Falling for Your Best Friend (Love Clichés, #4)

by Emma St. Clair

Dear Dr. Love, What if you really screw up? What if you tell the guy you love that you don’t love him? And it’s not true, but he believes you and lets you go—what then? I hoped he might understand. I secretly hoped he might chase me. But he didn’t. I don’t think I’ll ever get him back. Harpy, I hope you don’t mind that Taylor recognized your email and let me know it was you. We’re going to get you through this. I promise. Okay? Call me when you get this. -Sam

So. Wholesome.

It was that rare smile, the one he saves just for me.

Harper probably assumed that I asked her to run for her sake, but it was as much for mine. I was furious, running off the flame of rage. But it didn’t help. Hours later, and I’m still furious and anxious and now paranoid, wondering if everyone in the world knows that I’m in love with Harper.

Harper’s gaze drops to my mouth. SHE IS LOOKING AT MY MOUTH. Don’t lick your lips. Don’t move. Be still. Don’t scare her away. Let her come to you. I am a human, standing in the forest with a woodland creature approaching cautiously. I can almost hear the Discovery Channel narration in my head. The wild Harper is testing him, watching to see if he makes a move, searching for his scent in the air. Curiosity is getting the better of her. It looks like she’s going to move in … Easy … Easy now …

But it’s Harper that my body is attuned to. She’s the one making my skin prickle and my fingertips twitch.

Whatever the case, she isn’t broken. She’s just … Harper.

“Stop questioning your sexy,” Abby says from behind me, not even looking at me, like she just knows. “Chase is going to die. You ready?” For once, rather than protest that Chase and I are just friends, I don’t say a single word. Because my brain got snagged thinking about his reaction, imagining heat in his gaze as he takes me in, considering possibilities that I shouldn’t be considering because they really aren’t possibilities.

It was always a long game to me, getting to this moment right here, where Harper is in my arms.

I lick my lips. “I know it’s the most clichéd statement in the world, but this is all me. Not you. Not even one percent you.”

Twenty minutes later, I’m sitting in a chair in the living room with my arms crossed. My four best friends are crammed on the couch, watching me. Waiting. Abby mirrors my pose, and Zoey has one eyebrow raised. She and I should have an eyebrow-raise battle to the death. I’m not sure who would win.

“I lost the challenge, but Zane won me a bunch of stuffed animals.”

That’s Abby. Pain in the butt. Nosy and in your face as all get-out, but with sweetness buried under her layers of sarcasm.

Or maybe my obsession with the Ocean’s Eleven movies have made too much of a false impression on me.

Yesssss, Harpy!!

“You didn’t sign the email ‘Dating Grandpa Gosling’?” the host asks, playing up the disbelief and shaking his head at the audience, eliciting the same response. “No,” the woman says firmly. The audience grumbles, and Grandpa Gosling shifts uncomfortably. Sam throws a pillow at the screen. “Maybe she didn’t give him the name, but she did compare him to a grandpa. And tepid bathwater. Beige! She called him beige!” Her phone rings, and without looking at the screen, Sam answers. “Yeah, I’m watching. I know! What a pack of low-fat baloney.”

The whole ride back to the office so far, Chase has been silent. I swear, he’s seething, his body holding all the tension of a rubber band pulled to its limit. I’m sitting on my hands to keep them from curling into fists. I’ve already apologized, but he’s said nothing.

Without realizing it, I’ve given Chase tons of my heart, and I’ve been silently requiring the same from him in return.

She nods but still has that tortured look on her face. I want to shake her, to shout, to demand that she tell me why she rejected me and still wants to keep me hanging around. I hate to think of Harper as selfish. But we don’t always know ourselves all that well, and I’m beginning to wonder if I’m a crutch for her. She doesn’t want me, but she doesn’t want to let me go either. Does she think I can just keep existing in this limbo where I love her but she doesn’t love me back?

My heart does a funny little twist. He’s being flirty, and I love it.

When I meet Abby the next day for lunch, I’m not surprised to see her sporting a headband with a unicorn horn.

This part still makes me so happy. 🥰🦄

Now, I just have to get through the rest of today and find some kind of Chelsea repellent.

“I’m going to start heading to bed. Need any other help?” I force myself to look at Chase, something I’ve been avoiding all day. His eyes make me feel too much. Good and bad.

“Harper? Are you … crying?” “No.” I sniff again. Totally busted. Giving up on the idea of not moving, I shift to wipe my damp cheeks. “You are,” he says, concern rising in his voice. “Harp, what’s wrong?” What isn’t wrong? I feel like I’m standing in the doorway of a trashed hotel room, with only the vague memory of trashing it myself. I am the only one who can clean up the mess. No one is coming to save me. And I don’t need them to. But I do need to stop the waterworks so I can talk to Chase without my voice trembling and my nose running all over my face.

Honestly, it’s a solid question. Chase, for the first time since I’ve known him, has smooth, bare cheeks. No beard at all, only pale white skin where his beard used to be. He shaved his beard. HE SHAVED HIS BEARD.

Chase groans and closes his eyes before turning his face to the ceiling. From this angle, I can see his smooth, pale neck. His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows, and the movement is magnetic. I find myself wanting to trace a finger along the curve of his throat, then follow it with my lips. All that smooth skin. Now, I do gasp, because CHASE SHAVED HIS BEARD AND I KNOW EXACTLY WHY. I got it when he walked in, but now I really get it. He did this for me. For us. My heart shifts a little in my chest, like it just swooned in there. I hope not, because I really need that thing to function at peak levels right now. “Go to your rooms,” I say, getting to my feet. “Sam, Abby. Now.”

“You shaved,” I say. Chase runs a hand over his cheek, which, as Abby brought up, is remarkably pale. He’s got a reverse-beard tan, and it would be hilarious if it weren’t so sweet. And sexy. One hundred percent sexy. The nervousness in my stomach, which has shifted to something more like excited anticipation, agrees. “I feel so weird,” Chase says. “I look so weird.” “You look … amazing. Different. But I love it. I love—” I catch myself and my cheeks grow hot at what I almost admitted. Clearing my throat, I say, “I really love it.”

“You drive a hard bargain, woman,” Chase says, pulling back just enough that I can meet his eyes. “But you are completely worth it.”