by Lauren Layne
Definitely an after-five kind of work night.
I finally get a five-minute break between meetings, and it gives me a chance to pee, grab a much-needed Diet Coke, and text my carpool buddy who also happens to be my fu—, er, sex buddy, who also happens to be my best friend.
I shake my head as I pull out my cellphone, marveling, not for the first time, at how intertwined my life is with Ben Olsen’s.
Especially lately.
On paper, I’m sure we look unhealthy, spending so much time together, especially now that we’ve added nights—all night—to the mix.
But the thing is, it doesn’t feel unhealthy.
Because if it were, I wouldn’t feel so happy all the time, right?
And I do.
Feel happy, that is.
I guess that’s the power of regular orgasms?
I text him:
Hey, you okay if I work late? Maybe Jason could give you a ride home?
I start to put my phone away, but he texts back immediately, probably between meetings himself.
Nah, I’ll wait around. Have some things I can work on.
Cool. Meet you at the car around 7?
Yup.
I set my phone on top of my notebook and start to head toward the conference room when it buzzes again.
Wanna grab dinner out tonight? Somewhere expensive? My treat. I’ve got news.
My eyebrows lift. Olsen, you asking me out on a date?
His response is immediate.
Totally. I hope you like the three dozen pink carnations I ordered. I also wrote love notes all over your windshield.
I smile. And *this* is why you don’t have a girlfriend.
Why would I need a girlfriend when I’m getting regular sex from my hussy roommate?
“What are you looking so happy about?” I jump as I see Lori and Eryn walking toward me.
Lori slows her walk and makes a slight face toward Eryn.
Eryn, in all her inappropriateness, tries to look at my phone, and I lock it before she can see the screen. The last thing I need is for the office snot to learn about Ben and me.
Or for Lori to learn.
“Ooh, I know that look,” Eryn says in an annoying singsong voice. “Parker’s texting her boyfriend.”
“Actually, Lance dumped me,” I say with a wide smile. “Thanks for bringing it up, though.”
She has the decency to look slightly embarrassed by her gaffe, but I don’t like her enough to reassure her that I haven’t really thought about Lance in days.
Eryn slinks into the conference room, but Lori and I don’t immediately follow. It’s our weekly team meeting, and our boss is always late.
I take a sip of my Diet Coke and Lori moves closer. “Okay, don’t make me ask again.”
I frown in confusion. “About what?”
She rolls her eyes. “Did you call him?”
Him …Him…Him who…?
Oh. Him.
“Not yet,” I say, pretending to be fascinated with my pop can.
Lori has asked me every day this week whether I’ve called the guy from the karaoke bar, and I’m running out of excuses.
There’s no good way to tell her that the only reason I’d call that guy was if I was still pursuing my hookup agenda.
And there’s also not a good way to tell her that the only reason I even talked to that guy in the first place was because she and Ben were looking all twosome-ish up there onstage, and I’d felt…not jealous, precisely.
But maybe a little thrown off by not being the one up there onstage with Ben.
Still, the guy at the bar—Brandon—had really seemed like a decent kind of guy. Funny, normal…
And yet, I have absolutely zero interest in calling him.
I’m saved from having to think up yet another excuse when we spot our boss heading toward us, cellphone tucked under her chin, even as her finger furiously swipes across the iPad that she’s never without.
The meeting runs long.
So does the meeting after that, and the one after that, and then I get pulled into an impromptu review session with some designers who can’t agree on a color scheme.
By the time I get back to my desk, Lori’s left a note that she’s gone for the day and to Call The Guy TONIGHT.
Sigh.
I race through my emails, none of which were as urgent as the senders seemed to think, but my reporting takes longer than I expect because I get an error on every other screen.
By the time I get to the car Ben’s leaning against my Prius, messenger bag across his shoulder, totally focused on his cellphone.
“This is why I gave you my spare set of keys,” I say, unlocking the door as I approach. “So you don’t have to wait in the cold.”
He looks up. Grins. “Forgot ’em.”
“By forgot ’em, do you mean lost ’em?” I ask.
“They’re around,” he says as we both toss our bags into the backseat and climb into the car.
Yup. He’s totally lost them.
I turn to face him before starting the car. “That’s why you wanted to go out to dinner, huh? You’ve lost my keys and you know how expensive they are to replace? You’re buttering me up.”
Ben makes a tsking noise. “Now, Blanton, not everything is about you.”
“So you do know where my keys are, or…?”
“I got the promotion,” he says in response.
My thoughts about my extra car keys scatter.
I squeal. Then squeal again.
He winces. “Take it easy, Parks.”
I punch him in the arm. “I so will not take it easy! You got it! You’ve been telling me for weeks you thought they were going to bring in someone from the outside!”
A couple months ago, the senior product manager on Ben’s team relocated to Atlanta, and Ben heard rumors early on that he was under consideration to be her replacement. Rumors that he continually disregarded, because for reasons I don’t understand, Ben has it in his head that he’s mediocre.
