Own Me

by Lexi Scott

  “You think you’d be okay sleeping on the couch for months or years?” she demands, her hands clutching at the front of my shirt. “This is temporary, sure, but it’s long-term temporary. You work hard and you need your rest, which means you need to sleep in a bed.”

  She’s being practical. She’s making valid points that jostle our accepted social norms, but she’s not coming onto me. I have to tell myself that, because when I look down into her wild eyes, she makes my heart thud with a want I’ve never felt for anyone before.

  “It’s more complicated than that,” I tell her, but I can see from the way she pulls her mouth to the side that she thinks I’m the one making things complicated. “It’s not just my ability to sleep. Or yours. What about…what about if, during the time we’re doing this, you meet someone you really care about? Is it cheating if you decide to be with him?”

  “I think we can cross that bridge if we ever come to it. And I think we have to acknowledge the fact that…” She pulls closer to me, and I can feel the heat of her skin through her clothes. “I’m a red-blooded woman, Adam. I’ve noticed the way you look at me. You’re actually very hot—when I can get past your Doctor Who shirts.” I laugh, and she bites her lip. “I don’t think it’s realistic for us to be celibate for years. And I think our lives will be complicated enough without casually dating other people in the meantime. We’re adults, we’re friends. This situation is going to test our relationship and change it anyway. I hope we’re strong enough to roll with it, and…I guess what I’m trying to say is I’m willing to go all the way with this experiment.”

  I shake my head, and I get up the guts to put my hands on her face again. It may be one of the last times. Her skin is softer than I expected. I rub my thumbs over her cheekbones and watch her lips part. “I can’t let you do that. I want you to have the kind of love you deserve. I don’t want you to put that aside so I can finish my fucking research.”

  “Adam, I have my whole life to find my soul mate, okay? If you and I spend the next few years in a very official ‘friends with benefits’ capacity, that will just give me time to move away from my family, get my head on straight, finish school, and escape the stigma of my whole Deo crush—”

  “I’m happy to help with that.” I know Deo didn’t technically do anything wrong by marrying the girl he loved, but still, he hurt Gen, and that makes me blind with rage. God, she looks gorgeous, her lips bright pink, her eyes flashing the way they do when she’s right on the cusp of solving a really complicated problem. The wind picks up, and I use it as an excuse to brush her hair away from her face. “I want you to know, I’m aware how lucky I am to have such a fearless, loyal, smart-as-hell best friend. Since I moved here, you’ve made this place feel like my home. I owe so much to you, Genevieve.”

  She’s not making eye contact with me. Her eyes dart back and forth and she bites her lips. She’s breathing heavy, and when she finally looks up at me, her eyebrows are furrowed low. “Funny you say that, Adam. I feel exactly the same way you do. I know getting married as friends seems rash and full of potential problems, but if anyone could make this work, it’s me and you.”

  “Very true,” I laugh. “You’re sure, Gen? You’re sure this is what you want? Because the last thing I want is to be your biggest regret.”

  “Marry me, Adam.” Genevieve looks at me, and her hands come up to either side of my face and grip it hard. “Marry me and stay my best friend.”

  Chapter Five

  Genevieve

  The cheap Formica tabletop is cold and smooth under my palm. I want to press my face to it and dull the thumping in my head. The never ending drum solo kept me awake all night, thinking about Adam…and what I’d said to him.

  Or, literally, proposed.

  “Thanks for meeting me,” he says, sliding into the cracked booth.

  His dark hair is still shower-damp and tousled. I think about what it would be like to wake up and watch Adam get ready to take a shower. Or, like every frisky newlywed couple in a Hollywood rom-com, maybe follow him into the bathroom and step into the hot spray. For a second, my dirty mind imagines the entire soapy, wet scenario, and I feel my cheeks—and other places—go warm.

  His voice brings me back from my totally inappropriate domestic fantasy and into the present. “I guess I could’ve picked something a little…nicer.”

