by Emma Hart
“And I haven’t mooned anyone since,” he replied. “My pants now stay firmly on when I drink.”
Except for Saturday night.
I cleared my throat, focusing on the tomato I was cutting up. “Yeah, well, I think that’s for the best for everyone.”
“It’s not my fault. I didn’t wear pants at home until I was eight. This is on my parents. It’s hard-wired in me to be pantsless.”
“There’s pantsless; then there’s naked.” I assembled the sandwich and cut it on two. “I’m sure there would have been a lot less outrage from the pensioners playing bingo that night if you’d left your underwear on.” I put the sandwich on a plate and handed it to him.
“Mrs. Cortez hasn’t been able to look me in the eye since.”
“Yeah, well, she saw more than one of your eyes that night.” I grabbed the cloth and cleaned up the island. “I think I’m still scarred from that night, never mind poor Mrs. Cortez.”
“Poor Mrs. Cortez my ass,” he said around a mouthful of food. “The next day, she showed up at my house, told Abuelita what I’d done, and she whipped me with her flip-flop for ten minutes straight. I think I have a scar on my thigh from her attack.”
“It worked, though. She beat the urge to flash your ass in public right out of you.”
Now, you just do it in private. To your best friend. Ahem.
“I prefer the line that I grew out of the urge.” He raised an eyebrow and put down the sandwich to get a bottle of water from my fridge. “It sounds better to prospective girlfriends than ‘my crazy Mexican grandmother beat my ass with her shoe.’”
“Prospective girlfriends? You got many of those?”
“No, but it’s beside the point.”
“It’s not, but if it makes you feel better, you believe that.” I tossed the dirty cloth in the sink and leaned back against the counter. “You know Abuelita will just tell everyone what she did anyway.”
“Yeah, but by that point, I’ll have charmed the pants off any prospective girlfriend, and she’ll be totally in love with me so it won’t matter.”
“Clearly, your ego isn’t that damaged that much.”
“I’m charming as hell. Admit it.”
“Luke, you’re about as charming as a bout of food poisoning on your wedding day.”
“You wound me. How have I kept you around this long?”
“Well,” I said, tilting my head to the side. “Do you want me to start with the food part? Or the fact that I know all your secrets?”
He tapped his fingers on the countertop, frowning. “I should probably go for the secrets thing, but it’s more likely the food.”
I shook my head. “You’re insane.”
“I know. I just bought you tampons. I must be insane.”
“You’re talking an awful lot for someone who claims to be hungry.”
He answered that with a grin and a huge bite into his sandwich. “So, what’s for dinner?”
“Sometimes, I feel like we’re an old married couple,” I muttered, pushing off the counter and heading for my room. “Lock the door on your way out.”
His deep laugh followed me even as I shut my bedroom door behind him.
Best friends. Who needed them?
CHAPTER SIX – LUKE
Food Fixes Everything
I hauled the huge box of food out of the trunk of my truck. I had to put it on the floor to shut the trunk and lock the car, then I began the trek up to Aspen’s fourth-floor apartment.
Abuelita finally finished making enough food to feed the five hundred, and I wasn’t entirely sure Aspen had room in her freezer for all this. She’d even gone so far as to make up taco fillings and freeze them for her.
See? Between Aspen and my grandmother, I had no reason to go grocery shopping. They’d feed me until I either got married or died.
I was likely to die first. Finding a woman as willing to feed me as they were was probably a tall order.
It wasn’t that I couldn’t cook. I could cook. You didn’t grow up in a Mexican family without being dragged into the kitchen on a semi-regular basis. In fact, I was quite a good cook.
I just didn’t like to cook.
So I didn’t cook. Unless it was absolutely necessary.
It was rarely necessary.
I made it to Aspen’s floor and kicked the door a few times in lieu of knocking. I couldn’t knock given that I had a restaurant-worthy amount of food in the box I was holding.
