I cup her face, tilting it up to mine, bringing her lips closer—
Parker turns her head.
“Don’t do this,” she says with a harsh gasp.
My blood feels like it’s turning to ice water in my veins.
Except…
I
know
she wants it. It’s written all over her face. I know it because I know
her.
She wants me, and the thought gives me a flare of hope like I’ve never—
“Please, Ben,” she says, her voice small, her eyes pleading. “Please don’t make a cheater out of me.”
Right.
Right.
Because she’s with Lance now. Again.
And I’m sort of with Lori.
And then, because I’ve never been able to deny Parker Blanton anything that she wanted, and what she wants is
Lance,
I release her.
Slowly, though, my fingers savoring the familiar soft skin.
And then I let her go.
I let her go all the way then, because she’s my best friend.
And because I care way too much to hurt her any more than I already have by keeping her close.
So.
Ben and Lori broke up.
If you could even call what they had
being together.
“It doesn’t even make sense,” Lori is saying, tapping her pen furiously against her notebook as she sits next to me in the conference room. “We didn’t even…”
She glances around at the still mostly empty room.
“
You
know.”
I try to ignore the thrill that this news gives me.
Ben and Lori never slept together.
It shouldn’t matter to me, but it matters so damn much I can barely breathe.
“Maybe because he respects you more than all those other girls,” I say kindly. “Knows that you deserve more than
wham bam thank you ma’am.
”
Her pen taps even faster. “But if that’s true, then why did he end it? Like, he didn’t see me as the good-time girl
or
the long-term girl.”
I purse my lips. “Tell me again what he said, exactly.”
She gives me a strange look. “I’ve told you like two times already. Honestly,
you’re
supposed to be the one doing the talking. He’s your BFF. Explain him to me!”
I hesitate. I’ve yet to tell Lori that Ben and I aren’t exactly on speaking terms, and I’m a little surprised she hasn’t seemed to pick up on this. Neither has Lance. It makes no sense to me. I’ve never felt more alone, more lost, and two of the people closest to me don’t even notice.
And the person who’s
supposed
to be closest to me—my best friend—isn’t even
kind of
my friend anymore.
“He just said I deserved more,” Lori says with a shrug, after it becomes obvious that I have nothing to add to the conversation.
“I don’t even know what that means,” she continues. “More
what
? Then he started talking about his job, and his family, and something about how his older brother just got some sort of public service award that he’ll never get, and he’s saying all of this, and all I can think is, wait, so I’m not even going to get laid?”
Lori is sitting to my right, and a dramatic sigh comes from my left. We both turn to give an irritated look to Eryn.
Too late, I realize that while our conversation started as a whisper, it got increasingly louder as Lori got more and more upset.
Eryn confirms that she overheard everything with a snide remark. “You do know there are better places to talk about your love life than the conference room?”
Lori lifts a finger, and I can tell she’s getting ready to go all diva, but I gently push her hand down. “Eavesdrop much?” I ask Eryn.
She doesn’t look even remotely sheepish as she turns to face us more fully.
Eryn gives a quick glance around to ensure our boss still hasn’t shown up, and that the only two other people in the room are at the far opposite end of the enormous conference table, one talking on her phone, the other playing what seems to be
Words with Friends.
“You guys are talking about Ben Olsen, right? Parker’s bestie?”
Neither Lori nor I confirm, but she keeps prattling on anyway. “It’s so
obvious
what’s going on with him. Inferiority complex.”
I scoff. “You’ve met him, what, like, five times at company functions?”
“Yes. And all the times he’s tagged along as your plus-one at team happy hours, or whatever. I have to do something while you guys are all ignoring me, so I watch.”
I feel a little sting of guilt. Eryn’s so flipping annoying that it’s never really occurred to me that maybe part of the reason she’s so obnoxious is because she’s always on the outside.
I wonder which comes first…someone being left out in the cold because they’re annoying, or someone becoming annoying because they’re left out.
“Look, you said he just got promoted, right?” Eryn asks.
Lori’s eyes bug out. “Exactly how often do you eavesdrop?”
Eryn waves at this. “Oh, all the time. You guys talk super loud, and keep in mind our cubicle walls only come up to boob level. Not exactly soundproof. Anyway, so Ben’s recently been promoted but refuses to tell anyone about it, which means he thinks he doesn’t deserve it. He also has, like, an endless string of bimbos, and then he finds someone he thinks is nice”—Eryn gives a skeptical once-over of Lori here—“and he dumps her because she deserves more?”
I stare at her, my mind racing.
Eryn gives one last snotty little shrug. “Like I said. Inferiority complex. The guy thinks he’s no good at anything—that he doesn’t deserve better.”
Lori starts to lay into Eryn about how she doesn’t know crap and how she should get her own life, but I sit back in my chair, taking in everything Eryn’s just said.
