“Hey, thanks for having us. This is a really great house.”
“It’ll be slightly less great once this guy and his wife move out, unfortunately. Thanks for coming.” I started to angle away from her, ever so slightly, but her hand reached out for my arm.
“Actually I wanted to ask you…Ethan was telling me you developed a fitness app for runners?”
“Yeah, a few years ago.” I saw Gemma’s head tilt back and she was laughing—really laughing at something Ben had said. Shit.
“Well, I’ve just started running, you know, to lose weight.” She paused for me and Ethan to tell her that she didn’t need to lose weight—which we did. “Whatever. It sounds like something I need. What’s it called?”
Gemma’s hand reached out to touch Ben’s shoulder and he leaned in to say something in her ear, his hand lightly touching her waist. Fuck.
“It’s uh, it’s called Fitness Nerd. You input your current weight, age, measurements etc, your goal weight, size, fitness level, and the app will tell you exactly how much you should ideally consume in a day, how much activity you need to do, the ideal distance and pace if you’re running, and the best type and ratio of macronutrients and exercises to help you reach your goals.” I could give that pitch in my sleep, and also while never once looking at the person I was talking to, which was convenient because that meant that I was free to catch Gemma looking up at me—finally—she looked over and saw Andie.
“It lays it out in a very methodical, easy to understand way,” said Ethan. “In case you’re wondering how I got into such amazing shape…” He half-heartedly raised his arms up and spun around, not even enjoying his own dumb joke. Andie completely ignored him.
“Oh my God,” she pushed her hair behind her ear. “That’s literally exactly what I need. I mean, that’s what everyone needs. I’m gonna download it right now.”
Gemma looked back to me and held my gaze for a few seconds longer than usual. It wasn’t the Rescue Me From This Idiot/Asshole look. It wasn’t the Let’s Go Home I’m Tired look, because obviously we were at home. It was something new. The little smirk on her flushed face told me everything I needed to know, whether she knew it or not.
“Cool. Ethan can help you out if you need a tutorial. It only took him four months to figure it out. I like your dress, by the way.” I said that last thing just in case I decided to circle back and chat her up later, but I could feel her frowning at me and then at Ethan as I walked away to join Gemma and Ben out on the deck.
Gemma was right. I did like Ben. I liked him so much I decided to hang out with him for the rest of the night until he finally left to take his dog for a late night walk.
I still didn’t like him for Gemma, though.
Gemma definitely didn’t like me for hanging around Ben.
But she’d get over it soon enough.
She always did.
6
Theo
“Stop cleaning, Grandma!”
It was one-thirty, the last guest had left half an hour ago, Chloe and Ethan were downstairs, and Gemma hadn’t stopped humming or fussing around since then. She had kicked off her heels and removed those enormous round earrings, but she was beyond tipsy and it was like watching a toddler pretending to tidy up. I should have just sat back and enjoyed the show because she was so fucking cute, but I knew she was going to pass out any minute and I was afraid she’d do it while she was holding onto a bunch of bottles and cut herself.
“You could help me out, you know,” she said, bumping into the dining table.
“Rosa’s coming late tomorrow morning to clean up.”
“We can’t make her clean all this up.”
“I’m paying her overtime for the extra visit.”
“Okay, well I’m just…pre-cleaning.”
She just didn’t want to stay still because she was afraid I’d keep grilling her about Ben.
“Maybe we should give her the margarita machine? You don’t want to keep it? Do you? I don’t think you and margarita make a good team.”
“I’m sure Rosa’s teenage son would love it. And I think you’re just jealous of me and Marge and Rita.”
She didn’t acknowledge my dumb joke, groaned, and finally stopped moving. “I’m so tired. I partied so hard.”
I laughed hard. “No. You didn’t.”
She sighed. “I tried…I’m so hungry. There’s no more food in the house.”
“Oh yes there is.”
“There isn’t. I checked. Protein powder doesn’t count as food.” She pouted. She could barely keep her eyes open. She was going to go down fast and soon.
“You’ve been looking for what you want in all the wrong places.”
She wrinkled her brow at me. “What?”
“Hang on.” I got up off the sofa, went to my room, and returned with a bag of potato chips and oatmeal cookies. We had both consumed way too many carbs already, but it was Cheat Day. Nothing counts on Cheat Day. “I knew you wouldn’t eat enough when we had people over so I hid a stash in my closet.”
She clasped her hands at her chest and swayed. “You hid food in the closet for me?” She grabbed onto the back of a dining chair for stability. “Awww. Walker.”
I tore open the bag of chips. “Well. It’s for me too.” I was fresh out of the Old Dutch chips that my Mom sent a month earlier, but these would do. I dropped back down to the sofa, held the bag up to lure her, and watched as she came towards me, one foot carefully placed in front of the other, leaning a little further back than any sober person would.
She landed on the sofa right next to me and hugged the bag of chips to her chest like it was a stuffed animal she’d just won at a fair. “Haaaahhhhhh,” she said. “You.”
“Not mad at me anymore, are you?”
“Didn’t say that.”
