by Lauren Layne
Neither of us move after she shuts the door behind Demi.
“I know what that was,” I say finally. “Payback for that time I told that one girl that you had a doll collection—”
But Parker’s not interested in memory lane, because she interrupts me.
“Talk or mute?” she asks.
“I, um, what?” I ask, confused at the sudden appearance of our old game. Generally we do it only when the other person clearly has something on their mind.
And while I definitely have stuff on my mind, it’s nothing that I can talk about—
“You’re not deciding whether you talk or mute,” she explains. “You’re deciding whether I talk or mute.”
What the hell?
“Why would I decide whether you talk or not?” I ask.
She meets my gaze steadily. “Because there’s a very, very good chance you’re not going to like what I have to say.”
I’m not really loving the sound of that, but…
“This something you want to get off your chest?” I ask warily.
“I wouldn’t be here otherwise.”
I blow out a long breath. “Then tell me.”
She opens her mouth, then seems to lose her nerve, because she shuts it. “Can we do this in the living room?”
“Um, okay,” I say, because she’s already walking away.
“And I could use a drink for this!” she calls.
Do I need one? I wonder quietly to myself.
“You should get one for yourself, too!” she calls again.
Great.
I dig around behind some embarrassingly old leftovers until I find a bottle of prosecco left from when this used to be Parker’s fridge, too.
I pop the cork and dump hefty pours into two coffee mugs.
As I pour, I wonder if I hadn’t left the sparkling wine in the fridge for precisely this reason.
A hope that she’d come home.
And here she is. And I’m glad to see her, I am. It’s just…I almost wish she hadn’t come over.
Because all I can think about is begging her to stay.
But we have to get through whatever big announcement has her all wound up and pacing around the living room like a caged animal.
I hand her a mug and she stares at it for a moment, but doesn’t move to take it.
“Sorry it’s not crystal,” I say. “This is a bachelor pad now.”
“Obviously,” she says. “Demi seemed…um, partially clothed.”
I take a big sip from my own mug. It’s not my favorite drink, but my beer supply is low and I need the booze.
“For the record, I didn’t know she was crazy when I brought her home,” I say.
“Uh-huh.”
The skepticism in her tone says she clearly thinks I’m still sleeping my way through Portland, and I open my mouth to refute her, but think better of it.
The last thing an almost-engaged woman needs to hear is that her best friend is still hung up on their last sexual encounter.
I freeze as a horrible thought occurs to me.
Suddenly, I know exactly why Parker is here.
I know why she’s so tense.
And I know why she thinks I won’t want to hear what she has to say.
Because I don’t. I don’t want to hear it.
I don’t want to hear that Lance proposed. I don’t want to hear that she’s going to get married to someone else.
“Mute,” I say a little desperately. “I want you to mute.”
Her eyes flicker. “But you said—”
“I changed my mind. I don’t want to hear it.”
I know it’s selfish. Of course I know.
And eventually I’ll hear, and I’ll congratulate her and I’ll even toast her wedding, but I just can’t hear it right now.
I can’t hear that the girl I love is going to get married to someone else.
I love her.
I swallow and turn away from her, squeezing my eyes shut.
I love her so much.
“Ben, wait,” she says, coming toward me. “I won’t talk if you don’t want me to, but at least tell me why you changed your mind—”
I spin back to face her, and my pain must be all over my face because her eyes widen and she takes a step back in surprise.
And all of a sudden, it becomes too much. She’s too damn beautiful, and I care too damn much.
“Talk or mute,” I say roughly.
“But you just said—you’re confusing me, Ben.”
“Me,” I say. “We’re talking about me now. Do you want me to talk?”
A little line appears between her eyes. “Do you have something you want to get off your chest?”
It’s a nearly verbatim replay of our earlier conversation, except with the roles reversed, and suddenly I lose patience with all our stupid word games and how we’re tiptoeing around each other.
“Sit down,” I say.
“You’re being weird,” she says.
She moves toward the couch anyway, but then I change my mind about her sitting, and my hand snakes out, grabbing her arm and pulling her around so we’re face-to-face.
We’re both breathing harder than the situation calls for. But maybe that’s not true, because the bomb I’m about to drop on her is a big one.
“Parker, I—”
“Don’t go to Seattle,” she blurts, interrupting me.
“I—what?”
She moves closer, her eyes full of panic. “Don’t go to Seattle.”
I shake my head. “I already turned in the applications—”
“So? You can do more applications here. To Portland schools.”
This so isn’t what I want to be talking about right now, but I suppose it’s as good a segue to what I have to say to her as any, so I go with it. “I can’t stay here, Parker.”
“You have to,” she says, her voice breaking. She reaches out her hands toward my chest then yanks them back so they’re cradled against her own chest. “You can’t leave me.”
My heart breaks, even amid my confusion. “Parks—”
“Or I’ll go with you!” she says. “I mean, I’ll have to come back to Portland, like, all the time because of my mom, but I could live with you in Seattle some of the time, and—”
Something is wrong. She isn’t acting right.
