Close Up

by Elise Faber

But I couldn’t give up on being in her life.

  Even if it was only as her friend.

  Six

  Eden

  I was a coward.

  I owed him an explanation.

  I was a coward.

  I—

  Had pretty much been going around in circles since I’d first picked up my cell earlier that day to call him.

  I was going to dial his number. I wasn’t going to text but actually speak to him and explain that I’d had a horrible ex and that he’d hurt me, and I was still fucked up and broken and damaged.

  And that it wasn't him.

  That it was me.

  It’s not you, it’s me.

  Ugh. That sounded about as good this time around as it had all the previous times I’d gone through this loop in my brain.

  So, I’d chickened out. And I’d texted instead, promising myself I’d just blurt the explanation via text and then turn off my cell.

  I’d done neither.

  Minimally, I’d apologized, which was the single good thing I’d done that day, but the explanation hadn’t come, I hadn’t been able to stop my replies, and by the end of it, Damon was coming to my house, bringing me pizza, and we were rehearsing my lines.

  And then he was going home.

  He’d spelled that part out clearly.

  I deliberately ignored the fact that Damon leaving made a pang shoot through my heart.

  I was well aware of my faults along with my past trauma and that it was influencing my present life. This wasn’t me thinking I was such a bad person and didn’t deserve happiness. Yes, I was damaged. Yes, there was a part of me that would never be fully healed. But I wasn’t a martyr. I’d gotten through to the other side. I had friends, and I had my career. That was enough.

  I was also critically aware that I would never be able to lower my guard enough to give another man power over me.

  I controlled the interactions.

  I said when and where and then told them to get the fuck out.

  Always get the fuck out.

  They just . . . none of them had ever stayed or even tried to stay.

  But none of them had been Damon either. I hadn’t known them well, hadn’t spent years with a weekly call, dinners when we were in the same town, clubs and dancing and drinking when we’d been younger and newly successful and the most exciting thing was being allowed into the VIP section. But though that excitement—partying all night, drinking myself into oblivion—had faded after a while, my connection to Damon hadn’t.

  This is why I hadn’t allowed myself to do this.

  This is why I shouldn’t have allowed myself to do it now.

  Fucking biological clock and cute newborns and Artie and Pierce looking so lovingly into each other’s eyes.

  It had melted my brain.

  I’d agreed to the drink when I’d been vulnerable, and that had stretched to a meal and more drinks and then—

  Damon in my bed.

  Being more spectacular of a lover than I’d ever expected. I mean, it wasn’t like I hadn’t hoped and prayed he would be a fantastic fuck or imagined what it would be like to have him in my bed.

  But . . . he was too close.

  Then last night.

  Had. Been. Incredible.

  And also the stupidest thing I’d ever done in my life.

  Circles?

  See?

  Now it was 6:56 P.M. and Damon was punctual, so he would be on time. Which meant I had exactly four minutes to . . .

  Panic? No. To get my shit together? Yes. That.

  “Forget the orgasms,” I muttered, moving to my closet and throwing on an oversized sweatshirt. Paired with loose jeans, a tank top and T-shirt, along with white sneakers, my hair pulled back into a pony, a pink baseball cap on my head, and I was wearing as many layers of clothes as I could stand.

  It was ninety degrees outside. The sun was nearly set, and my air conditioning was still going at full force. I would be roasting in all the layers, but my reasoning was sound.

  Namely, if it took me forever to get undressed, then I’d be less likely to jump on top of Damon’s glorious cock when he came through the door.

  Didn’t stop me from taking it into my mouth, though.

  Eden!

  I stopped, shook my head hard, glad that my inner reprimand had been in my mother’s voice.

  That was the surest way to douse any of my remaining desire.

  Clothes, good.

  Penis, bad.

  Friends, good.

  Anything more than friends—and that included fuck buddies—bad.

  The doorbell rang.