I, on the other hand, know otherwise. He’s amazing.
I’ve heard him on work calls. Seen him working late into the night. The dude knows his stuff. He’s really, really good at his job, and, strangely, he’s the only one who doesn’t seem to know it.
I start the car and shake my head. “You are so not buying dinner. I’m buying dinner. And we’re getting champagne.”
“Uh-huh, and I’m sure that last one is all for me, huh?” he says, knowing my love of the bubbly wine.
“You have to drink it with me tonight,” I insist. “Promotions and champagne go together like…peanut butter and jelly.”
“Steak and potatoes,” he says, picking up on our old game of “things that go together.”
“Spinach and strawberries.”
He makes a face. “More like, margaritas and nachos.”
“Beer and wings?”
“Better,” he says, with a nod of approval. “Tomato soup and grilled cheese.”
“Cookies and milk.”
“Cocks and condoms,” he says.
“Gross. How about…” I purse my lips, thinking for one I haven’t used a million times before. “Ooh, I know. Candles and bubble baths.”
Ben looks scandalized. “I don’t even know what that means. I take your candles and bubble baths and raise you Bert and Ernie.”
“Ummm…” I tap my fingers on the steering wheel as I think.
You and me.
I jolt a little in surprise at the thought, trying to push it away, but the thought merely digs its heels in. Two things that go together: you and me. Ben and Parker.
I frown.
Well. That’s new.
“You win,” I say hurriedly. “Game over.”
He holds up his right hand in a fist, then bumps it with his left fist.
I shake my head. “Did you just fist bump yourself?”
He shrugs. “Well, I knew you wouldn’t fist bump me. You hate losing.”
I back out of the
parking spot, relieved that he seems oblivious to my treacherous thoughts from a moment ago.
“Portland City Grill?” I ask.
He raises his eyebrows. “Feeling spendy, are we?”
“Feeling proud,” I correct. “You got a promotion, Ben. It deserves to be celebrated.”
You deserve to be celebrated, you big oaf.
He falls silent then, and I glance at him across the car. “You’re doing that thing, aren’t you?”
“What thing?”
“Where you think you don’t deserve it. Where you’re trying to figure out why the heck they picked you.”
He shrugs and looks out the window. “I didn’t do anything special. Any of the other people on the team would have been—”
“Stop,” I interrupt. “None of that. Don’t do that thing. You’ve got to stop thinking that just because you didn’t follow your parents’ defined path of success means you aren’t a success.”
He slams his head back against the headrest. “Now you’re doing that thing. The one where you try to fix a guy.”
“That’s not a thing.” At least it’s not my thing.
“Only because you didn’t have to fix Lance,” he mutters. “Lance already had it all figured out.”
His voice is grumpier than usual, and I have the oddest sense that we could be on our way to a mini-fight, except we’re saved by the buzzing of my phone.
“Can you get that?” I ask, pointing my head toward my purse in the backseat.
He digs it out and looks at the screen. “Lori.”
I groan.
“What, you guys in a girl fight or something? And if so, can I watch if it gets handsy?”
“No, not fighting,” I mutter as I merge onto the freeway toward the restaurant. “She just won’t stop bugging me about calling that guy.”
“What guy?”
“The one from the karaoke bar.”
“Ah,” he says. “The one who was making you do your head-back laugh.”
“My what?”
“It’s how I know when your laughs are genuine. You tilt your head back.”
“That’s weird,” I mutter. “But, yeah, I guess the laughs were real. The guy was funny.”
“So why not call him?” Ben asks, silencing my still-buzzing phone and dropping it into the console between our seats.
“I—”
I don’t know.
That’s the truth. I don’t know why I don’t call this guy.
“You think I should?” I ask.
Ben shrugs. “Not about what I think.”
I press my lips together. He’s right. It’s not about what he thinks, because he and I aren’t together. We’re just friends. With really amazing benefits.
And from the very beginning we asserted that this was exclusive only as long as we wanted it to be. That the second one of us changes our mind, we just say the word, and go back to sleeping with other people.
But when I first suggested that he and I use each other to scratch an itch, I hadn’t thought it would be quite so…constant.
Or so consistently good.
But there are times when we’re apart. He goes to the gym nearly every day. And he went out for drinks with his friend John just last night. Maybe he’s got a few quickies scattered in here and there.
I want to know. I’m dying to know.
But I can’t ask him. It’s not my business.
“I think you should call him,” he says.
“I thought you just said it’s not about what you think,” I say, my voice taking on just the slightest edge.
“It’s not, it’s just…” Ben turns his head to look at me. “I think if you don’t start dating again, you’re never going to get over Lance.”
Lance? Lance? He thinks this is about Lance?
Of all the—
But wait. It should be about Lance.
Any hesitation over whether or not I call a promising romantic prospect absolutely should tie back to the fact that the guy I thought I was going to marry dumped me only a month ago.
“Okay,” I say slowly. “I’ll call him this weekend.”