Because while Lori’s right—Eryn doesn’t know Ben—I think she might actually be right about this.
Oh my God.
Lori and Eryn’s catfight is interrupted by the appearance of our boss, and I try to focus on the meeting. I really do.
But I keep hearing Eryn’s words over and over.
He thinks he’s no good at anything—that he doesn’t deserve better.
Suddenly I’m replaying everything.
The way he denied deserving that damn promotion.
The way he refused to tell anyone about it.
I replay the way he clams up
every
time he has to go home to visit his all-star family.
The way he plays down everything important about himself, and instead jokes only about his
Call of Duty
skills or his prowess in the bedroom.
And then, worst of all, I replay the fight we had the day before I moved out.
The one where I’d all but laughed out loud at the thought that he could actually be somebody’s boyfriend.
My reaction had been borne out of shock—maybe even jealousy—but what if Ben saw it differently?
What if
he
thinks
I
think that he’s not
capable
of being a good boyfriend?
What if he thinks I think that nobody would want to date him?
The thought makes my heart hurt, because as at odds as we are right now, I know that Ben cares what I think, just like I care what he thinks.
I am—I
was
—important to him, and I’d all but told him he was good for nothing more than a roll in the hay.
And this thing with Lori…
Does he think he’s not good enough for her?
I start to get angry the more that I think about it, because Ben is good enough for
anybody.
Ben is the freaking
best.
But just as I start to get really good and fired up about this, I deflate.
Once upon a time, I could have been his champion. The one who’d go find him right this second and give an animated monologue about how he was being an idiot and that any girl would be more than lucky to have him love her.
I could have done that once. But not now. Because I’m too afraid that I’ll slip up. Say something I shouldn’t.
Something like
I want to be that girl.
Turns out, I kind of like living alone.
John didn’t work out as a roommate. His landlord freaked at the thought of him moving out, so he gave John a killer deal to stay at his old place.
Which means that I’m still on the hunt for a new roommate, but I’m not in a hurry.
Parker rather decently volunteered to pay two months of her share of the rent, given the short notice of her move. Plus, the recent promotion at work came with a nice boost in salary.
For the first time ever, money’s really not an issue. It feels very…adult.
Of course, the extra income didn’t take any of the pain out of dropping my credit card at Portland City Grill that night with Lori.
Not that the meal with Lori had been unpleasant.
It had been fine.
But that was the night it hit me: Lori deserved more than
fine
.
She was a nice girl who deserved more than a guy who’d really agreed to date her only to prove a point to a friend.
And that’s the real kicker.
I’d said yes to Lori mainly to prove Parker wrong, only to belatedly realize that Parker didn’t give a shit one way or another who I dated, or even
if
I dated.
Parker had moved on. And moved out.
“Wanna go out?” This from John, who, while not my roommate, has been spending a fair amount of time over at my place since my TV’s bigger.
I glance at the clock. It’s eight o’clock on Saturday, and I want nothing more than to stay exactly where I am, vegged out on my couch, contemplating whether or not I want pepperoni or sausage on my pizza.
And that’s when it hits me. I
need
to go out. Need to get out of this weird funk.
I need to get fucking
laid.
I haven’t touched a girl since that night in Cannon Beach with Parker—the one that I attached way too much importance to and got burned for it.
I swing my legs off the coffee table. “Yeah,” I tell John. “Let’s go out.”
An hour later, I’m right back in my element. And pardon the cliché, but picking up girls is kind of like riding a bike. It’s coming right back to me.
If I’m reading the vibes right—and I usually do—by the end of the night, I’ll have my pick of two cute blondes, a gorgeous Latina, or a pretty brunette who I pretty quickly rule out because she looks too much like Parker.
Parker, whom I haven’t spoken to since that night in the restaurant.
I’ve seen her once or twice. We were in the same line at Starbucks the other day, and I’m completely ashamed to admit that I pretended not to see her.
Except I’m not
that
ashamed, because I’m pretty sure she did the same thing.
“Yo! Olsen!” I turn around and my smile slips a little when I see who’s called my name.
“Hey! Lori!” It’s been about a week since I gently suggested that things weren’t working out, and although she took it like a champ, it’s never exactly fun being confronted with an ex, even though I don’t know that Lori and I were ever serious enough to warrant the
ex
label.
“What are you doing here?” she asks. Her voice is a shade too loud for the circumstances, which tells me she’s well on her way past tipsy. “Um—”
“Just kidding,” she says, before I can answer. “I know exactly what you’re doing here. Same thing as me!”
She does this goofy little thrusting thing with her hips, and I laugh, because she doesn’t
at all
seem pissed about the way we left things.
“Slim pickings tonight, at least on the guy front,” she says, glancing around before coming back to me. “At least until now.”
