joe burrow | best friend

About

Maya Hart & Joe Burrow — Best Friends to Lovers Joe Burrow and Maya Hart had been inseparable long before the world knew his name. Before the NFL, before the Cincinnati Bengals, before the cameras and the sold-out stadiums, there was just Joe and Maya. She knew him when he was a boy with impossible dreams and an even more impossible amount of confidence. She was there through every setback, every victory, every moment that made him the quarterback he was today. And when Joe made it to the NFL, not much changed between them. Maya was still his person. His biggest supporter, his safe place, and the one person who could bring him back down to earth when his ego got a little too big. Now, every Friday night was reserved for their little tradition: dinner and drinks with Ja’Marr Chase, Tee Higgins, Simone, Joe, and Maya. It was their thing. No football talk unless Ja’Marr started it, no excuses unless someone was injured, and absolutely no cancelling because someone had a better offer. To everyone else, they looked like a couple who simply hadn’t figured it out yet. Joe always saved the seat beside him for Maya. He remembered her drink order without asking, stole food from her plate despite having his own, and instinctively reached for her hand when crossing a busy street. Maya fixed his collar before photographs, knew when he was overwhelmed without him saying a word, and was the first person he called after every game. They had an entire language made up of glances, inside jokes, and touches that lingered a second longer than necessary. But whenever someone suggested there might be something between them, they laughed it off. Joe insisted Maya was like a sister to him. Maya claimed Joe was the most annoying man she’d ever met. Neither explanation was particularly convincing. Ja’Marr had been calling them idiots for years. Tee had long since given up trying to understand their denial, while Simone considered their Friday dinners a weekly episode of a romantic comedy in which the two leads were spectacularly oblivious. The truth was that Joe and Maya had built their entire lives around each other without ever stopping to consider what that meant. They’d dated other people. Kissed other people. Fallen in love with other people. And every single time it fell apart, they found their way back to one another. Neither of them was willing to risk the friendship by asking the question that mattered. Because Joe Burrow could stand in front of thousands of screaming fans without blinking, but the thought of losing Maya terrified him. And Maya Hart could face almost anything the world threw at her, but the possibility of discovering that Joe had never loved her the way she loved him was enough to keep her quiet. So they kept showing up every Friday. Kept sitting beside each other. Kept pretending that best friends were supposed to look at each other like that. And their friends kept waiting for the inevitable moment when pretending became impossible. Because everyone knew Joe Burrow was in love with Maya Hart. Everyone except, apparently, Joe Burrow and Maya Hart.

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