The door swung open. Since it was almost eight p.m. and she’d worked the afternoon and early evening shift, I wasn’t surprised at all to see Aspen looking the way she did.
No make-up. Hair shoved in a messy twist on top of her head with wisps framing her face. Faded shorts covered with the American flag. An old tank top with sauce from the pizza slice she was holding. And no bra.
Definitely no bra.
“’Sup?” she said with her mouth full of pizza. “What’s that?”
“Abuelita kept her promise. It’s food.”
Her eyes widened, and she leaned right over to look in. “Enchiladas, quesadilla—oh my god, is that taco filling? And homemade nachos?”
“Yes, and they’re fucking heavy, so can you move?”
She jumped to the side, clearing the way for me to get in.
I lugged the box inside and breathed a sigh of relief when I was able to put it on the kitchen island. Fuck me, that was heavy. If that didn’t prove my love for her as a best friend, I didn’t know what would.
Maybe eating dinner at my own place once in a while, but let’s not get too crazy.
“You bought pizza?”
She put her slice back down in the box. “Extra-large. It’s like I knew you’d be coming,” she drawled sarcastically. “Did Abuelita think I was feeding a family of five?”
“No, but she did know that you’d end up feeding me at least forty percent of it.”
“Only forty percent?” She quirked a brow and dug through the tubs. “I can freeze some of this stuff, right?”
“Yes. She split the box as she packed it. This side is for freezing,” I said, touching the right side. “It’s all fillings. They’re labeled. Beef and chicken tacos, enchilada, fajita, burrito, and probably more.”
“Yummmmm.”
“And this side is to eat straight away.” I tapped the left side.
She tore off a bite of pizza and looked. “I’ll heat up these quesadillas. You want some?”
“You’re eating pizza, Asp.”
She grabbed two trays of quesadilla and glared at me with her honey-colored eyes. “Are you judging me?”
“A little.” My lips twitched.
“Based on the calendar, I have a day and a half left of the worst week of the month. Therefore, I’m running out of time to eat my body weight every six hours. Either shut up, or I’ll eat your quesadillas, too.”
“Don’t play with my food, woman.”
“Don’t play with me, Luke.” She shot me mock daggers and put the quesadillas in the oven to warm through. “So. How was work?”
I pulled a beer from her fridge and took it to the sofa. Her sofa was the comfiest thing I’d ever put my ass on. “Oh, you mean after you sent me running around town for your tampons? Great. I spent two hours being told I was whipped until Julie whipped them.”
Aspen scoffed, taking her half-eaten slice of pizza and jumping into the armchair. “You can’t be whipped. I’m not your girlfriend.”
“You think I didn’t tell them that?”
“I think they’re still hung up on the kiss you claimed happened that never did.”
Oh, Jesus. “It was a kiss. Barely, but still one.”
“We never kissed.” She shook her head, the bun on top of her head wobbling. “You can’t add me to that tally.”
“I don’t have a tally. I’m not fourteen.” I paused. “Besides, is the idea of kissing me really that repulsive?”
You weren’t complaining on Saturday…
Aspen sighed, tucki
ng her feet under her ass. Her eyes met mine. “I never said it was repulsive; I merely argued that it never happened. And, for the record, no, I do not find the idea of kissing you repulsive. Just really fucking weird.”
“Weird?”
“Well, yeah.” She shifted slightly. “That’s not the kind of thing you come back from as friends, is it?”
I raised my eyebrows. “Why not?”
“You’re starting to sound like you want to kiss me.”
“I’d suck a toe before I’d kiss you,” I replied. Lying through my teeth.
“Okay, there’s no need to be mean about it.”
“How was that mean?”
“You’re right. It wasn’t. I’d suck a toe before I’d kiss you, too.” She shrugged and licked the pizza sauce off her fingers. “It’s just weird, isn’t it? Like, we’ve known each other for twenty years. Can you really imagine us making out?”
Yes.
I can imagine it. Very fucking thoroughly.
Still, I lied, shaking my head. “Hell no.”