Her eyes lock on mine meaningfully, and only then do I realize that I was too quick to let my guard down, because the speculative look in her eyes makes it clear what she has in mind.
A one-night stand.
“Come on,” she says with a little tug on my arm. “I promise I’m not going to trap you into buying me dinner again. I just want some fun, you know? With someone as hot as I am.”
I look her over, and she’s right about one thing.
She’s definitely hot. Breasts are displayed to perfection in a tight blue shirt that ends just a couple inches short of her jeans’ waistband, displaying a smooth strip of flat stomach.
She’s gorgeous and fun, and all but guaranteeing a night of no-strings-attached sex, and…
I can’t.
I need to get laid, yes, but I need to do so in order to stop thinking about Parker, and doing it with Parker’s friend?
Not the right thing to do. For any of the parties involved, least of all Lori.
She sees the moment I’m going to reject her and gives an aw-shucks snap of her fingers. “Oh well. Worth a shot. Fear not, Olsen, I’ve got myself a brunet backup plan.”
“He’s a lucky guy,” I say, meaning it.
She winks and starts to walk away, before turning back and giving me a curious look. “Question.”
“Sure,” I say, taking a sip of my drink.
“When I asked you out, and you said yes…that was about Parker, huh? Somehow?”
I open my mouth, but no words come out.
“And when you broke up with me,” she said. “That was about Parker, too?”
Still no words.
Lori’s smile is slower, more confident. “And just now, when you turned down my offer of sex?”
I nod slowly, figuring I owe her the truth.
Yep
.
That was about Parker, too.
“She’s my best friend,” I say, lest Lori get the wrong idea and think that by
about Parker
I mean I have some sort of romantic interest in her.
Because that’s not what this is about.
Sure, for a weird moment there in Cannon Beach, things had felt kind of…intense. But she’s still
Parker
.
Lori lets out a self-deprecating groan. “Oh my gawd, how could I have been so freaking blind!”
Then she seems to perk up, her light blue eyes pinning me. “Though,” she says, “not that I’m even close to being as blind as you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask.
But Lori’s already walking away from me and gives a little dismissive wave of her hand over her head as she sidles up to some beefy dude by the wall.
“Whatever,” I mutter.
I turn back to the bar, relieved to see that my original targets are still here. Just because I have no intention of taking Lori up on her offer doesn’t mean that I’d turn down an invitation from any of these lovely anonymous ladies.
Anonymous sex is exactly what I need right now.
In fact, it’s all I’ve
ever
wanted. And damn Parker for messing that up with all her
Sex should be fun
and
You should be able to talk to the person after
bullshit.
Sex was sex.
Talk was talk.
The two were kept completely separate, as Parker and I had just so disastrously demonstrated.
And as for feelings? That shit didn’t belong in there at all.
In the end I settle on the shorter of the two blondes, a friendly publicist who’d recently accepted a new job in Austin, and has made it
abundantly
clear that she’s looking for a last hurrah in Portland before relocating.
The girl practically has
no strings attached
written across her cute, perky butt.
Five minutes later, I’ve settled up our bar tab and waved goodbye to John, who’s also looking to be on the verge of getting lucky, and I’m about to escort
Ana with one n
back to my place when my phone vibrates in my back pocket.
I take it out with the intention of silencing it, but my thumb freezes when I see the name on the screen.
Parks.
It’s been so long since she’s called me, texted me,
talked
to me, that, for a moment, my face breaks out in a smile, until I remember the state of our friendship:
Deteriorated.
I tell myself to ignore it. Tell myself to focus on what’s simple, like Blondie here.
But my brain doesn’t listen, because then my thumb swipes across the screen, and I lift it to my face, although I don’t actually say anything.
Don’t know what to say.
“Ben?”
I skid to a halt then, because I’d know that voice anywhere. It’s her crying voice.
Automatically, the sound of it brings out the
I will slay dragons for you
instinct in me.
Even now.
Especially now.
I will slay dragons for you, Parker.
“Tell me,” I say.
“It’s my mom.” Her voice is tiny. Scared.
My heart drops.
“The cancer came back. It’s…it’s really bad.”
“Where are you?”
“At my parents’. You don’t have to come, I just…I wanted…I needed—”
“Shut up, Parks. I’m on my way.”
And just like that, I know. Know that I’d do anything—
anything
—to get my best friend back.
“Who was that?” Ana asks when I hang up.
“A friend.”
“Sounded like more than a friend,” she says indifferently, taking a piece of gum out of her purse.
I stare at this tiny blonde as my brain buzzes.
It strikes me as utterly ridiculous and yet completely undeniable that this virtual stranger is the one who opens my eyes to the biggest, most crucial truth of my life:
Parker is more than a friend.
Has perhaps
always
been more than a friend.
The realization turns me upside down, inside out, and yet…
I can never let her know it.
Not unless I want to lose her all over again.