LOL #3 Romantic Comedy Anthology

by Anthology

  A couple of the groomsmen had to get back earlier than the rest of us due to work on Sunday and they gladly offered Tiffani a ride. She didn’t seem too heartbroken over saying goodbye, but I wasn’t sure whether she was putting on a brave face or if she was over it already.

  And it still left a lot of questions unanswered.

  Because first… if Michaela even felt the same way, would she feel comfortable seeing me? And how awkward would it be for me to hang out over there as Mic’s date or—God, I hoped—her boyfriend while she was still living with Tiff?

  It really had been shortsighted of me to ask Tiff out.

  I should have waited… waited until Michaela was free. Live and learn. She was free now. And so was I. And I wasn’t going to give Lucas the opportunity to swoop in and take that chance away.

  So after making sure Tiffani was safely away, I put on my jacket to head outside and do what I’d been wanting to do since the beginning of the weekend. Sled down that damn hill—and do it with Michaela.

  I stomped over toward the back door, bent to find my boots and pull them on. Lacing them tight, I came up, reached for the doorknob, and froze. Looking through the window in the back door, I could see Mic and Lucas standing close together on the back porch. He bent to push a pale blonde strand of hair behind her ear and she smiled at him.

  And a jealous rage washed over me. I clenched my jaw. I immediately wanted to kill Lucas. With my bare hands. Okay, that probably wasn’t possible, given Lucas outweighed me and looked pretty fit. But damn… why’d he have to pick now to make his move… when I was five minutes away from making my move?

  Before I could do anything assholish like storm out there and interrupt their moment, he bent and kissed her on the lips. She tilted her head toward him and her eyes fluttered close.

  Goddamn it! Damn it to Hell!

  Was I just about to lose her again to the most insane piece of fucked up timing ever?

  Then the question popped into my mind. Had I ever even had her in the first place in order to lose her?

  “Hey man, what’s up?” Nathan came up behind me.

  “Nothing.” I turned, blocking his view out the door window. “You up for a rematch on Call of Duty? I need to kick your ass so I have something to brag about at work on Monday.”

  Nathan frowned, taking in my boots and winter jacket. “You’re not going outside?”

  I shrugged. “Changed my mind. So are you changing the subject because you are… chicken?”

  “Screw you, loser,” he laughed. “It is on like Donkey Kong!”

  “I was hoping you’d say that!” I grinned, following him back out of the kitchen and pulling off my jacket to sit down beside him at the console. Fortunately I was able to lose myself in the game, but that knot of frustration twisted tighter and tighter at the base of my throat—even when I wasn’t directly thinking about Michaela and Lucas.

  A few hours later, I’d made good on my threats.

  “Defeated! It’s a good thing you are already engaged because no other woman would want a lllloooooser.” I said, pressing my thumb and index finger to form a big L on my forehead.

  He answered with a finger signal of his own… the middle one, straight up, to be exact.

  “What’s this, you got a tournament going or something?” Lucas said, entering and plopping down on chair beside us on the couch.

  I glared at him. He caught it and scowled. “What?”

  “Where’s Michaela?”

  He glanced away, clearly annoyed. “I dunno.”

  I looked out the window and saw that it had already begun to get dark. Nathan and I had been so involved in our game that I had hardly realized so much time had passed.

  “What do you mean you don’t know? You just left her out there?”

  She’d been out there for hours. And like me, she was pure SoCal through and through. We weren’t used to cold weather. Okay, so maybe it was only in the thirties or lower twenties. But why did I suddenly feel like Chewbacca when the shield doors of Echo Base on Hoth were closed while Han was still outside in the frozen night?

  “She said she wanted to be alone and go for a walk. Needed to think about stuff. Sheesh, man. Chill out.” Then he snorted at his own joke. “Yeah, go take a roll out in the snow and chill out.”

  Muttering under my breath, I stood and pulled my jacket on. Useless fucktard. “It’s getting dark. I’m going to go find her.” And I stomped out the back door, dodging the bride-to-be and a couple of bridesmaids as they made their way inside after having gone shopping downtown in the village.