“Exactly.” She pointed at me and got up to check the quesadilla.
I looked away, staring at the TV. Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares was on, but the TV was on mute as he rifled through some poor bastard’s disgusting freezer.
Talking about kissing her was too much. The memories from Saturday were still seared into my brain, and no matter how much I tried to get rid of them, I couldn’t.
Because I knew one thing, no matter how badly the night had ended, kissing her had been a fucking dream.
And I wanted to do it again. Against all rational thought and what I knew was right, I wanted to kiss her again. I wanted to feel her soft lips on mine. My hands in her hair. Her fingers wound into my t-shirt.
Fuck. It was all wrong. I had no damn business sitting here wanting to kiss Aspen. She was my best friend for the love of God—I annoyed her by eating her food, and she annoyed me by asking me to do stupid shit like buy her fucking tampons.
Which I was never doing again.
No amount of food could ever send me back down the psychedelic aisle of ladies’ sanitary items.
But still—our relationship had never been based on attraction. Sure, I thought she was beautiful and sexy, but it was more of a casual thought rather than anything I’d ever focused on.
Until now.
Now, I couldn’t stop fucking looking at her that way.
Even when she looked like she’d dragged herself through a bush and smeared pizza sauce on her shirt.
She was still beautiful.
And it wasn’t just because she was bringing a plate full of my grandmother’s quesadilla over to me.
“Here.” She handed it to me with a twinkle in her eye. “Because you brought it to me and saved me a trip…and a lesson on keeping a man in my life.”
I laughed, taking the plate and cutlery from her. “She did mention that when she gave me the box. She asked me if you were dating a nice young Mexican man yet.”
Aspen groaned, tucking one of the wisps of hair behind her ear. “Why is she insistent on my future husband being Mexican?”
“Because she hates the Italians? I don’t know. She’s Mexican. She thinks everyone should marry Mexican in the hope that one day, we’ll be able to take over the world.”
“No, that’ll be the aliens who take over the world.”
“You know how she feels about aliens. They’re right up there with the Illuminati.”
“I know that, but I only have a very rudimentary understanding of Spanish.” Aspen paused, a piece of quesadilla speared onto her fork. “You’re the one who gets the rant about conspiracy theorists.”
“And that’s why I now do my best to not piss you off,” I countered. “Because last time, she went on about it for three days.”
“She has some very valid arguments.”
“You believe in both aliens and the Illuminati.”
“Of course I do. There’s no way that, in an infinite universe, a race as dumb as humans are the only ones to exist,” she said, putting a cushion under her plate and settling it back down. “And as for the Illuminati, well, that’s not a conversation you should have out loud.”
I rolled my eyes. “You need to spend less time on the internet.”
“On the contrary, you need to spend more. You should try Tumblr.”
“What’s on Tumblr?”
“You’re just proving my point, Luke. Go visit Tumblr. It’s a gold mine.” She grinned and reached for the remote. “How do people still visit restaurants after watching this show? These places are gross.”
“That was a one-eighty in conversation I’m not sure how to deal with.” I chewed some quesadilla and swallowed. “For the record, I agree with you. These places are gross.”
Aspen nodded. “Yet I can’t stop watching. It’s like a bad drug. A bit like sex. And tequila.”
Sex and tequila. Doubly bad when mixed together. I was the fucking authority on that, after all.
“You’re telling me,” I muttered.
She jerked her head up. “What?”
“I agreed with you,” I said quickly. “I was eating.”
Her eyes narrowed, but she let it go. We ate in peace after that, with no more mentions of Mexican men or sex or tequila. I was glad of that. I didn’t want to think about any of those things in relation to Aspen.
It was going to take a while to move past what had happened, that was for sure. I was just happy it wasn’t painfully fucking awkward.
I’m sure it would have been had we both remembered.
My phone buzzed in my pocket with an incoming call. I put the plate on the coffee table in front of me and pulled it out.
It was my grandmother.