“Good girl,” Ben says with a nod. And then the topic’s apparently closed, because he changes the subject. “You’re sure you’re buying tonight?”
“Absolutely,” I say.
Then I glance at him. “Wait, why do you ask it in that smug tone?”
His grin flashes white across the darkened car. “Just trying to figure out how many lobsters I want to order.”
Chapter 16
Ben
It’s been a long time since Parker and I have shared a meal like this.
I mean, we share meals all the time.
Random lunches if we’re out running errands, or taco Tuesdays with friends at our place, or waffles on Sundays, since they’re about the only thing I know how to make.
But tonight is different.
Tonight there’s a white tablecloth, and a gorgeous view of the city, candles, and, yes, champagne. Of course.
And for just the briefest of seconds, when we first sit down and are arguing over which appetizer to start with, I have a moment of panic.
Panic because this looks like a date.
No, not looks like a date. Feels like a date.
But the panic recedes almost immediately, because dates are all about sweaty palms and painful small talk and that slight nagging stress over whether there’s going to be another date to follow.
There’s none of that with Parker.
It’s just dinner with your best friend, my brain soothes. Chill.
And for the most part, my brain does settle down, except for one nagging, tiny seed of annoyance that I can’t stop thinking about:
Parker’s planning on calling that guy from the karaoke bar.
I mean, I told her to. I had to tell her that.
I meant what I’d said about her needing to get over Lance, and while she hasn’t been moping, I know her. I know she can’t possibly be as healed as she pretends to be. Not after that moron dropped her like it was no big thing.
But it bothers me that she’s thinking about other guys while she and I are still…you know. Doing it.
I mean it doesn’t bother me.
It bothers my ego. Because from my side of the bed, and the shower, and the couch, and the kitchen counter, things have been pretty damn exceptional.
So exceptional, in fact, that I haven’t even looked at another girl since that first night.
Whoa.
I sit back in my chair at that whopper of a realization, totally tuning out the inquisition Parker is giving our server over the preparation of the fish special.
Two weeks, and I’ve only been having sex with one girl.
Not just any girl. Parker.
Huh.
And, I know, I know, two weeks isn’t a big deal. Except to me it is.
The last relationship I had was in my sophomore year at college, and that lasted all of four semi-miserable months. Since then I’ve been happily cruising along in the no-commitment lane.
Sure, I’ve had plenty of repeat hookups with a few girls, but it’s generally been the once-and-done thing.
I run a hand over my face as I look across the table at Parks.
She’s wearing some sort of navy sweater dress, which shouldn’t be all that sexy since it’s a long-sleeved turtleneck kind of deal and shows almost no skin—especially since she’s paired it with knee-high boots—but it hugs her just right.
Her dark hair’s down today, flowing around her shoulders, and with the stupid candlelight, she looks…pretty.
I barely let our server finish his sentence before I blurt out, “Can I see your bourbon list?”
Parker shoots me a puzzled look, probably because I hardly ever drink anything other than beer, or sometimes wine if I’m with her. “I’ll save the rest of the champagne for you.”
Except that’s not the real reason I want the bourbon. The real reason I need something stronger than wi
ne is to help me come to grips with the fact that I’m on the verge of a sexual rut.
Worse than the rut is that it doesn’t feel like a rut at all.
The server moves away, and Parker leans forward. “What’s wrong with you? You look ready to puke.”
I lean forward, too, deciding to lay it out and play it totally straight with her, because she’s my best friend and she deserves it.
“When you pitched this whole friends-with-benefits thing, how long did you envision it lasting?” I ask.
She blinks. “Um, I don’t know. Can’t really say that I was thinking about a timeline.”
I breathe out a long breath. “Are you aware that it’s been nearly two weeks? We’ve been having sex for two weeks.”
“Yeah? So?” she says, her nose scrunching.
“I haven’t…” I rub a hand over the back of my neck. Might as well just say it. “I haven’t been with anyone else since the first night you and I hooked up.”
Parker’s silent for several seconds before she starts cracking up. “Oh my God. You should see your face right now.”
I smile begrudgingly. “It’s not funny.”
It is. A little.
“Sorry.” She tries for a straight face and fails, chuckling into her champagne flute. “Okay, so I thought we covered this. If one of us wants to sleep with someone else, we just say the word—”
“Right,” he says quickly. “Like you and that guy from the bar—”
“Brandon,” she says.
I clench my fists beneath the table.
“Sure. So you’re going to call Brandon, and then it won’t be weird if I hang out with another girl.”
“Definitely not weird.”
“Right.”
“Right,” she repeats.
“Right.”
The server comes back with the whiskey menu, which I take, my eyes never leaving Parker. The server is astute enough to know that she’s interrupting something and backs away without a word.
“Oh God,” Parker says, her voice a little panicked. “We’re not going to let it get weird. Are we?”
No. No way will I let that happen.
“Here’s what we’re gonna do,” I say, opening the menu. “Tomorrow is Friday. You’re going to see if Brandon wants to go out. I’m going to go out on the prowl.”