  I hurried from my closet and dashed down the hall, wanting to get as far away from my bedroom as possible. On second thought—

  I ran back and shut my door.

  Then turned toward the front of the house. Paused. Reconsidered.

  “Shit,” I muttered and hustled back, opening the door and locking it from the inside then pulling it closed. I’d have to find the key later, the one that resembled a pin but with a circle on one end that I could shove into the hole in the knob to unlock it. Otherwise, I’d be sleeping on the couch.

  I nodded with approval. Worth it.

  The temptation would be locked away and I—

  The doorbell rang again.

  “Get it together, Larsen,” I muttered and got my ass to the front door. “Friends,” I reminded myself. “Back to friends.”

  I sucked in a breath, mentally girded my chastity belt, and turned the knob.

  Then was wholly unprepared for the gut punch that was Damon.

  Fuck, I loved the way he looked at me, brown eyes warm, lips curled up just slightly at the edges. “Hi,” he murmured and fuck, but I loved it even more when he spoke to me like that, soft and gentle and sweet. His voice was like being wrapped in a warm blanket. He held up the box. “Extra garlic bread, as requested.”

  All of my nervousness faded.

  I nodded. “Thanks,” I said and added, “Want to come in?” when he hesitated on the threshold.

  “You good with this?”

  Concern in those pretty chocolate eyes and I mentally chastised myself again. I’d ruined the easy rapport between us. I’d known better and I’d still—

  His fingers on my cheek. “Stop it.”

  “I’m—”

  Damon brushed by me, holding the pizza boxes aloft and stepping into the hall. I turned, saw he hadn’t stopped, was disappearing into the kitchen. With a slow, deep breath, I closed the door and followed him.

  He’d put slices on plates and had the blue porcelain circles in his hands by the time I made it into the room. I saw him glance toward the kitchen table then hesitate.

  I deliberately avoided looking in that direction because . . . well, because orgasms and sticky syrup on my skin, the sweet smell of powdered sugar in my nose. “My . . . um . . . the script is on the coffee table in the family room if you want to eat in there.”

  A nod then he moved that way. “Any chance you can get me a glass of water?” he asked. “I forgot to pick up drinks.”

  I moved toward the fridge. “Do you want a beer?”

  “That would be great. Thanks.” He slipped through the doorway that led to the family room.

  I was not going to make this weird. I was not. We’d forget about this morning, forget about last night, and—

  “Don’t forget to grab yourself one,” he called.

  That was enough to snap me out of my head. Friend. Be a friend.

  “Do you want to run through the full script?” he asked when I came through with a beer in each hand, “or just the rewrites?”

  I could do this. “All of it,” I said. “If you have time.”

  He nodded, picking up the script I’d left on the table. “When does filming start?”

  I plunked the beers down, grabbed my slice. “Three weeks, though we start rehearsals next Tuesday.”

  “And it’ll be shot over at the studio?”

  “Most
of it,” I said around a bite. “We’ll also have a few weeks in New Mexico.”

  We took a few minutes to talk locations and length, comparing notes about where we’d both been. By the time we’d both finished our pizzas, we were onto our second beers. He took a long sip of his. “I did a shoot once at White Sands. My model freaked out because she got sand on her skin.”

  I lift a brow. “Seriously?”

  His lips curved. “She didn’t like it when I pointed out that it wasn’t actually sand, but gypsum.”

  “Smartass,” I muttered.

  “Not disagreeing with you,” he said.

  “But also, I appreciate your conviction to being scientifically correct.”

  Damon laughed. “I’m glad you appreciate my dedication to learning.”

  I snorted.

  He chuckled.

  We stared at each other for a long moment and I felt the past pressing on me again, sitting heavy on my lungs, tapdancing on the back of my tongue. I had to clear the air. I couldn’t—

  “Don’t,” he whispered.

  I stopped, stared up at him agape.

