His expression relaxed somewhat. “No, you didn’t protest at all.”
Ah ha. So he did remember the begging.
I twisted my hand in his grasp so that our palms faced each other and laced my fingers in his. The way we fit together was natural.
He didn’t pull away, and the charge around us amplified and energized. I felt alive from the pulse in the air. If this had always existed between us, how had I resisted it for so long?
“Last night...Brett…” I wasn’t scared to tell him how I felt now. Just awkward in how to word it. “I had a really good time.”
“Yeah? I did too.” His thumb now stroked the outside of my thumb, and holy hell, that simple caress sure made a mess between my thighs.
“Like...a really good time.”
“Good.”
“Like...maybe we should do that more often.”
He chuckled as he removed his hand from mine. Not in a rejection sort of way, but in an I-need-my-hands-to-fix-my-own-plate kind of way. “You mean like a friends with benefits kind of thing?” he asked as he turned back to pour the rest of the egg mixture into the skillet.
“Um, maybe? I was actually thinking more like…” Now the nerves were returning. Talking to his backside both helped and didn’t. In some ways, it was easier to be vulnerable without his eyes on me. In other ways, his eyes were the main thing telling me that this connection between us was real.
“More like?”
“You know, we’re already so close. We spend all our time together. We know each other’s secrets. And we...care about each other. Add in sex and that kind of defines a romantic relationship.”
He froze.
At least, it looked like he did.
It was a little hard to tell from where I sat. Maybe he was just waiting for the eggs to cook before he flipped them, but it did seem like his back got straighter and his shoulders tensed, and he held that pose for what felt like hours.
It was probably only a handful of seconds later when he reached to grab the bowl of Gouda he’d shredded earlier and poured it into the skillet. “I thought we said we weren’t going to let last night get in the way of our friendship.”
“We did.” I hadn’t been prepared for this sort of response. Honestly, I hadn’t prepared myself for any response except banging on the kitchen counter again, and it took a moment to figure out what to say next. “This isn’t getting in the way of our friendship, though. This is adding to it.”
When he didn’t say anything, I said more. “Trying it out anyway. Seeing if it works.”
Why wouldn’t it work? We already worked. Didn’t last night prove we worked?
“I’m listening. I’m just…” He folded the omelette in half. “Thinking.”
The fact that there was anything to think about was baffling. And irritating. “You’ve invited me to live with you before.”
“Now you want to live together?”
“No.” This was not going well at all. “It just seems if you’re offering to share a lease that you’re already invested in our relationship long term.”
“Of course I’m invested. We’re good friends.”
I ignored the emphasis he placed on the F word. “Really, it’s amazing we haven’t tried to be a couple before this.”
He flipped his eggs over, waited a few long seconds, then slid the meal onto his waiting plate before turning to face me. “You’ve never said anything about considering us an Us before now.”
I hadn’t.
But neither had he.
I swallowed. “You haven’t thought about it?”
When I’d asked the question the night before, his expression had opened up, and I’d seen into this vault of stored emotions. He’d thought about me a lot. He’d wanted me a lot.
But now his face was hard, and the vault was completely closed. “That’s just not where I see us going.”
“Oh.” My eyes pricked.
Fuck. It had been a long time since I’d actually cried over a boy. “Crying” over Scott had really just been code for “I’m going to eat a lot of ice cream and feel sorry for myself.”
This rejection felt completely different.
That cliché about the knife through the gut? That was how this felt. Jagged and deep and it was not my fault if Brett got blood all over his hardwood floors.
“Edie…I’m sorry.”
The nickname had turned me into an inferno the night before. Now it felt patronizing. Come on, Edie. Get it together.
“No, no, no. Don’t be sorry. It was just an idea.” A fucking lame idea, apparently. Though I couldn’t really make sense of that because hadn’t he always shown signs that he liked me?
“You’re just feeling emotional because of Scott.”
“Yes, yes, totally it.” It wasn’t it at all, but I was happy to cling on to any excuse for the very apparent tears I was blinking back.
“Give it a week, and things will be back to where they were between the two of you.”
Was that what this was about? He thought I was rebounding from Scott? “I’m done with him.”
“I know.”
“For real this time.”
“Good! I’m glad.” He was glad, but he didn’t believe me. It was written all over his...everything.
And that made the tears slow.
Because he wasn’t actually rejecting me, and this thing between us wasn’t a bad idea—he just didn’t believe I meant it.
So now I just needed some time to show him that I did.
Chapter Six
“Have you seen Brett today yet? Has he said anything about the dress?”
I leaned an elbow on my desk and hid my face, as though that could hide me from the woman on the other side of the phone.
But there was no hiding from Avery. She knew by now that I didn’t answer my cell phone during work hours, and had taken to calling the main line—which I was responsible for answering—instead.
“If he hasn’t complimented you in that dress,” she went on, “he’s a dick, is all I’m saying. That dress is fire.”
This was the problem with borrowing clothes from her. It made it harder to pretend I’d dressed for myself instead of to get Brett’s attention.
“God, I wish I’d never told you,” I groaned. “Wait. I didn’t tell you. I wish I’d never told Nolan.”
“You should have told me.”
No, I should have kept my mouth shut. Telling Nolan had meant that Avery was at the door waiting to greet me when I’d finally made it home on Sunday, and because I hated looking like a total loser in front of my goddess of a sister, I’d had to reframe my rejection into something less rejectiony.
“We’re feeling things out,” I said, repeating what I’d said then. “Remember? Taking things slow. Don’t start making plans for renovating my room yet.”
She sighed in a way that made me think she really had been making plans for my departure. “What exactly does feeling things out mean?” As though she hadn’t asked every day this week.
It was Friday.
It had been a long week.
I pulled a Post-it note off the pad on my desk and wrote buy lottery ticket and underlined it twice. She wanted me gone? Well good luck finding an insta-babysitter when I won the Powerball. “It means we aren’t rushing into changing our relationship. If something more happens, it happens.”