Lez practically jumped on me when I'd just barely set my eyes on my house.

Screaming, my knees buckled beneath me, and I fell to the pavement with Lez collapsing beside me.

Lying on her back, she let out a loud guffaw. "Oh my God."

Regaining my wits, I pushed myself up off the ground and gave her the stink-eye. "You scared me to my grave."

"Good!" Just when I thought her laughter would subside - nope, it just got louder. Ear-piercing, even.

Muttering a few choice words under my breath, I reached out a hand to help her up.

I don't know why the possibility hadn't occurred to me before, but when Lez's hand wrapped around mine and I felt a tug was when I realized.

But it was too late, because I was already falling.

Onto Lez.

That was a consolation, at least.

She wasn't laughing so much anymore when I squashed her like an elephant's foot coming down on a mouse. That is, if elephants weren't afraid of mice. Although, it could have just been because she'd had the wind audibly knocked out of her.

"Karma sure was quick today." A self-satisfied grin snaking its way across my face, I bounced to my feet, this time not bothering to extend my graciousness to helping Lez up.

She still had the audacity to let out a wheezing laugh as she got to her own feet. Her twinkling eyes regarded me. "Thanks for taking the time out of your Loverboy schedule to hang out with your best friend. I really appreciate it."

Loverboy. Oh God.

She would have dropped dead in five seconds flat had looks been able to kill.

There was no point trying to tell her off, so I just mumbled darkly, "You're welcome."

Taking my arm in hers, she dragged me into - Oh. I'd been standing in front of her house. Now, how had that slipped my mind?

It had been focused on other matters. Like Emerson. Alone. Injured.

Once in Lez's room, the door shut and her eyes bright and excited, my mind was turned back to her "YUMMY news". "What d'you wanna tell me?"

She smacked my arm. "Be more excited, Emerson!"

I suppressed a sigh, then forced my face into a perky grin and chirped, "Gurl, what d'you wanna tell me?!"

A satisfied smile. "Better. Okay! So!" She clapped suddenly, bouncing on her heels, startling me. She practically hopped about the room.

Lez always had been an easily excitable girl, but this topped the cake. My interest now piqued, I asked her warily, "Erm... Lez...?"

"Hmm? Oh, yeah." She had been distracted. Was Lez ever distracted?

I didn't know whether or not to be scared of what she wanted to tell me. "The suspense is killing me, Lesleigh."

She didn't usually like me to full-name her - gay and proud, remember? She much preferred to be called Lez, as a nod to her out status (not that she would ever let anyone forget it), and she damn well didn't want to hide it.

But she didn't care. Halting suddenly, regarding me with wide eyes and a wide smile, she blurted out, "I finally kissed a girl. This morning."

At first, all I could do was gape at her while she worried her bottom lip as she stared at me, waiting with, I could imagine, bated breath for my reaction.

Then, squealing, I leaped on her, tackling her so she stumbled backwards, and wrapped her in a hug. Or maybe it was more like I clung to her like a sloth to a tree.

"Oh my God." A breathless scream. "Your first kiss."

I could feel her nod vigorously. "I know right! She is so cute and she tasted so good." A dreamy sigh drifted past her lips.

At that, my heart seized in my chest, and I had to force myself not to let my grin drop, even if she couldn't see it.

It wasn't that I wasn't happy for Lez. She's my best friend, and she'd never been very pleased about not having had a first kiss, so I understood how she was so ecstatic.

But try as I might, I couldn't take away the sting of jealousy that shot through me. Lez had had her first kiss. Lez was beautiful and bubbly and, despite some flaws, she was a good friend. A great friend. At the core, she had only my best interests at heart. Well, sometimes hers as well.

And then there was me. I was everything she wasn't. Even at the most basic level of comparison, where she was light-haired and light-eyed, I was dark-haired and dark-eyed.

I'd looked in the mirror, and I didn't kid myself into thinking I could compare to her beauty. My hair was limp, making me look like a drowned rat even when I was freezing my butt off, and was an unruly mess of tangles. My face wasn't exactly what you would call nice. Wide-set, smallish eyes, a nose so big it could have been its own landmark, a small, chapped mouth, a face shape that didn't help matters.