I grab her hands, holding them still. “Parker. Sweetie. What’s wrong? Is it your mom? Has she taken a turn for the worse?”
Her eyes are overflowing with tears. “No. She’s the same. Prognosis is the same.” She licks tears off her lips, and my heart breaks all over again.
What is going on here?
I take a deep breath. “Did Lance—”
“We broke up.” She’s talking faster now.
My first reaction is relief. Deep, soul-wrenching relief. For me.
Followed quickly with pain for her. I hate that I have to watch her go through this again. No wonder she’s so worked up. She just got dumped.
And yet none of this makes sense. Why would he go from carrying a ring around to breaking up with her in twenty-four hours?
“Did he say why?” I ask.
“Why what?”
“Why he broke up with you?” I say, keeping my voice as gentle as possible.
“You’re not getting it!” Parker jerks her hands back from mine and takes a step back, only to come right back toward me, closer this time.
She meets my eyes. “Don’t mute me, Ben. Please don’t mute me. Let me say this.”
My heart begins to pound.
With fear. And hope.
When her hands come toward me again, they’re shaking, and she hesitates slightly before resting her palms lightly against my cheeks.
“Lance didn’t break up with me,” she says. “I broke up with him.”
I don’t breathe. Can’t breathe. “Why?”
Her eyes roam over my features as though searching for something. “You really don’t know?”
My heart is pounding i
n earnest now, but still I don’t move.
“I don’t think—” I break off, having to clear my throat. “I don’t think I could bear it if I was wrong.”
“Last night, after I sang to you, where did you go?”
My hands lift, covering hers. “So you were singing to me?”
Parker’s eyes manage to roll despite the fact that they’re watery. “Of course.”
I hesitate, unsure of how much I should tell her, but it’s too late for either of us to go back now. “Lance had a ring,” I say slowly.
“I know. I saw it.”
“He showed it to me,” I tell her. “He asked my permission or some shit, I guess.”
“Did you give it to him?” she asks.
“What?”
“Did you give him permission?”
“Of course,” I say.
Her eyes go carefully blank, and her hands drop as she takes a step backward.
“No, Parks…you don’t…I thought you loved him. I thought you wanted to marry him.”
She shakes her head. “I didn’t. I don’t.”
I close my eyes, hardly daring to hope.
“Parker—” My throat closes, and I have to clear it again. “Why did you come over here tonight?”
“Because I made a mistake,” she whispers. “Because I promised my best friend that if we slept together, that I wouldn’t fall for him. I promised him that nothing would change. That we could go back to where we were.”
She glances at the floor before looking back at me. “But I did fall for him. And I don’t want things to go back to how they were.”
I open my mouth, but happiness is getting in the way of words, and I can’t seem to make a single noise.
“If you’re going to reject me, do it quickly,” she says. “Like when you ripped off that Band-Aid after my tetanus shot last year. Just end the pain fast—”
I put my hands on her face. I cup her head.
And I kiss her.
The kiss is rough and desperate and I pour every last drop of my feelings for her into it.
I pull back slightly, searching her face to make sure she’s getting it, but she still looks confused, so I kiss her again, more slowly this time.
“Ben?” she says when I pull back.
“You recently pointed out that I haven’t had a serious girlfriend for as long as I’ve known you,” I say roughly. “Don’t you want to know why?”
She hesitates, then nods.
I gently kiss her mouth before continuing. “It’s because I fell in love with this incredible girl my freshman year. Only I didn’t know how to be in love, so I did the only thing I could to keep her close. I became her friend. I became her best friend, and buried all of my own feelings so deep that I didn’t even recognize them, because her feelings were all that mattered, and she wanted this other guy.”
I take a deep breath and force myself to continue. To be brave like she was. “But when I touched you, Parker…I slipped up. All those long-buried feelings bubbled up and…you get what I’m trying to tell you, right?”
She wipes her eyes. Nods.
I smile at her. “Those sure as hell better be happy tears.”
She smiles back. “The happiest. I love you, Ben. I should have said it the second I came in the door.”
I laugh. “You probably should have. But I should have said it all those years ago.”
She leans against me, her finger tracing the shape of my mouth as though memorizing it. “Tell me now.”
I bend my knees a little so we’re eye level. “I love you, Parker Blanton. I’ve loved you for the longest time.”
Her answering smile is my everything.
“I love you, too, Ben Olsen.”
“New house rule,” I say. “You have to say it every day.”
“I make the house rules,” she says, tapping a finger to my mouth. “And I decree that you have to say it every day.”
I wrap my arms around her, lifting her off the floor. “Does this mean I get to see you naked again?”
She laughs, and I love the sound of it. “Depends. Are your sheets clean?”
I sling her over my shoulder, ass in the air, and move toward the stairs. She slaps at my back with her palm. “That wasn’t an answer.”
I grin as I take her up the stairs.
My sheets totally aren’t that clean.
Turns out, she doesn’t care.