  Chapter Five ~ Michaela

  I needed to think. This was all so confusing. First Tiffani’s push to find someone new. Then Jeremy’s odd, almost jealous behavior. Then the kiss in the closet.

  And the guilt. Lord the guilt was crushing down on me. And because of it I’d been about to step into another mistake. Lucas was a nice enough guy, but as much as I hated to admit it, Jeremy had been right—Lucas wasn’t right for me. He was cute enough and nice enough… but there was just something lacking. Something I hadn’t been able to put my finger on.

  And then he’d kissed me and I’d realized what it was. He wasn’t Jeremy.

  Since Jeremy had come back into my life last year, it’d been hard to think about any other guy—even the one I’d been in a relationship with at the time, Sean. Jeremy and I had picked up our old friendship right where it had left off the year Jeremy had gone off to college.

  We’d fallen into our same habits, our same interests. But we’d been friends. Just friends. Good friends. Good, good friends.

  Friends who, when they kissed, finally, struck sparks that threatened to burn the house down. And when Lucas had kissed me earlier today, all I could think about was Jeremy’s kiss the night before.

  Jeremy, my friend. My roommate’s boyfriend.

  I had to get over this, get over him, and part of the reason I’d been hanging out with Lucas today had been in an honest effort to do it.

  I was halfway through the wooded lot, naked tree trunks and branches clawing at a grey, gloomy sky. It was getting dark and I was getting really cold. My jacket—not very adequate for snow—had gotten wet and I’d left it behind on the porch when I’d pushed Lucas away and told him I needed to be alone.

  But now I was freezing my ass off and it was getting dark. My hands were starting to get a little numb and putting them in my pockets wasn’t helping.

  I turned around to head back toward the house, stopping when I saw a figure cutting across the field and heading toward the edge of the bare woods. I recognized Jeremy’s blue ski jacket with yellow trim. Much as I would have liked to cut around the long way to avoid him, he was coming at me from the shortest distance to the house and I was too cold to play around. So I set my shoulders, planning to forge ahead and give him a nod when we passed.

  As I hit the edge of the wood, his strides quickened upon seeing me, long and determined and headed straight toward me. I figured I wouldn’t be able to avoid him and he had come to talk to me. But now my ears were starting to hurt from the cold.

  It was almost completely dark. The lights in the house glowed golden through the rectangular windows, casting squares of sparkling illumination on the fresh powder that had fallen overnight. I paused and blew into my hands.

  “Where’s your jacket?” he asked as he unzipped his own.

  “It was wet. Left it on the porch. I need to get inside because it’s really damn cold right now.”

  He didn’t budge from his spot but caught my arm as I made to turn toward the house. “Put mine on,” he said.

  “Then you’ll be cold.”

  “I’m fine for a few minutes. Just put it on. You look like you’re about to keel over from hypothermia.”

  I didn’t hesitate when he pushed it into my hands. I slid into the puffy, down jacket that had been warmed by his body. It felt like settling into a fleecy hug. Jeremy reached over and pulled the collar up.

  “Cover your ear
s. They are bright red.”

  I hunched down so that the collar would shield my ears from the cold. It felt amazing, comforting.

  “What are you doing out here all alone?” he asked.

  I shrugged, though I was so swallowed up in his jacket—which was one and a half times too big for me—that I doubted he could see the action. “Just thinking… ”

  “About?”

  I looked away. “Just feeling bad, I guess.”

  His mouth thinned. “About last night? That was my fault… I’m sorry—”

  I shook my head. “Don’t apologize, okay? We can both feel bad that it happened and try to forget it. And treat it like the pleasant memory it should be… ”

  An unreadable look crossed his face. “So… you thought it was pleasant?”

  I frowned at him. That should have been obvious, I thought.

  “Didn’t you?”

  His brow twitched and he looked like he might start laughing. “Uh. Yeah. You could say that.”

