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I closed my eyes and let his steady breaths ease the tension from my body. Only for tonight. This was the last time we’d share a bed.
“You don’t come near her. You don’t breathe near her. You don’t even be in the same building as her.” His head bounced up and down like a bobblehead on a dashboard. “If she shows up to a party, coffee shop, library, whatever, you leave. Don’t even take time to gather up your shit. You walk out the door without a word or a look.”
First one suited up. First one ready for practice. First one to ride the bench all season.
These easy, fun moments made it hard to imagine my life without her. The thought of losing our Thursday movie nights was like a spike to my brain.
“Are you sure you’re going to be okay here with all of us gone?” Worries drummed inside my head. Chris. Her being alone. Her deciding to cook.
“Was that a guitar case?” “I think so.” She dropped her hand into the empty bowl and it sent the vibrations straight to my dick. “One day you’re going to have to ask him what the hell that’s about, because as far as I can tell, he doesn’t even play.”
I didn’t want our movie night to end. She yawned covering her mouth and shook out the last bits of popcorn into her hand. “Do you want to watch another one?”
I would take a moment, just one, to admire her. I brushed her wavy black strands away from her face. The curve of her nose had long ago been committed to my memory. It was so burnt into my brain that, from halfway across campus, I could pick out the slight upturn at the end and small dent in the side from when she was eight and fell out of a tree in my backyard.
“I’m going to miss you when I go to Michigan. I wish you could come with me, but it’s going to be cold as balls. The time is slipping away so quickly, and I don’t know what I’ll do if you go to Venice for two years. I’ll miss you even more.”
They were nothing alike. Her talking about them as if her relationship with my dad was anything like my friendship with LJ pissed me off even more. LJ could never do what Ron had done.
“Did you just try to friendly-advise me into trying to get pregnant by my best friend to weasel child support money out of him?” “Stop being so dramatic, Marisa. It’s not like you both wouldn’t get what you want out of the deal. It’s the least he could do for you.”
How the hell did I even know how to have a real relationship when my models were an absentee father and a narcissistic mother who only cared about herself?
“Listen, I’m sorry about the other night.” I cringed and ran my fingers over the collar to my shirt. The regret and guilt over him needing to jump in to save me sandbagged in my chest. His head snapped back like I’d flung a barbed-wire-wrapped salmon in his direction. “What the hell do you have to be sorry about?”
He was my rock. The one I could always count on. And his life was about to get a lot more complicated with a lot more demands on his time. More worthy demands.
There was no doubt he’d stand up for me no matter what—even if it wasn’t in his best interest. He was an annoyingly good best friend that way.
“Hey, LJ. Marisa was just asking why the hell you’re not playing much this season.” LJ’s face fell like he was looking over a hundred-foot ledge.
“Marisa, what happened?” LJ’s head tilted and he looked at me like a disappointed sitcom dad. “She tried to defrost eight pounds of chicken in the microwave—all at once—still in the wrapper.” Berk spoke around the cookies shoved in his face.
Marisa was banned from the kitchen without supervision. She’d accused me of calling her every hour while I was in Michigan. Maybe every other hour.
As hard as it had been to have her gone for the whole summer, seeing the happiness pouring off her in waves had helped. She deserved that and more.
I hated how much I needed him. I hated feeling needy. I hated feeling vulnerable. He could slice me in two with a word without even realizing it.
We’d always shopped for a gift together, but this year he’d said he wanted to get her something on his own. It was another hole poked in our fifteen-year friendship.
Ron was so great and took them out to find their Halloween costumes.” My head whipped from her to him.
When I’d tell Santa all I wanted was for Ron to come and rescue me. When my mom was so fucking drunk I had to drive us back from a restaurant at twelve years old.”
“And I was stuck with an alcoholic mother who was sure to tell me every single day how much I’d screwed up her life.”
“Marisa, why didn’t—” “I’m sick and tired of this. I didn’t tell you, LJ, because you didn’t even have the concept of what it was like to have a shitty parent.
We’d have done anything for you. Still will.” “And become a mooch or someone you felt you had to keep around? No. That’s not my deal.” “What the hell is wrong with you? Why do you keep talking about yourself like this?”
“There’s more than a few things you don’t want to know about me, LJ.” Trying to share them in the past had only gotten me hurt. He wanted to be my knight in shining armor, but I wasn’t his princess in the tower. I was his sidekick.
My mom loves you like a daughter. I lo—I can’t believe you kept all that from me for so long.”
“What else? Tell me. What things can’t you tell me?” About Venice and… “And things like, I like you. I’ve always liked you and you don’t feel the same way about me. So there. How about those new bits of information?”
His arms wrapped around me, holding me tight against him, and his lips were liquid fire crashing down on mine.
He kicked my door closed and went in for another kiss. The first hadn’t been a fluke, not by a long shot. This wasn’t a daydream. This wasn’t a fake out. This was happening.
If there was a time to not be a gentleman, it was now, but LJ being exactly who he was, it was why I loved him like I did.
He was watching me like I was the most precious thing in his life.
“I’m all yours, L.”
“I bought them myself.” She moved under the blankets, the wheels turning and gears grinding even louder. “When?” “Senior year of high school.”
“You’re a virgin?”
“They weren’t you.”
“I—I’m a virgin too. Well, I was…”
Holy shit, Marisa was a virgin. I’d devirginized her. Those words detonated in my skull.
“I know, I should’ve been doing it years ago.” Her gaze narrowed and she grabbed a pillow, whacking me with it. “Too late now. I’ve got the first place spot on your bedpost.”
Things didn’t feel one bit awkward. It felt like us, but better. I wanted more of this. A lot more.
“What a pair we are—two 22-year-old virgins.”
“Especially since I got the Guggenheim Fellowship. I’ll leave for Venice two weeks after graduation.” The war between pride and happiness brought out the big guns, trying to push out hesitancy, heartache and hatred for a whole damn city.
And he had the hots for Jules, but liked to pretend he didn’t.
“I told you we should’ve left a half hour earlier.” The responsible guy. My responsible guy.
I’ll have to braid it. It looks like I was stuck in a category 5 hurricane.” “Let me do it. Turn sideways.”
Resting my head against the head rest, I looked to the one guy who’d been a fixture in my life since one of the worst years I’d ever lived through. He’d shown up in my life at the exact moment I’d needed him—when my dad left.
Going to LJ’s house was a knife that cut both ways. It was a window into a family I loved with my whole heart, and one I’d always felt I’d be on the outside of.
Charlie stepped beside Jill and wrapped his arm around her. “A toast, to the most wonderful wife a guy could have. The kind who will tell me how stupid I look in a new pair of pants, but it doesn’t stop her from squeezing my butt when I’m cooking her birthday meal.”
“She could scoop the cookie dough.” He leaned in and whispered into her ear. A shudder ripped through her. “I’d blocked that from my memory.
