by Molly E. Lee
“He keeps looking over here every five seconds,” Randy said, his voice completely innocent, but the way he was leaning into me totally not.
“Because he’s my friend. He wants to protect me from big college guys like you.”
He laughed, and the tension left me little by little. “Just trust me,” he said. “I’m officially taking up the position of your wingman.”
I resisted the urge to face-palm myself. Why was the world set on me telling Fynn the truth on the one night he decided to pursue someone else?
“Why?” I asked, wondering why he’d want to help me when I’d clearly turned him down.
“I like you,” he said, shrugging. “You’re one of the good ones. And, hey, I’m a nice guy. It’s the least I can do for nearly crushing you on the stairs earlier.” He pulled back from me a tad, enough to casually put his hand on my knee. “By the end of the night, he’ll realize what he’s missed all these years.”
I shook my head in disbelief, but the idea sent a thrill through me. Either way, I was glad Randy knew where I stood, and that I’d gained a friend in the process. “You’ll be wasting your time,” I admitted with a smile. “You could be off looking for another girl to impress.”
“Nah,” he said. “You were the coolest one here, with your Avengers references and comic book swim suit. No use in looking now, because there aren’t any others out there like you.”
I pressed my lips together in a silent apology.
“This will be fun,” he said. “Honestly. I can’t wait to see the look on his face when it hits him.”
“When what hits him?”
“What an idiot he’s been.”
I smacked his bulking chest. “That’s my friend you’re talking—”
A cold, wet nose shoved against my dangling calf and cut me off. Hendrix on the hunt for more treats pushed Randy back a foot, the perfect angle for his long tail to thwack Randy right in his junk.
He doubled over, sucking in a sharp breath.
I jumped off the counter, trying wicked hard not to laugh as I grabbed his shoulders. “Are you okay?”
“Mmm-hmm,” he mumbled as he straightened himself. He glared at Hendrix, who, after realizing I had no food left, bounded through the people dancing in the other room and out the opened sliding glass door.
“Don’t be mad at him,” I said, happy to see Randy’s face return to its normal shade. “I’m a sucker and gave him all my food earlier. He’s happy and I’m starving.” I chuckled.
“You have a weakness for dogs. Good to know.”
“Well, that dog has personality.”
“I’ll say.” Randy adjusted himself with a hiss and I tried not to notice.
After a few more minutes, we settled back into an easy conversation, one I was thankful for. It was a good distraction, and Randy really was a nice guy. Now that he knew my heart belonged to someone else, I didn’t feel nearly as guilty, and I was able to enjoy his company. And the way this night had shaped up—and it was only the beginning—I was taking any positivity I could get.
Chapter Six
Fynn
“And then I told the guy at the fabric store that silk was absolutely harder to work with than chiffon,” Katy said, throwing her head back against the loveseat as she laughed.
“Wow.” I rolled my empty cup between my hands, trying to muster up a laugh but unable to force one out.
Katy scrunched her eyebrows together. “Anyway…that was my weekend excitement.”
I looked from my cup to her and back again. I suppose I might’ve found the story of her adventures through seven different fabric stores more interesting if I could stop sneaking glances at Braylen—who sat on the counter chatting with Randy in the kitchen. Who was I kidding? I couldn’t pretend to understand why one fabric was funnier than another, no matter the distractions I faced. It wasn’t Katy’s fault. It was all mine. The connection I’d felt earlier was wobbling in and out, and I blamed it fully on the distractions at hand.
I couldn’t figure out why Braylen talking to Randy bugged me so much.
Because he’s a college, thrill-seeking douche who has no business talking to her.
That wasn’t fair. I didn’t know for certain he was a douche, but his attention grabbing stunt into the pool hadn’t screamed reliable guy to me.
Braylen’s legs dangled off the countertop, her boots tapping against the bottom cabinets as she laughed at something Randy said. My chest tightened and I clenched my fist so quickly I cracked the empty cup between my hands.
“Whoa,” Katy said. “Does my mentioning Don make you that mad?”