  I hugged my arms to myself for lack of anything better to do with my hands, suddenly uncomfortable. I didn’t want to admit to myself how long I’d wondered what it would be like to kiss Jeremy, to feel his hands on me. To wish it was his arms around me instead of his warm coat. To smell his smell, trying unsuccessfully to bury that tingling feeling in the pit of my stomach. Trying to forget the way Jeremy made me feel.

  Because he wasn’t mine and I had no right to feel this way.

  “I need to tell you something,” he said, the breath escaping through his lips and haunting the chill air between us like a phantom.

  I swallowed, my throat suddenly feeling thick. “No, don’t.”

  He blinked. “How do you even know what I’m going to say?”

  I took a deep breath and let it go, the vapor from my breath drifting out between my lips to mingle with his. “Whatever you are going to say is going to make this more awkward and more—painful.”

  He said nothing for a long moment, then reached his hand, placed it on my jaw. It was warm. His thumb caressed my cheek. I closed my eyes, wishing I had the willpower to pull away from him.

  “Mic… ” he whispered.

  I sucked in a painful breath and backed up a step. He let his hand fall from my face and we stared each other down for a long, thick minute.

  “Tiff went home a few hours ago.”

  “What? Why? Did she—did you tell her about what happened in the closet?” Oh, shit. Shit. If possible, the guilt clutching at me squeezed even tighter in the pit of my stomach. How she must hate me.

  “No. She left because she knew… ” his voice trailed off. He looked away and squared his shoulders, as if afraid to go on.

  “She knew what?” I said.

  His eyes returned to mine. All his features, his coloring looked like shades of deep blue in the faint light of this mountain evening.

  “That it was always you.” Those words seemed to trail out between his lips, mix with that phantom breath, coalesce into something otherworldly between us. My throat tightened and I swallowed.

  “I… ” I shook my head, unable to find the words to reply to that, muted by joy and terror at once.

  He moved up to me again, this time placing one hand on each cheek. “Always. Since that first day I came over to play with your brother Doug in middle school and you wouldn’t leave us alone. Since that day I helped you when you scraped up your knees. When you failed your algebra test and tried to hide your tears when you asked me to tutor you. Since that day you helped me practice my graduation speech over and over again, listening for hours, helping me memorize it, cheering every single time I finished it. Since… ”

  “Since the beginning… ” I said, my voice trembling.

  He nodded. I leaned up on tiptoes to lock my hands around his neck and pulled him down to me. And since he’d started it last night between us—finally making that move—it was my turn tonight.

  His mouth fell on mine and I tasted him, his warm, firm lips. I felt that kiss clear down to my toes. It zinged and sizzled through my body, every extremity. His lips opened and my tongue danced with his, communicating without words, only feelings—long bottled up by fear and uncertainty.

  All those years in high school I’d nursed that crush, afraid he’d never feel the same way. And apparently he had. And we’d lost—what? Six years? Seven?

  But now he kissed me, his lips toying with mine in that delicious way. My eyes fluttered closed, the heat in my chest building with each breath that he stole from me. I couldn’t help but be grateful for the years we’d had in between to grow up, to gain confidence, to find each other once again.

  And finally, we had timing on our side too. I was free and so, now, was he.

  When our mouths parted, steam escaped our lips and I could see that he was just now starting to shiver. I laughed.

  “You look like you’re about to keel over from hypothermia.” I smiled.

  A lazy grin stretched across his mouth. “Maybe I want to go inside for another reason altogether.”

  “Well there is more than one way to… warm up… ”

  He reached down and grabbed my hand and enfolded it in his own, and we strode toward the illuminated cabin together. My head sank to his shoulder and my eyes closed momentarily even as my heartbeat sped up in anticipation.

  It was finally happening. All my girlish fantasies were about to come true.

  And maybe this would live up to those, or maybe it would be even better.

  “Jeremy.” I paused on the porch before he opened the door.

  He turned to look at me, a smile curving his lips, his eyebrows raised with the unasked question.

  “For me, it was always you, too.”

  And who knew at this early stage, this very beginning. But I had a very good feeling that from here on out, it would be only him. And for him, only me.