I looked like a bowling ball.

And Lez? She looked like an honest-to-God model, with her big blue eyes and brown-streaked blonde curls (which I'd always joked about to her, saying she was as straight as her hair), fully-kissable lips, and svelte figure.

Frankly, if she'd told anyone else she'd only just had her first kiss at sixteen going on seventeen, they wouldn't have believed her.

And selfish as it was, right now I was wondering, Where is my first kiss?

Forcing myself to clear my head of such thoughts, I managed to get out, "I'm really happy for you. I mean it."

She squeezed me. "Thank you."

I drew away from her grip, cocking my head at her curiously. "So, are you two dating now? Who is she, anyway? Do I know her?"

Lez's pealing laughter caused my heart to wrench further. "She was an old classmate. I'm not really sure if you know her. But she just recently had the courage to come out, and I was at the mall the other day when she came up to me and..." A wistful, reminiscing smile crossed her face.

Wait. "This was before yesterday?"

Lez blushed crimson and looked away, reminding me of those cartoon characters who would act as if nothing was the matter by holding their hands behind their backs and whistling merrily. She sure looked like she wanted me to stop pressing the matter.

Her silence was all the confirmation I needed.

When she still didn't reply, I took a cue from her book and persisted, "And you didn't think to tell me you'd met someone?"

She met my gaze from beneath her lashes, looking meek. Was this even the Lez I knew? The one who commanded attention to her wherever she went? Who wouldn't even look away when you caught her looking at you?

Affronted, I glared at her. "I told you about Emerson!" Albeit, it was after much persuasion from her, but the end negates the means, to completely butcher an old saying.

She coughed into her fist. "Um, yeah."

"What happened to best friends? From the womb to the tomb? Since when have you started keeping secrets from me?" I steamrolled on, throwing her words back at her, my voice getting louder with every sentence.

So she would come out to me, cry on my shoulder when her extended family all seemed to shun her because she wasn't straight, text me whenever she found a new celebrity crush - I still remembered the time the world went crazy over Ruby Rose and Lez practically drooled at the thought of her, which cost me many a night staying up late with her saying "yes, she's hot" and "of course you stand a chance with her!" - but she would keep a crush on a person she had actually met face-to-face a secret?

But was I really one to talk? I wouldn't have told her about Emerson had she not been so persistent.

She sighed and reached out to wrap her arms around me. I stiffened, but didn't pull away.

"I'm sorry, Em. I guess I now know how you felt about me forcing you to tell me about Emerson."

I wanted to snap at her, and I opened my mouth to do just that when a thought struck me.

Maybe it wasn't her my anger was directed at, per se. Maybe it had more to do with my envy. Maybe I was just jealous that she was finding happiness in her love life while I was seventeen and had never even kissed a boy, much less had a boyfriend. Maybe I was just hurt that she hadn't rushed to tell me as soon as she met someone she liked.

Maybe I didn't have a right to be any of those things. Lez had come out to me first, had confided in me about her first kiss. I should be happy for my best friend, not acting like a bitter old crone.

"Hark! Was that an apology I heard coming from Lez's lips or did my ears deceive me?!"

She drew away, scowling ferociously, and slapped my shoulder.

I let out an exaggeratedly loud cry and clapped my hand over the spot where she had hit me, crumpling to the floor, gasping for air. "I - I'm - dying. You killed" - a loud sucking in of air - "me!" I tilted my head to the side and stuck my tongue out in a spot-on impression of a corpse.

Lez's face hovered over mine, and although her lips were downturned, I could tell she was fighting not to burst out laughing. "Quit playing."

"I'm really dead."

"I wish," she muttered, but reached a hand down. I briefly considered doing the same trick to her as she had done to me just now, but discarded the thought. I would be nice. This time.

Grabbing on to her hand, I let her do the heavy lifting, until I was once again situated on my two feet.

My anger hadn't entirely dissipated, but right now, it was directed at myself. For being such a selfish, bitter bitch. For ruining Lez's happiness with my foul jealousy.

Making her plop herself onto her bed, I stood before her with my hands propped on my hips, an eyebrow arched. "Well, what happened? Tell me everything."