I blinked a couple times—ripping my eyes away from Braylen, who looked more than happy as Randy pushed her hair over her ear—and focused on Katy. I nodded, hoping she hadn’t noticed I’d checked out after her last story.
“We were together for years, you know?” she continued.
I adjusted, leaning back against the loveseat. “I know. What did you ever see in that dude anyway?” I asked out of genuine curiosity. “Beyond his varsity athlete status, that is.”
She scoffed. “There is way more to him than that.”
“Like…” I urged her to continue. I’d never seen him do anything that didn’t benefit him in some way, and I always wondered how he managed to hang on to a girl like Katy for so long. I’d always assumed it was the fact that they’d been together since middle school.
She got a wistful look in her eye and twirled the ends of her hair. “He has a side he only shows me.”
I nodded slowly. “He could be himself around you?” That I understood well. Braylen had been the person I could open up to about anything without thinking twice, and it was comforting to know I had someone to go to no matter what the reason.
“Yes,” she said. “Totally.”
“Why’d you split?” I’d only heard the rumors and I highly doubted him sleeping with a Victoria’s Secret model was true.
“He bro—” Katy sat up straighter, glancing around before taking a fast drink. “I ended it. One day I woke up and realized we were on different paths.”
“Didn’t he get into UCLA with you?”
She ground her teeth. “Yes, but he has no motivations beyond sports. I couldn’t take it anymore.”
“I never thought I’d see the day you two weren’t together,” I said honestly.
“Me either.” She shifted next to me. “But with high school ending, I knew it was time. So much will change now that we’ve graduated and I didn’t want to head off for college never knowing anything outside of him. And he felt the same way.”
“Really?” Hard to believe he’d want anyone else but Katy—they’d been together forever.
“Yeah,” she said. “It’s better this way.” A smile took over the frown her lips had shaped into as she leaned closer to me. “Which is why I’m so glad Braylen told me about you. Knowing all you want to do…the places you’re going to go. That is enough to make a girl weak in the knees.”
Her breath smelled tart as it hit my face, she was that close. My senses honed in on her perfect lips only an inch away from mine. This would be the exact moment to try for a quick, easy kiss. One kiss. That’s all it would take to prove we were right for each other—prove that my fumbles in conversation were just nerves. That my non-stop thoughts about Braylen were only a fluke brought on by graduation.
I moved closer to Katy but Braylen’s name floating through my mind made me sneak one last peek in her direction. I froze as I watched Randy attempt to hand feed her a truffle. And my fucking heart stopped as I saw Bray open her mouth for him.
Leaping off the loveseat so fast Katy flew backward, I sprinted the distance to Braylen and smacked the shit out of Randy’s hand. The truffle went flying across the room, smacking Zoey in the back of the head. Gordon peered around her as she rubbed the spot, but I didn’t have time to apologize.
“What the fuck, man?” Randy snapped, bumping his chest with mine.
I locked all my muscles down, using
every kind of willpower I didn’t even know I possessed in order to not punch him for what he’d almost done to Bray.
“Fynn?” Both girls yelled at the same time but my eyes never strayed from Randy’s.
“You could’ve killed her!”
“With chocolate? You’re delusional, dude.” Randy leaned closer to me, his gaze sharp. “You sure you’re with the right girl? ’Cause you seem invested in this one.”
I didn’t dignify his accusation with a response. She was my best friend, of course I would be worried about her when a douchebag was trying to hand feed her poison. “Those have nuts in them.”
Bray gasped beside me. “How did you know that?”
I finally looked at her, my eyes locking onto her panic-filled brown ones. “I asked Lennon earlier. I always ask.” I shrugged, wondering how she hadn’t noticed that before.
A wave of unmerited jealousy crashed through me as Randy touched Braylen’s wrist. “I’m so sorry, Braylen. I wouldn’t have—”
“I’m fine.” Braylen smiled, but it wasn’t anything close to her real one. She was spooked and rightfully so. “No worries.”