  Author’s Note - Brenna Aubrey

  You’ve just finished reading It Was Always You, a short story by Brenna Aubrey. If you’d like to spend more time in the Gaming The System world, feel free to check out the first three books in the series: At Any Price, At Any Turn and At Any Moment.

  At Any Price on Amazon.com

  Other titles by Brenna Aubrey

  At Any Price

  At Any Turn

  At Any Moment

  For The Win (forthcoming)

  Stay in touch with Brenna Aubrey

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  Brenna Aubrey

  www.brennaaubrey.net

  Take for Granted

  Daisy Prescott

  What does it take to add a little spark to a marriage?

  DESCRIPTION: Jo and Ben Grant are spending a week in Aspen, without the kids. Bliss. Heaven. When Jo plans a wild evening out, will Ben embrace the crazy?

  GENRE: Contemporary Adult Romantic Comedy, 9,000 words or approximately 26 pages. This is standalone short story with a happy ending featuring characters from Daisy’s bestselling novel, Geoducks Are for Lovers. Don’t worry, you don’t need to have read any of her Modern Love Stories to enjoy this short.

  HEAT LEVEL: Sweet & Spicy

  Turn the page to begin reading Take for Granted by Daisy Prescott, or click here to return to this anthology’s Table of Contents.

  Take for Granted

  Daisy Prescott

  Take for Granted

  My travel log / medical history:

  Vail 2011: Ear infection and altitude sickness

  Whistler 2012: Sinus infection

  Park City 2013: Bronchitis

  Darien 2014: Flu

  Aspen 2015: Lingering cough since the holidays

  I’m cursed.

  Every year we plan a family ski trip over winter break in February, and every single year I get sick. Every, single damn year. Instead of schwooping down the slopes or going out to eat, I sleep in the condo and get familiar with the local Urgent Care facilitie
s and pharmacies. Need a good pharmacy in Vail? Doctor with long hours in Park City? I’m your girl.

  This year is going to be different. All three kids are going to Florida with my parents. That means it will only be Ben and I. In Aspen. Together. No condo with multiple bedrooms and a kitchen. Every mom on vacation knows there’s some expectation of cooking something if there’s a kitchen. Condos also come with laundry rooms. Cooking and doing laundry are not a vacation for me. No kids means we’ll be in a hotel room, a suite, with housekeeping, and room service and turn down service, and nothing for me to do.

  In other words, heaven.

  Ben has a couple meetings scheduled during the trip. Meetings that will take place on the mountain or in the gondola while they pretend to ski. Other than the meetings and a client dinner, we have no plans. No schedule.

  No kids. No schedule. No chores.

  A week of bliss.

  I am not going to get sick.

  I’ve been chugging chalky Vitamin C powder and swallowing extra vitamins and zinc for the past two months to ward off germs and evil viruses. Flu shot, Vitamin B12 shot, wheatgrass shots… I’d done all that I could in preparation for this trip.

  I will not get sick.

  I will not get sick.

  My view out the window tips from sky to earth. My stomach lurches when the plane banks a sharp turn over the rocky, snow dusted peaks of the Rockies on the short flight from Denver to Aspen.

  “Doesn’t this make you think of that movie Alive?” I ask Ben, who is reading the Wall Street Journal like he’s sitting at his desk at work, completely undisturbed by the fact that we are careening over jagged mountains at a high speed.

  “The nineties one about the soccer players who crashed in the Andes?” he asks into his paper.

  “Yes, that’s the one.” I gently clench his wrist as the plane bounces on an updraft.

  “You’re morbid. Wasn’t Ethan Hawke in that? Did he survive?” His eyes flick to my face.

  “I’m not morbid. If you put down the paper for a second and looked outside, you’d agree.” I push down the paper with my other hand. “And of course Ethan survived. I couldn’t watch his movies for years without thinking ‘cannibal’ in my head every time I saw him.”

  “Right, I remember that. You had a hard time deciphering reality from fiction and acting back then.” He ducks his head and leans across my seat to see the view. “Yep, exactly like the Andes.”