanded, and pushed her up against the wall, angling her thigh between Claire’s legs and kissing her again, and Claire complied because she had no choice but to kiss back with everything in her.
“I thought,” Claire panted when Serena moved her mouth to the space where her neck met her ear, “I thought you didn’t date friends.”
“Rules are made to be broken,” Serena responded. “I knew I liked you when you tried to bail on me and it broke my heart. Now shut up and let me kiss you.”
So Claire did.
They kissed until she started to smell something decidedly un-Serena-like: something burnt and smoky. “I think,” Claire said, and Serena leaned back to grin at her.
“What did I say about thinking?”
“But do you smell that?”
In a blink, Serena’s flirtatious grin was replaced by a look of panic, and she whirled around to the oven, which Claire now realized was the source of the smell. It was also emitting plumes of smoke. As one, Serena and Claire hollered, “The turkey!”
Serena rushed to turn the oven off, and Claire just stood there. When Serena turned to her questioningly, she grinned. “Oxygen,” she said. “The fire’ll go out on its own.”
Serena laughed, rested her hip against the counter, and took in Claire’s figure. “Why are you so far away from me?” she asked, then crooked a finger. “Get back here and let me finish kissing you.”
Hours later, when Serena and Claire showed up to Friendsgiving with mussed hair, swollen lips, a burnt turkey, and two perfect pies, it was the happiest Claire had felt in months.
Next week on Heartbeat, get ready for a short story from Amy Sariego.
Follow Heartbeat on Instagram at @storiesbyheartbeat for upcoming behind-the-scenes sneak peeks at Amy’s story!
Three quick things from Hannah:
I adore this interview with Joshua Safran, who co-wrote Gossip Girl’s iconic Thanksgiving episode in Season 3 (the one with the dinner scene set to that Jason Derulo earworm). I need to rewatch it ASAP.
I’m swooning so hard over the gorgeous cover of Meet Me at the Lake by Carley Fortune and can’t wait to read it.
Even if I weren’t talking to a bunch of romance readers, I’d recommend the Love Potion candle by Brooklyn Candle Company. It has notes of mandarin, lavender, and jasmine blossoms — it’s incredible. It’d make a great holiday gift.
What did you think of this week’s story? Let us know in the comments below!