I arched an eyebrow at her, wondering if she’d drank too much or if she had genuinely thought the truffles were safe. Either way I was ready to throw her over my shoulder and bolt. The fear of her going into anaphylactic shock was a nightmare of mine since the first time it had happened in the sixth grade. The haunting memory of her swollen and gasping for air, like an invisible force was strangling her, was never far from my mind whenever she decided to eat around me.
“Glad you’re okay,” Katy said, looking at Braylen around my shoulder. “You want to dance?” She tugged on my arm, bringing me back to earth.
Braylen is safe. She is fine.
Then why couldn’t I take my eyes off her? Like if I stopped looking, she’d disappear? Why did the insane notion suck the air out of my lungs like a vacuum?
Another pull on my arm and I moved on autopilot, blinking to break our stare-down. I let Katy drag me onto the dance floor and forced myself to move to the music thumping so loud it vibrated through my shoes.
Good. Mind-numbing music and a hot girl I’d fantasized about for years swaying her hips against mine. That was exactly what I needed to shake off what just happened. Because if I wasn’t careful, I might overanalyze the feelings swimming in my blood—feelings that were unfamiliar and revolved around my best friend.
I placed my hands on Katy’s hips and slowly moved side to side as she did most of the work. The girl could move, too, like her muscles were in sync with the music. With each beat she twirled, rolled, or popped her hips underneath my fingers, and with each brush of her body against mine, I lost a little bit of the foggy feelings toward Bray that racked my mind.
After two songs, I was breathing normally again, but it didn’t stop me from maneuvering us to a position where I could see into the kitchen. The cold came back when I found it empty of either Braylen or Randy. I scanned the dance floor around us, searching the sea of faces and swaying bodies for them there, but found Zoey and Gordon first.
I mouthed sorry when I locked eyes with Zoey, who giggled with her hands raised in a WTH gesture. I shrugged and she copied me, pulling Gordon closer toward her. I tilted my head at him when they spun to where I could see his face, but he looked as confused as I felt. A small grin tugged at my lips for the first time since I saw that idiot Randy holding the damned truffle to Bray. She’d love to see this—or more so, I’d love to throw it in her face—for calling me crazy when I’d said Gordon and Zoey should date.
Katy jolted, grabbing her cell in the middle of our dance. A quick roll of her eyes followed by a full laugh had my head spinning. “Sorry,” she said, glancing up at me. “Donna. I’ll be back.” She bolted off the floor, leaving me standing there with my hands in my pockets.
Not one to dance alone, I moseyed off the floor as fast as possible. I made my way down the main hallway, stopping outside the entertainment room when I heard Braylen’s laugh.
“You kind of suck at this,” she said.
“Only because you’re so good,” Randy answered.
My eyes flew wide. I whirled around, stepping into the room, the air going out of my lungs when I found them sitting on a couch in front of a huge TV, playing video games.
“Fynn?” Braylen asked, turning around the second I stepped inside, like she’d felt me coming.
“Hey,” I said, shoving my hands in my pockets because I suddenly didn’t know what to do with them.
Randy eyed me, then Braylen, before setting his controller on the couch between them. “I’ve got to get something to eat,” he said, standing. “Could you somehow improve my score, man?” He smacked my arm as he headed toward the door. “She’s seriously kicking my ass.”
I laughed. “She tends to do that. Plants vs. Zombies is her jam.”
Randy nodded, glancing at Braylen. “See you in a bit.” He winked at her before he left the room and I had to quash the urge to glare after him. Instead, I walked around the couch, taking the spot much closer to Braylen than he had been—but, hey, I’d earned that closeness to her after years of being her best friend.
“Katy have a party emergency?” she teased, staring at the screen as she started a new game.
I quickly snatched up the controller, punching buttons to try to thwart her attack. “I don’t know,” I said, laughing as she blew up my zombie character. “Getting chummy with the college dude, I see.”
She scoffed, her focus fully on the game. “Randy is nice.”
I rolled my eyes. “They all seem nice until they aren’t.”
“And you’re an expert on that?” she questioned, a laugh in her tone.