  He makes a good point. The place is a dump, but I’d be surprised if it isn’t exactly halfway between my parent’s house and Adam’s place, and I’m sure he knew that when he picked it. Because he’s precise like that. Thoughtful.

  I’m not all that thoughtful. That’s always worked fine when we were just friends. How will it pan out when we’re husband and wife?

  “This place is great. The coffee is good,” I lie.

  I tip my cup to examine the sludge with a lump of coffee grounds floating around in the bottom. There’s no amount of sugar and cream that could tame this brew. I force a smile and it seems to relax Adam. He shimmies out of his sweater and then folds his hands, short-nailed and long-fingered, on the tabletop.

  “Did you order?” He nods at the laminate menus that are stuck together with the syrup remnants of breakfasts long past.

  I shake my head. “No, I was waiting on you. Are you hungry?”

  His eyes flash to me, then he tugs the menu over and unsticks the pages, flipping through without really looking. “Yeah, starved. I could really go for some Eggs Benedict. Do you think they have that here? Probably not.”

  It’s polite small talk. And it’s not necessary. It also has nothing at all to do with why we’re here.

  I can’t do this with him. I can’t sit in this diner and pretend what happened the other night never happened. I can’t pretend we didn’t just start planning our wedding. The wedding to celebrate our marriage. This is about to be real, no turning back.

  The thing is, I kept waiting to regret those words, to wish them into a deep, black hole where they’d be forgotten forever. But that never happened. In fact, the minute I saw him walk in I felt like… As crazy as it sounds, I felt like I was looking at my future.

  And it looked damn good.

  I can’t explain it, and I don’t know if I want to. I just know what I feel and that this feels so damn right.

  “Look, Adam, about last night. I know you think I’m crazy—”

  “I don’t think you’re crazy, Genevieve,” Adam says, his voice clear and steady. He pulls his eyebrows together and tilts his head like he’s choosing his words carefully. “I think you’re…impetuous. It’s a good thing. You’re young—”

  “You’re, like, the same age.” I shake my head, annoyed. My next words are barely a whisper. “Why does everyone have to treat me like I’m such a child?”

  Adam stares awkwardly out the window, running one hand over the five o’clock shadow prickling his wide jaw. I’ve probably made him really uncomfortable.

  Though I guess it’s not any more uncomfortable than last night, when I forced him to talk about sharing a bed with me. A marriage bed.

  We’ve kissed exactly once.

  And I can’t stop thinking about when we’ll kiss again.

  “Are you two ready to order?” The waitress’s question makes me jump in my seat. She moves to refill my coffee, but I cover the mug with my palm and shake my head.

  “I’ll just have toast,” I say with a weak smile.

  “Same,” Adam says, pushing the menu into place behind the napkin holder. I thought he was starved for something big, like Eggs Benedict? Maybe all this marriage talk made him lose his appetite? The waitress slips her notepad back into her apron pocket and walks away.

  “So, I called because I don’t want you to think all the planning needs to be on you,” Adam says. “I don’t care what you say, you’re still getting the shitty end of this deal. I know I talked about eloping because it made more sense, but I see now how selfish that was of me.” He says these words like he has them written on index cards in his back pocket. “This
isn’t about efficiency. It’s about compromise. I want to do what makes us both happy, and a wedding that you can be proud of makes me happy.”

  Whoa. Maybe he also has a copy of Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus tucked in his back pocket.

  “I just…my family is very, very traditional,” I say. “And with all of them convinced Deo broke my heart, I guess I want to prove to them that I’m with someone amazing. I know the marriage isn’t real, but our friendship is. I’m proud of you, Adam. I want to show everyone that I made a good decision—and I think the two of us marrying as friends is a great decision.”

  Adam weighs the salt and pepper shakers in each hand. It’s a nervous act, but he contradicts it by not breaking eye contact with me the entire time, and I feel sucked into his stare.