  He shook his head. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. I just—don’t feel like you owe me anything. Last night was . . . fucking fantastic, if I’m being honest, but being your friend is also fantastic and if that’s all we can be, then I’m fine, Ed. I don’t need more than you’re able to give.”

  Soft. Sweet. Kind.

  Damon.

  I traced shapes in the condensation on the outside of the beer bottle. “I can’t be more than friends with you,” I whispered. “Last night was fantastic, but . . . I think you saw enough to realize that I can’t be in a relationship.” A beat as I met his eyes. “I won’t let myself go there.”

  Damon studied me for several moments. “Won’t let yourself go there?” he asked. “Or let yourself go there again?”

  My fingers froze mid-circle, and I forced my eyes to stay on his. “Again.”

  Silence, then the beer bottle hit the table and his fisted hands moved to his hips. “I want to ask who I should kill,” he began.

  I rested my hand on his knee. “Then you’d have to dig him up and kill him again.”

  His gaze was furious, but at my words, his hands flattened out and he dropped his chin to his chest, which expanded and fell on a long exhale.

  “I’m okay, Damon,” I murmured.

  Chocolate eyes sparking fire, but he didn’t say what he had every right to. Which was that, clearly, I wasn’t okay because of the way I’d acted earlier that day. Instead, he just stared at me, fury in his expression, body stiff and unmoving.

  Except for his chest.

  That kept lifting and falling in rapid succession, his staccato breaths the only noise in the room.

  Then his hand dropped onto mine, loosely gripping my fingers where they still rested on his knee. “I’m sorry you went through whatever it was that was bad enough to mark you so thoroughly. I’m sorry that I pushed this morning. I’m—”

  I squeezed his leg lightly. “Me, too,” I said. “But I promised myself a long time ago I would stop apologizing for what he did.”

  “I—”

  “And if it’s cool with you, I’d like to put the past where it belongs and focus on the good things I have going on in my life,” I said. “The first of which is having a friend like you who cares.” I waited until he glanced up at me and smiled. “The second being”—I slipped my hand free and tapped the script on the table—“having the ability to actually complain about rewrites because I’m working in my dream job and doing films rather than cat food commercials.”

  Damon’s jaw clenched despite my levity though he nodded, albeit tightly. “I’m glad you have that, too.”

  “I’m also lucky to have someone read those rewritten lines with me.” I picked up the script, handed it to him. “Hint, hint.”

  His lips curved just the slightest bit, and he reached over and took it from me. “Okay, sweetheart.” His smile expanded. “Or should I say okay, demander?”

  “I prefer the first,” I teased. “But I stand by the second.”

  He grinned. I giggled.

  And then we both set down our beers and got to work running the lines.

  Damon was patient, feeding them to me when I faltered with the new material, but not just giving them all to me freely. He made me work; testing my memory and helping them stick in my brain.

  That wasn’t even mentioning the vast amount of accents he could do. He colored more emotions into the script than I’d been able to do in my mind, and that was saying something. I really liked the story and had brought it to life in my brain, complete with mental images and voices.

  “How are you so good at this?” I accused about halfway through. “I’m starting to think you moved to L.A. so you could pursue acting yourself.”

  He laughed. “Not at all,” he said, turning the page and pausing. “My sister was the theater geek, that’s it. End of story.” His eyes darted away from mine. And was that a blush? “Okay, now Madeline says—”

  I pinned him with a stare. “Why am I not thinking that’s the end of the story, based on your avoidance?”

  “She says, ‘And I don’t know why—’”

  “Damon.”

  “‘You’re looking at me that way.’ And Todd replies—”

  “Damon.”

  He froze, shoulders rising, eyes still on the script, but . . . yes, that definitely was a hint of blush on his cheeks?

  Oh my God.

  I yanked the script out of his hands.

  “Spill it, buster.”

  He snagged it back. “‘You can’t expect me to—’”

  “Damon Alexander Garcia, don’t you dare try and hold out on me.”