“I am a guy.” I tightened my hold on the control, like that would help me finally take her down.
“Are you?” she teased. “I hadn’t noticed.”
An easy laugh left my lips. For the first time the entire party, I felt at home instead of on edge, my nerves over hanging with Katy twisting me up. “Sure, sure.” I clicked away at the buttons, doing my best to chase her plant character down. “That’s not what your eyes screamed when I had you in the water earlier. It was like you couldn’t get enough of my manly masculine muscles.”
She gasped, and clocked an elbow into my side. “You are so full of it!”
I nudged her back, knocking her arm enough to make her fumble with her controller until it crashed on the floor. “Yes!” I bolted upright, seizing the opportunity to kill her character.
Her mouth popped into the shape of an O as she watched the cold-blooded kill. I raised my arms in victory. Big mistake.
Braylen hurtled at me, ready to shove my ass to the ground for cheating. I moved at the last second so she’d fly by me, only to wrap my arms around her and hold her back against my chest. I successfully pinned her flailing arms to her sides by holding her firmly around the middle.
“You are so dead!” She practically growled as she tried to break my grasp.
“Oh, yeah?” I taunted.
“Yeah.” She wiggled in an attempt to escape. “Cheaters never prosper!”
I tightened my hold a fraction, tucking my chin over her shoulder. “Looks like I’m winning,” I whispered, since her ear was so close to my lips. Chill bumps raised over the skin of her neck and she suddenly went still beneath me.
I could feel her heart racing, it was beating that hard. My cheek pressed against hers, her back against my chest, her butt against my hips…
Swallowing hard, I told myself to let her go, but I was rooted to the spot. Warmth snaked into my blood, my heart running to match her pace. For a second I simply closed my eyes and breathed her in.
“Fynn,” she whispered, slowly turning within my hold to look up at me. Her brown eyes had lost all the play of the game, her cheeks slightly flushed. “Can we talk—”
“There you are,” Katy’s voice rang from the doorway, and Braylen leaped backward just as I jerked my arms away from her. “So
rry that took so long,” she said, coming to my side.
I shrugged. “It’s cool. Got to play a round of video games with Bray.”
“Dude, you beat her?” Randy asked, coming back into the room, immediately standing next to Braylen. He nudged her, glancing down at her in question. She gave him a small nod and I scrunched my eyebrows. Silent conversations were our thing.
“He did,” Braylen answered for me.
“Nice! I call winner,” Katy said, shocking the hell out of me.
She didn’t seem like a girl who spent any time near an Xbox unless she was using it to set her purse on. Another fun fact I hadn’t known about her until tonight. Nice.
“It wasn’t a clean win,” I admitted. “Braylen’s the rightful winner.”
“Damn!” Randy said. “You force good people to do bad things!” He chuckled as he high-fived Braylen, before handing her a controller and Katy the other. “You’ve got this, Braylen. Sorry Katy,” he added with a grin.
Lame.
Braylen laughed, finally breaking out of the stare-down she’d been giving me. Her cheeks flushed in the bright light from the big screen. Had I done that to her? Something wove tight inside me, but I couldn’t figure out what.
“Awesome,” Katy said, dropping onto the couch next to Braylen.
“Good luck,” I said.
“Thanks,” both Katy and Braylen said in unison.
Shit.
“You’ll need it, Katy,” Randy said, jumping in faster than I could try to recover myself. Asshole. He moved to stand behind Braylen, leaning his elbows on the back of the couch.
Katy crossed one leg over the other, examining the controller in her hand like it was a test she hadn’t studied for. I followed Randy’s idea and stood behind her, reaching over to point out the most important components of the device.
“This one is to shoot. This one to run. This one to jump.”
Katy looked back up at me, flashing me a smile as if I’d just given her the numbers to my bank account. “I’m used to Playstation,” she said. “Not Xbox.”
“Same basic concept.” I moved back as the game started, ignoring the glare from Braylen for helping Katy. It was only fair to give the girl a shot against someone as good as Bray.