  “I agree. I agree with you. Don’t get me wrong. I guess it’s also that I’ll be standing up there alone. I don’t really have many friends here, other than people from the labs, or professors. But they’re more like coworkers. My family is obviously too far away to travel, and I don’t know your family at all—”

  He’s talking in nervous circles and letting his eyes linger too long on my face. I swallow back the lump in my throat.

  “I’m so sorry,” I interrupt, and slide my hand across the tabletop, almost touching his fingers, but just a shade too chicken to go all the way. Funny, I’m not afraid to present the idea of marriage, but I can’t get up the guts to hold his hand when he needs me to.

  “I am. And I feel like a selfish brat that I never thought about it from your side. You always seem so sure of yourself, so pulled together, I guess I never stop to think that you get nervous, too.”

  “Damn, Gen. I wish I could see myself the way you see me.” He leans forward over the little battered table, his eyes soft, his hands almost ready to take mine, but holding back. Because he doesn’t know where the line is, just like I don’t. “And I say that I’ll be nervous and alone, but that’s not entirely true, is it? I only have to wait until you walk down the aisle, and then I’ll have my best friend standing with me.”

  “You should be surrounded by family, too,” I protest. I want to explain what I feel about him, about me, about love and life, and the way nothing makes sense and then sometimes, out of nowhere, something does, but not for any reason you can explain. Not without sounding like a lunatic. So I try to stick to the facts and give him a reasonable, logical argument, even if that’s not quite what I mean. “But if they can’t, I’ll do my best to stand in and be enough.”

  This muscle high up in his jaw pulses, and he shakes his head, about to answer me. But then he pulls back and stares down at the pattern on the Formica like he’s trying to figure out how to say what he needs to say.

  “You’re so much more than enough, Genevieve.” And then his entire face changes. His eyes go dark, his mouth is hard and tight. There’s something fierce in his expression, something that makes me draw a quick breath in and hold it in my lungs. “You’re incredible. And I don’t deserve friendship like yours.”

  I push away from the table and smile shyly.

  “What?” Adam asks, the intense expression loosening with a grin. “Did you just roll your eyes at me?”

  I crack a smile. “You’re sweet to me. Too sweet. Is the prospect of marrying me getting you mushy, Abramowitz? You used to be tough on me, and never let me get away with any crap.”

  Our waitress sets the toast in front of us, but neither Adam nor I move toward our plates. It’s like we’re using every ounce of our energy to keep from jumping across this table and…

  What?

  I don’t know. I don’t think Adam knows. And neither one of us seems ready to admit the feeling is even there, so we keep having this logical discussion like two sensible, mature adults while the air around us crackles with something hot and dangerously sexy.

  “It’s different now.” He shrugs and his mouth goes tight, like there are things he’s not going to say. Things he wants but can’t admit to. “I get that this isn’t going to be a conventional marriage, but in the eyes of the law, you’ll be my wife, Genevieve. I’ll be responsible for you in a way I never was when I was just your friend. I think we’d be really naive if we didn’t face the fact that this is going to change things for us. We need to be open to that.”

  He’s only sitting a few feet away from me, but the look in his eyes tells me he wants to drag me closer. There’s a possessive quality to his words—I’ll be responsible for you—that makes my heart stutter. It’s an old-fashioned sentiment. The liberal, modern woman in me should point out that we’ll be responsible for each other, but I don’t. I stop myself because something deep in me responds to his hungry gaze. I don’t know if he’s just not bothering to hide the fact that he wants me, or if he can’t.

  I square my shoulders and straighten my back, putting a hand against my neck. I can feel my pulse jumping under my fingers, and I wonder just how flushed my skin is. Does Adam notice I’m blushing? Would he imagine it’s because of him?

  “I realize that, Adam, but I really don’t think what we’re doing is that weird. In fact, historically, there are probably way more marriages like ours than go through the whole ‘fall madly in love and marry your soul mate’ shtick. I mean, people have been getting married without being in love, or even really knowing each other that well, for centuries. Even my pretty liberal parents talked to me just this fall about meeting men. You know. Um, meeting men they…would help me choose.”