I switched the TV input from Blu-ray to Apple TV and started up a Bob’s Burgers on Hulu. She liked to watch animated stuff to relax. If I put on anything live action she’d start paying attention to the set design and go into work mode. Even when she’s drunk. If I wanted to torture her I’d put on a Wes Anderson movie. She’d start levitating and use paper clips to force her eyelids open.
This, I knew, but I didn’t know if she liked it rough. I didn’t know what she tasted like down there in that place of hers that I’d never seen. I didn’t know how she kissed when she was really turned on, and I had no idea that I was about to find out.
She rested her head against my bicep and stuffed a cookie into her mouth.
“That was a pretty good party, right?”
“Huh?” It was like she’d forgotten we just had a party at our house. “Oh yeah. It was. I’m gonna miss those guys.”
“Me too.” I leaned my head down to touch the top of hers. “I’ve missed you, Gem. I feel like we never see each other anymore.”
She swallowed the last of her cookie, put the bag of chips on the floor, and sat up to face me. Her eyes were completely hooded, and she was licking her lips. I knew it was because of the salt from the potato chips and the sugar from the cookie, but still…those lips.
“Theo,” she whispered, like a sad little song. “What’re we gonna do?” She put her hands on either side of my face, and tried to focus her eyes on mine. And then, something crazy happened.
She got this carnal look in them, bit her lower lip, and before I knew it, she was on my lap, straddling me. “I liked the way you were looking at me tonight,” she said in a husky voice that I had never heard before. “Did you like looking at me?”
“Yes.” I was leaning as far back into the sofa as I could, this blue sofa that we had hung out on countless times as friends, and I hadn’t once let myself imagine this happening here.
“You don’t want anyone else looking at me like that, do you?”
“No.”
“They do, though. Guys. Not just Ben. Guys look at me now. It’s like they know…”
“Know what?”
“How badly I need it.”
I sw
allowed. “Need what?” I knew exactly what.
“This.”
“Gemma…”
“Shhhh.” She reached for my hands, placed them on her hips, then kissed me on my neck, just below my ear, and God it felt good. “I want this.”
I tried to say her name again, to question this, but I couldn’t because my mouth had found hers, and that was it. There was no question. I never wanted to stop kissing those salty sweet lips. Our breaths mingled, our tongues touched and explored, my hands were squeezing her ass and I wanted to get her out of those tight jeans so bad. She was grinding down on me, making little moaning sounds, and we were making out hot and heavy like teenagers, when only a minute earlier I was just trying to get her to relax.
Her hands were all over my chest and I realized that she was trying to get my shirt off. I managed to pull it off over my head without sacrificing more than a second of kisses, but she pulled away to look down at my abs. The abs that she had been yelling at me to cover up for an entire year.
“Ohhhh,” she cooed. I watched as she carefully stroked my pecs and ran her fingers down my abs, studying and admiring, then leaned down to lick a nipple, and I don’t think I had ever been so turned on in my life. By Gemma. What the fuck? My hands were in her soft wavy hair, and my very hard cock was pressing up against the inside of my jeans, and I could see it in her face when she realized that that’s what she had been feeling against her inner thigh. She gasped, her eyes widened, got hooded again.
“Theo...”
My hands stayed at her hips, concentrated on her face as she dragged the tips of her fingers down my chest while clenching her thighs together so tight around me. I was still holding myself back, as much as possible. I wasn’t drunk enough to make a mistake this big with someone as important as Gemma, but I wanted to. Thirty more seconds and I’d be past the point of no return.
Her hands reached for the bottom of the tight black tank top that had been making me just a little bit crazy all night, and oh yes, she pulled it up and as she struggled to get it off over her head, my face was two inches from the most beautiful round perky tits, all pushed together in a sexy black bra and nothing could stop me from leaning in and kissing the soft smooth mounds of sweet gorgeousness. She smelled like vanilla and caramel and something rich and earthy and dirty and she was groaning and I was groaning, and I reached around to unhook her bra, but her hands shot up and knocked me in the jaw.
I looked up and saw her covering her mouth, her eyes like saucers, her head and body completely still. “Oh no,” she muttered, before leaping off of me and scrambling towards the bathroom, staying low to the ground.
“Shit,” I mumbled to myself. I tried to stand up to help her out, but it took a minute for my body to remember that it existed to do anything other than get inside Gemma.
My best friend.
Fuck.
I managed to get to the bathroom to pull her hair out of her face before she really started to hurl. The bathroom was lit only from the dim hallway lights, and it sounded like a barnyard animal was giving birth and splashing around in a foot of water.
“Go away!” she muttered, in between splashes. “Don’t listen!”
“Honey, it’s okay. Just let it all out.” I called her “Honey” for the first time ever. In a matter of seconds, I went from the guy who was licking her boobs to some sixty year-old diner waitress. This was a weird night.
After every ounce of tequila had been expelled from her system, after she had brushed her teeth and rinsed with mouthwash, after I had brought her a brand new toothbrush from my bathroom because I knew she wouldn’t want to use the vomit one ever again—I found her under the covers in her bed. And by “under the covers” I mean her entire self was one big lump under the covers.
“You asleep?” I whispered.
She grunted.