  “I’m not holding—”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Yes, you are.”

  “I’m—”

  “Remember that time I told you you’d drank too much tequila and were going to have a massive hangover the next day?”

  A grunt.

  “Or when you’d eaten that chocolate cake too fast?”

  If there was such a thing as flipping a script page aggressively, then Damon did it. “As I was saying—”

  “Or when you were taking on too much and needed a vacation?”

  “Pot meet kettle,” he muttered.

  “Hence, the reason we took that long weekend to Miami, remember?”

  He reached for his beer, guzzled down a mouthful, eyes carefully avoiding mine. “Yeah, so what?”

  “So, I know you, Damon. I know when you’ve eaten too much, or drank too much, or worked too much.”

  “That may be true but—”

  “I also know when you’re lying about something,” I went on. “You know I do. It’s the same reason I knew you were near burnout and going to be sick to your stomach. It’s why I know that hint of blush on your cheeks means that you’re holding out on me.”

  He sighed, dropped the script to his lap. “Eden.”

  I sighed, dropped my hands to my lap. “Damon.”

  We faced off for several long moments.

  But I wasn’t caving. He wasn’t telling me everything. I knew that, without a doubt, and based on his reluctance to dish, I also knew that what he was holding back was going to be good.

  Really good.

  He sighed again and flopped back against the cushions. “First, I don’t know how you know or why I let you convince me to tell you these things.”

  I grinned and clapped my hands together. “OMG. Is this going to be as good as your sisters shaving your eyebrows right before you went on a date with the girl you’d been crushing on for months?”

  “First,” he muttered. “That was abuse. Second—” He snorted. “It was pretty funny.”

  I giggled. “Yes, and well-deserved if I’m remembering what you told me you did correctly.”

  “You mean me swapping their shampoo with hair bleach?”

  I nodded fervently. “That was probably the
most devious of all the sibling torture I’ve heard you guys committed.”

  “I was only trying to one-up them after they’d superglued my butt to the toilet seat.”

  “I—” I broke off on a chuckle and shook my head. “You lot were relentless.”

  “My poor mother,” he said in agreement. “Though, did I ever tell you about the time she made cookies and accidentally swapped the sugar for salt?”

  I shook my head.

  “We had this rule in my house. My mom cooked and we ate it without complaint,” he said. “We weren’t poor, by any means. But it wasn’t like we could afford to throw out meals just because we didn’t want to eat our broccoli, you know?”

  I nodded, loving how his face gentled when he spoke of his family.

  “So anyway, we all choked down those salt cookies, not saying a damn word because the ingredients were pricey and my mom worked a lot, so her being able to bake at all meant that she’d taken the time.”

  “Insane practical joking aside,” I said. “It sounds like you were good kids.”

  “Yeah, we were,” he said. “For the most part.”

  He grinned and I smiled back. “Me, too.”

  “I can’t imagine you ever doing anything bad,” he said, tugging on a lock of my hair. “You’re too nice.”

  I hadn’t done anything bad. Not ever. I’d been a rule follower from day one. But being a rule follower had also gotten me into the situation I’d nearly died trying to survive. So now I was less about abiding by the rules and more about being a nice person, but not allowing myself to be used or hurt.

  Armor.

  Yup.

  Closed down.

  Most certainly.

  But an asshole?

  No. I wasn’t that.

  Damon tucked a strand behind my ear, seeming to realize my thoughts had drifted somewhere else, somewhere unpleasant. “So, anyway, back to the cookies. I mean, we must have choked down six or seven each, my dad included. Not one of us made a peep of protest or complaint, but I swear, we pounded a gallon of milk faster than those cookies.”

  “And you never said anything?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “No, none of us wanted to hurt her feelings.”

  “That’s sweet.”

  “It’s devious,” he said, “and I’ll tell you why. My mom knew we wouldn’t say anything. She. Knew. Which is why she swapped the sugar and salt on purpose.”