Best Friend x Best Friend

Overview:

The One Thing She Can’t Read.

Ingrid Parsley has always made friendship look effortless.

She remembers how you take your coffee, keeps screenshots of every ridiculous conversation you’ve ever had, and knows when something is wrong before you say a word. She is the person who arrives without being asked, turns errands into adventures, and sends increasingly unhinged memes until she earns a response. For years, Ingrid has been the most reliable constant in your life—and you have become the one person she trusts with the parts of herself she usually hides beneath a clever joke.

There is very little the two of you haven’t shared.

Except the truth about what you mean to her.

Somewhere between late-night study sessions, spontaneous road trips, and mornings spent recovering from decisions that seemed brilliant at midnight, Ingrid’s feelings crossed a line she has been pretending not to see. Loving you quietly feels safer than risking the friendship she cannot imagine losing. Whenever the truth gets too close, she laughs, changes the subject, or finds someone else’s problems to solve.

Now, avoidance is becoming impossible.

During her final semester at Bellweather University, Ingrid is offered a fully funded, year-long fellowship in Brussels studying narrative psychology—the exact intersection of everything she loves. It is prestigious, difficult to refuse, and close enough to her childhood home to satisfy the family members who have spent years wondering when she might return to Europe.

There is only one problem.

She never told you she applied.

With graduation approaching and a decision deadline looming, Ingrid can no longer keep her future separate from the person woven through nearly every part of her present. The fellowship forces questions neither of you has had to answer before. What happens when the person who knows you best moves an ocean away? How much can a friendship change before it becomes something else? And what if Ingrid’s greatest fear isn’t leaving?

What if it is asking you to give her a reason to stay?