Her eyes lit up like fairy lights on a Christmas tree during... um... Christmas. (Another bad analogy by yours truly. I wondered if I could add that to my scorebook.)

"I saw her the other day while I was at the mall all alone because you" - she shot me a glare - "were busy. She approached me, and at first I was so confused and I was thinking 'Oh shit is she going to make fun of me?'." At this, Lez bit her lip.

A fist closed over my heart. Lez never outwardly expressed it, but even though she was gay and proud, even though she wanted the world to know she was most definitely homosexual, even though she always brushed it off, the various insults that had been chucked at her back when she had graced the school hallways had gotten to her.

My little Lez was afraid. She had had to deal with stupid jokes in school, with sensitive straight students shying out of her way as she passed them, with sneaky looks and sniggering, with loud, unconcealed gossip.

Granted, her parents had been more than accepting of Lez being lesbian, but her relatives - they were a different story. Lez always dragged me along to her family gatherings, and honestly, the adults were no better than the students, but they were even worse at masking their disgust and contempt, if that was even possible.

The worst was when she had once gathered up her courage to ask out this girl she had been majorly crushing on for the longest time, and if the rejection wasn't bad enough, it was the vile look the girl had thrown her as she'd said it, then walked off without a second glance backward, gathering with her group of friends and openly insulting Lez.

And it had all chipped at Lez, beat at her and broken her down, until that night after the failed asking out she had come to my room at 2a.m. and burst into tears, a loud, snotty affair.

But now, Lez's bright eyes had nothing to do with tears. Instead, she plunged ahead with her recounting of events, "So she said 'Hi' and she had the cutest blush. And I went 'Hello' and she was like 'Um I'm gay and I like you' and I was just caught off guard."

Her storytelling skills left little to be desired, but for now, I would attribute it to her being caught up in excitement. I nodded for her to continue.

Her hands began to move in sweeping gestures as she got more animated. "So she asked me out on a date, and of course I said yes! We went on one the day before I met up with you, and she was perfect, I swear." At this, a dreamy sigh escaped her lips. "She was so cute and nervous and babbled and after that I asked her out, so yesterday, she came over to my house for a sleepover."

I had to interject there. "Your parents allowed you to have a sleepover with a girl?"

Lez grinned. "My parents reasoned that it's not like I can get knocked up even if we did have sex, right?" She lifted a shoulder and let it fall in a shrug. "We didn't do anything, though. We just lay on the floor and talked and got to know each other better, and then we went to sleep and this morning, when I woke up, she was looking at me and grinning and she looked so stunning even with bed head and then she just - she just kissed me. And I swear, Em, it was wonderful and perfect and I'm so happy right now!"

I made a face. "You didn't brush your teeth? That's disgusting."

She impaled me with a frosty glare. "Don't ruin it."

I held my hands up, palms out, and let out a laugh. "Okay, okay." I was happy for her, though, that Lez had had her first kiss and in her own words, it was 'wonderful and perfect'. She deserved it, after all the shit she'd been dragged through.

But I was now curious to put a name to the mental picture I had of Lez's new girl. "What's her name?"

Lez grinned widely. "It's not as exciting as you and Loverboy, what with you two having the same name, but her name is Sophie."

I had expected something more than a common name, judging from the way Lez had spoken of her - as if she hung the sun in the sky, and rainbows shined out of her butt. I also chose to ignore the 'Loverboy' comment. "I don't know a Sophie, but I'm glad she confessed to you." I reached out and grabbed Lez's hands, squeezing them in my own and giving her a genuinely warm smile. "You deserve it, Lez."

She pulled me into a hug. "Thank you. I'm so glad that I have her now. And I'm so glad I have you. Love you, Em."

"Love you too."

But now I couldn't help wondering:

Lez had me, and now Sophie. I had Lez.

Who did Emer have?

[A/N: Hello! So this chapter focuses more on Em and Lez's friendship, and also hopefully provides more information about Lez. Because Lez deserves more facetime and I don't want one of those friendships which don't even seem real because there's more telling than showing and then as the story progresses the friend disappears. Like no.

If you read this and liked it, I wouldn't mind you voting! Just sayin' ;) Byeeee]