“I know who that is,” Aspen muttered, hiding a smile behind her hand.
“Hello?” I said, holding the phone to my ear.
A long stream of Spanish exploded into my ear.
“Whoa, calm down,” I said. “Speak slowly.”
“Does Aspen like the food? Did she meet a nice Mexican boy yet? Why hasn’t she called me?” Abuelita’s questions came like fireworks on the Fourth of July, one after another.
“You know. Abuelita, I’m not the person to answer that. Let me pass you over.”
Aspen was shaking her head with wide eyes before I’d even had a chance to move. “No, no, no!” she mouthed, waving her hands around.
“Yeah, here she is!” I held the phone out with a grin.
Aspen took it, murder in her bright eyes. She jammed the phone against her ear. “Hey, Abuelita. How are you?”
I could hear the buzz from my grandmother’s extraordinarily loud voice as I sat back with a grin and ate the rest of my food.
“Yes, the food is great, thank you,” Aspen said, turning her back to me. “Quesadilla… Mhmm, he is… Yep… Ah, well, no, I haven’t met anyone yet… No, not being picky, just working… Uh-huh… We’ll see, maybe… I’ll call you as soon as I do… Yes, I promise… Okay, bye!”
She turned on her heel and glared at me.
I held up my hands. “She asked me questions about you. How could I answer those?”
“With your words,” she snapped, throwing my phone onto the sofa next to me. “She just told me, in two languages, that I’m twenty-five this weekend, and it’s about time I got into a serious relationship, then offered me your cousin, Luis.”
I shook my head. “Don’t date Luis.”
“I didn’t intend on dating Luis!”
“You don’t need to shout at me.”
“She’s not even my grandmother! Why is she on my back about getting married? You’re two months older than me and you’re not getting married either! I didn’t sign up for this! My grandparents live in Maine!”
I tried not to laugh. I really fucking did, but I couldn’t help myself.
It wasn’t every day you had an angry brunette covered in pizza sauce with her nipples poking through her shirt yelling at you about your grandmother try
ing to marry her off.
Aspen threw a cushion at my head. “You’re a dick! Stop laughing at me!”
“I can’t.” I moved the plate back onto the coffee table and tossed the cushion back at her. “It’s so funny. She has an obsession with getting you married. I think she wants you to marry into my family.”
“Really? What gave it away?” She stormed over the fridge and pulled out an unopened bottle of wine. “Was it Luis tonight? Or Carlos last year? Or perhaps Juan at Christmas the year before that?”
“I thought you were quitting drinking.”
She jammed the corkscrew into the top of the bottle, twisted, and yanked the cork out. “Bite me.”
I grabbed my beer and laughed into my hand. “You forgot Javier and Eduardo at my parents’ anniversary party.”
She slumped forward, groaning as she poured wine into a glass. “Don’t. Please don’t remind me of that night. It was hell.”
“I would have thought Jorge at prom was the worst night.”
She held up one hand and drained her glass of wine. “Stop it. I cannot take another set up with one of your cousins. It’s not that I have anything against your family, but—”
“It’s bad enough dealing with Abuelita as my best friend, never mind being an actual part of the family.”
Sighing, she sat back in the chair. “She’s insane.”
“My entire family is insane. You know that. You would literally be a part of it if she had her way.”
“I basically am. I’m an honorary Taylor, even though it annoys her that your mom took your dad’s name.”
“Every day. Not a week goes by that she doesn’t guilt my mom about it, considering all her sisters married Mexican men or kept their surnames.” I paused. “Then again, I’m the only one of the grandkids not to be given a Mexican name, so I think my mom rebelled from birth.”
Aspen hugged her knee to her chest. “She did. She once told me that she ran shirtless through the middle of town because of a dare. She’s where you get your exhibitionist streak from.”
That explained so much. “When the hell did she tell you that?”
“At the anniversary party last year, right after she rescued me from your grandmother and Javier.”
“Was that before or after my cousins argued over who was going to date you?”