I left a sleeve of saltine crackers and a bottle of water on her bedside table.
“Don’t sleep on your back. Okay? In case you vomit in your sleep.”
“This is so humiliating,” she mumbled.
“Not on your back. You hear me?”
“Yes. Go away.”
“Good night.”
I turned off the lamp and left the door open, in case she had to run to the bathroom again.
I took a long cold shower and by the time it was over I knew that things would never go back to the way they were, but that we were very lucky we’d avoided making a big mistake. It would be awkward tomorrow, but I would do whatever it took to make sure she didn’t feel bad about it. Even if it meant making her mad at me. Again.
7
Gemma
Am I dead? I must have choked on my own vomit and died last night, because this is not how I remember it feeling in my head when I was alive.
I stared up at the ceiling, because it was too much effort to close my eyelids again.
Oh God. Why am I being punished?
And then I remembered.
I slowly lifted up the comforter, very slowly sat up, and found that I was wearing my very tight jeans and bra. The black tank top that I had been wearing at the party was folded neatly on top of my dresser. There was a sleeve of crackers and a bottle of water by my bed.
Theo.
I raised my fingertips to my lips. Not because I felt like throwing up again, because I could still feel what it was like to move them over that man’s stubbly face. Oh crap—I licked his nipple!
I slowly, ever so slowly and quietly lifted myself out of bed and tiptoed over to the open door to close it. My thoughts moved slowly too, but my brain wanted to run. Away from Theo. Oh shit I totally dry-humped him. I could climb out the window, stay downstairs, shower and change there, then get out of the house without seeing him. I could stay with Chloe and Ethan overnight. Starting tomorrow I would be so busy with work it wouldn’t be an issue.
“You up? I’m making breakfast.”
Dammit.
He was calling out to me from the kitchen. How did he know I was up when he was all the way in the kitchen?
“I need to shower!”
No response.
I gulped down the entire bottle of water and managed to get to the hallway bathroom with a change of clothes, without raising my eyes from the floor. I could sense him in the kitchen, I could feel him grinning at me. It was infuriating. Balls! He must have cleaned the bathroom too, because there was no evidence of my tango with the toilet. What a sexy way to end the evening after finally feeling an erection against my thigh again after such a long erectionless stretch of time.
I couldn’t remember how to turn on the shower, but I couldn’t forget how big and hard he was.
For me.
Christ.
Twenty minutes later, I emerged from the bathroom feeling clean and vaguely human, wearing boyfriend jeans and a plain black T-shirt that neither hid nor accentuated my curves. I had decided to act as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened. It was the polite, Midwestern thing to do, and my fallback approach to any type of potentially stressful situation.
Oh for the love of shirtlessness will you just give a girl a break?
His bare back to me, as he mixed up an almond milk/avocado/raw cacao powder/MCT oil/pea protein smoothie in the blender, I could tell that he’d already been out for a run, already done his post-run stretches. He was golden and still a little moist, wearing running shorts and his fancy running shoes. I wanted to wrap myself around him, lick that salty perspiration off his skin. I wanted him to turn and run towards me, grab me and throw me down on the sofa so we could finish what we’d started. I also wanted to time travel back to the moment when I’d shut the patio door after Chloe and Ethan had left, so I could say goodnight to Theo and retreat to my room, alone. If I’m being honest, I would have preferred to do the time travel thing after Theo had really given it to me on the sofa.
“Morning, Sunshine,” he said, nodding his head to the beat of whatever song he had last listened to. “How ya’ feelin’?”
“Sup
er. Thanks.”
“Good. You need to thoroughly rehydrate. It’s a gorgeous day out there. Not too warm, not too sunny. Want a smoothie?”
“No thank you.”
He didn’t have a trace of hangover or awkwardness. “Scrambled eggs and turkey bacon are ready, gluten-free toast is almost up.”
I wrinkled my nose at the gluten-free prospect, and went to the fridge to pull out the butter that I would have to hide the toast under. I sat down at the counter, to shovel food into my face and stared at the plate.
“Orange juice?”
I shook my head.
“Just coffee?”
I nodded.
He plated the toast and sat down on the stool next to me, watching me, his arm brushing against mine when he reached for a slice. My body tensed up.
“What’s wrong?”
I gave him a look.
“You want me to put a shirt on.”
“Whatever you want, it’s your house.”
“It’s our house.”
“It’s your house.” Emotional distancing. It felt good.
“Why are you in such a bad mood?” He took a sip of coffee. “Did you not enjoy our little goodnight kiss as much as I did?”
I covered my face with my hands. “Oh my God.”
“What?”
I pushed the plate out of the way and dropped my forehead to the countertop, wrapped my arms around my head. You know—playing it cool.
“I can’t believe I did that.”
“It wasn’t just you.”
“I can’t believe we did that.”
“Why not?”
I sat up, removed my hands from my face and gave him a wide-eyed mystified look. “Because it’s you!”
He grinned. He shrugged his shoulders. “You were drunk. I’m irresistible. It was bound to happen eventually.”
Wait. Did he say the words “little goodnight kiss?” Was that all it was to him?
Green: a friends to lovers romantic comedy Page 8