  Now is probably not the best time to mention that I was completely horrified and screamed that I would never, ever do that, that there was no way I’d let them arrange something that huge or ever marry for any reason other than love. My point is that plenty of smart, rational people still have arranged marriages, and no one even bats an eyelash.

  Well, very few people bat their eyelashes.

  Er, none of the Jewish parents or grandparents bat their eyelashes, anyway.

  Funny that right now it’s me batting my lashes at Adam—the same flirty technique I’ve used on plenty of guys before. This time it feels different. Maybe because Adam is my friend, and it’s not really kosher to bat your lashes at your friend. Or maybe it’s because Adam doesn’t seem nearly as affected by my attempt at flirtation as I hoped.

  “Are you talking about using a shadchan?” I’m not sure if he thinks the idea is hilarious or horrifying, but I like the sexy way his mouth curves when he asks the question.

  “Of course not,” I huff, though Miriam Spektor has arranged a half dozen totally happy marriages in our synagogue, and nobody laughs about her skills. Lydia was next on her list, before her partner’s divorce helped her snag a guy all on her own. “This isn’t Fiddler on the Roof.”

  “No, it isn’t.” His words drip with insinuation, like he’s daring me to help him figure out what this hot, confusing, exciting thing between us actually is. I have a feeling unknotting the tension sparking between us right now could prove very, very fun.

  I bulldoze past all the dirty scenarios suddenly darting through my brain and clear my throat nervously. “Anyway, you only need a shadchan if you can’t find someone on your own. We’ve already met, so this is all a moot point.”

  Adam sits back, arms crossed. His eyes lock with mine. He refuses to look away, and his voice drops to a sexy rasp that makes goose bumps rise up on my arms.

  “Genevieve, you realize you could have married anyone you wanted. Even if you were to go ahead with an arranged marriage, you’d have folders full of applicants. You could pick and choose, not get stuck with some washed-up loser with too many degrees and no way to support you.” A flash of embarrassment clouds his eyes.

  I take a breath, get my thoughts under control, and try hard not to ramble. My hands shake, and I can’t quite meet his gaze when I lay it all out for him.

  “Adam. If I could choose a husband, I’d choose someone kind. Someone hard-working. Someone smart and funny and…um…” I gesture at him. He raises one eyebrow high. “Handso
me!” I wind up yelling. I lower my voice and ignore the way his eyes widen in…shock? Humor? Terror? “I would choose someone like you. I’d be lucky to have the chance to choose someone like you. And I will go into this marriage like I go into everything: I’ll give it my all, and I won’t quit when things get hard.”

  “Gen.”

  His voice is thick. He reaches across the table and covers my trembling hands with his, finally. I catch my breath. They’re as strong and warm as always, and they give me an immediate sense of comfort. These are definitely hands I could hold for a lifetime—and will.

  I am bound and determined that Adam and I will never lose our friendship, no matter how this whole marriage experiment works out.

  He gives me a hard look. A warning look. “I want to bring up one more thing. What we’re planning to do has risks. There are laws against this kind of stuff. You could get into a lot of trouble. With the government.”

  I wave my hand at him, brushing off his threats of danger and doom. “Only if they didn’t believe us. We know each other. All right, maybe we don’t know everything about each other, but what we don’t know, we’ll learn. Plus we’re so charming if anyone ever called anything into question, we’d be able to wiggle out of trouble.” I catch his eye and he smirks.

  Then he smiles.

  Then he full on laughs.

  “I guess I have to trust you. I might be biased. I do find you pretty damn charming.”

  “Good,” I say, going all pink. “So it’s official now, right? We’re…are we engaged?” I sigh. “It feels ridiculous to say ‘engaged’ and ‘married’ when we both know that’s not exactly what this is.”

  He raises his dark eyebrows. “Maybe we need to call it something else? Maybe…you know when electrons transfer from atom to atom, they bond. And the bond is based on attraction that can’t be broken unless—”