Epilogue
Parker
EIGHT MONTHS LATER
“Ooh, I know!” I say, pointing excitedly at the karaoke book. “We could do this Disney song.”
Ben gives me a disgusted look. “We could. I could also hang myself with the cord of this microphone—”
“Well, you pick a song then,” I say impatiently.
“Would you chill out?” he says, flipping through the ten trillion pages of the song list. “We have, like, four people in front of us.”
“Not if we cut.”
“That only works if it’s you and Lori trying to cut in front of a group of horny dudes. And seeing as Lori has her tongue down Drake’s throat, I don’t think she’s going to be singing anytime soon.”
“God, I can’t believe she’s getting married on Saturday,” I say as I look over to where my friend is making out with her soon-to-be husband.
Yep, that’s right. Lori is marrying a guy she’s known for less than a year.
I’m a bridesmaid, along with her sister, and…wait for it…Eryn.
The girl is still a total weirdo, but one of my favorite people ever now that I’ve trained her not to say everything that’s on her mind.
“How about this one?” Ben asks, nudging me.
I glance down. “Um, no. Also, to save us time in the future, every time you want to do a duet version of ‘Baby Got Back,’ it’s always no. It was no back when we were just friends, it was no when we were friends with benefits, and it’s no now that we’re…”
I break off and he raises his eyebrows. “Now that we’re what? Lovers?”
I wrinkle my nose. “I was going to say boyfriend/girlfriend, but that seems woefully inadequate, huh?”
He tugs me toward him, wrapping his arms around me, and I give a happy sigh because every day I think I can’t love him any more, and every day I wake up loving him so much it takes my breath away.
“How about we’re best friends…in love,” he says.
I kiss him happily. “That’s cheesy.”
“Does it ever bother you?” he asks thoughtfully. “That we spent all those years preaching to the world about how wrong they were about guys and girls not being able to be just friends, only to find out that we were the blind ones?”
“Does it bother you?” I ask.
His lips nuzzle my neck, completely oblivious to the fact that we’re in a crowded karaoke bar. “Not a bit. Never been so happy to be wrong.”
Our kiss gets a little more passionate than either of us plans on, and a couple behind us clears their throats loudly.
“We’d like to see the book when you’re done,” the guy says in a pointed voice.
Ben shoves the book at him without ever breaking contact with my lips.
When we finally break apart to breathe, my eyes scan the room as we continue to wait our turn for the stage.
I spot my parents, who are not only turning a blind eye to the fact that Lori and her boyfriend are making out right in front of them but also seem to be doing a little snuggling of their own.
“I can’t wait until my mom gets up here,” I say.
“Yeah? I don’t think I’ve ever heard her sing. She as good as you?”
“No, she’s terrible. Totally tone deaf. But it’s on her bucket list, so…”
Ben’s hand rests against my back, softly, comfortingly, and I let the gentle touch soak up some of my sadness. My mom made it past the six-month mark, so that’s positive. But she’s still sick. Really sick. The cancer’s still eating at her.
But we’re exploring other treatments. Mor
e aggressive ones. She’ll get better. I know she will.
“I can’t believe I let you talk me into coming out on a school night,” Ben says around a yawn.
“Oh, womp womp, Grandpa.”
And then I give him another kiss on the cheek, just because I’m proud of him. Ben got accepted to several business schools in Seattle and Portland.
He settled on here. Right where he belongs.
“Hey, go with those girls,” I whisper. “See if they’ll let us go first.”
“On it.”
He heads off, and then is back by my side in a record two minutes. “Done. We’re up.”
“Nicely done!” I say, impressed. “I didn’t even see any of them give me the stink eye when you pointed at me.”
“Why would they give you the stink eye?” he asks innocently.
I give him a look. “You didn’t tell them I was your friend, did you? What did you tell them about me?”
“I just told them the truth.” Ben holds out a hand to help me onstage before tugging me close.
“Yeah?” I ask. “And what’s this truth?”
His kiss is sweet, as is his response:
“I told them we were best friends.”
TWO YEARS LATER
Mr. and Mrs. James Blanton
request the pleasure of your company
at the marriage of their daughter
Parker Eleanor
to
Mr. Benjamin Robert Olsen
at Seaside Lodge, Cannon Beach, Oregon
on Saturday, the Eleventh of August
at 2:30 in the afternoon.
Karaoke reception to follow.
For anyone who’s ever fallen in love with a friend.
I know firsthand that it can work out quite well. Right, Anth?
Acknowledgments
Every now and then, a story comes upon an author, seemingly out of nowhere, that absolutely must be told.
Some characters and some types of stories don’t care that the author has a million other projects already in flight. These characters and ideas don’t care that they’re not in vogue with current genre trends. Don’t care that they will cause a dozen different people (author included) to have to scramble to make them happen.
Blurred Lines and its characters are such a case. Ben and Parker came to me on a random Wednesday back in 2014, and despite the fact that I was knee-deep in existing projects, I stopped everything I was doing and started writing.