Rules of Friendship: Friends-to-Lovers Standalone Romance Novel

by C. A. Harms

  Tears cloud my vision as I think of the mornings when I woke and found him sitting on the back porch, the blanket my mother always covered up in draped over his lap. He’d mindlessly play with the fringe, twisting it around his fingers continuously. Slowly he’d sip his coffee, staring off in the distance, lost in a memory of my mother I’m sure.

  It was those mornings I’d see him completely relaxed, almost like a connection he felt with the one he’d missed the most. I never interrupted, just quietly adored. To be loved like that, even though you're gone, to still be remembered and cherished was astounding. It was beautiful, really. Heartbreaking and moving but so unbelievably beautiful.

  Someone grips my hip from behind, and suddenly I’m pulled back into a hard masculine body. “We need to talk.” My body stills. “You can yell. You can hit me. Hell, you can even hate me if you want, but you’re gonna hear what I have to say.”

  I try to turn around, only Dawson holds me so tightly against him that it is impossible to shift my weight.

  “Nothing happened,” he states firmly with more conviction than I’ve ever witnessed from him. “Renee needed a friend and that’s all it was. I was wrong for lying, and I wish I could go back and change the way I handled things.”

  I look over to find Heather staring at Dawson. The look on her face is one I can’t entirely read.

  “I miss you, Reese,” Dawson confesses, his lips near my ear, causing a warmth to spread throughout my body. However, a tightening feeling tugs at my heart, making me feel almost like I’m suffocating.

  “Don’t.” I shake my head and pull against him harder, finally breaking free.

  I move through the crowd in search of an escape, but know he’s following me.

  I reach the bar area and pause. What is the point of running now? I brace myself on the back of the bar stool and instantly feel when Dawson steps up behind me. “We made a mistake,” I say loud enough to ensure he’s heard it. Only he doesn’t reply. Taking a deep breath, doing all I can to hold back my tears, I turn to face him for the first time in weeks.

  I immediately notice his tired eyes that show the signs of exhaustion along with the stubble on his jaw. A huge part of me wants to reach out and run my finger across that sexy facial hair. But I hold back. “We’ve always been best friends, and we took a chance when we tried to become more. I think that was a mistake. We shouldn’t have pushed it.”

  “Why can’t we be best friends and a couple?” He lifts his hand and reaches out for mine, only I tuck my hand in close to my side. Touching him would be too much right now. “Tell me, Reese, why can’t we have both?”

  I try to swallow past the thickness in my throat, a barrier blocking my airway. It’s suddenly difficult to breathe.

  “No. You tell me,” I counter, blinking rapidly to hold back the tears trying to break free.

  “Because you can’t be with me when you’re still in love with her.” Saying it out loud confirms my doubts about him. My doubts about us.

  Though I try to remain distant from him, Dawson steps closer, invading every inch of my space. He lifts his good hand up toward my face and cups my cheek gently. I close my eyes and attempt to turn away. Looking at him hurts too much. “I’m not in love with her,” he assures me, “I’m in love with you.” Wait! He loves me?

  Hearing it shocks me, uncertainty now setting in, leaving an ache that feels almost like a punch in the stomach. I want to believe him. I’m just not sure I can. I shake my head no, which causes his hand to fall away from my face. I take this as an opportunity to move away quickly. Of all the chances he’s had to confess that he loves me, truly loves me more than just a friend, he waits until now. Until he’s betrayed me. He thinks that tossing out an I love you now to me will fix all his mistakes. If only it were that simple.

  The visions of Dawson and Renee standing outside the hotel and walking together as they left our apartment are all I can see. It hurts like hell.

  “You’re not in love with me,” I reply with a shuddered breath. “You just need me in your life to have things feel normal. But I can’t be that girl anymore, Dawson. Not after this. I can’t pretend that what took place didn’t happen. I’m not wired like that.”

  “Nothing’s changed for us,” he insists, “I’m still me and you’re still you.”

  If only it were that easy. If only I could force myself to believe that nothing took place between them. I wish that I can go back to the way I felt before he went running to Renee. No matter how hard I try, I only manage to end up right back where I was that day he betrayed me. The way they once were—smiling and in love.

  “Everything’s changed and we can’t go back there. Not now. Not when you . . .” My voice cracks and I have to pause. All I can picture is Renee and Dawson holding one another, him comforting her, and that look he’d always get in his eyes when Renee snuggled into him. It is awful seeing it in my mind. I just want it to go away.

  “Not when I what?” His nostrils flare as he does his best to hold himself together. The problem is that I still don’t know if he kissed her or slept with her. But he lied. If he insists that nothing happened between them, can I believe him now?

  “I just can’t.” I step back and shake my head when he reaches out to med. “Please,” I beg him as a tear slips over my cheek. “Just let it go, Dawson.”

  “You’re being dramatic and unreasonable, Reese.” He narrows his eyes, his nostrils flared.

  “No.” I back away as I stare directly at him, “I’m accepting that we should never have let things go as far as they did.”

  Dawson

  “The mobility in your arm looks really good,” my doctor affirms as he continues to examine me, but my head is entirely somewhere else. Suddenly, the need to get better no longer matters. It is easier to sink into the who gives a fuck mode when I’m not forced to care for those around me. Getting better means I’ll have no other choice but to get back out into the real world, and the real world sucks without having Reese to share it with me.

  “You need to continue with the physical therapy and the exercises at home,” Dr. Morris continues. “With the progress, you’re making, you’ll likely be released back to work in the next three to four weeks. Make sure you set up your next appointment with Mary before you leave today and continue doing what you’re doing.”

  “Thanks,” I respond with a nod as I slip my shirt back over my head. “See ya next time, doc.” He offers a smile just before exiting the room and leaving me alone with my thoughts. It doesn’t really matter though. Whether I’m alone or not, my mind is always focused on Reese.

  Missing Reese. Loving Reese. Being pissed at Reese. All of Reese.

  It is like a constant ache within me, one that nothing will fill until Reese completes me again.

  Being at home now just feels empty and cold. I miss seeing her bounce around the place. I miss her smile and her laughter. I even miss the way she’d lay into me after I left a mess around our home. I miss everything about her.

  I move around with purpose. The only reason I get up at all is to pay the bills. If I don’t follow the rules of the doctor, then my paid time off won’t continue. Right now, I prefer to stay tucked away in bed in the dark, walling in my misery, alone in solitude.

  I enter my apartment twenty minutes later to find Heather there. She rounds the corner, carrying a large box I assume is filled with Reese’s things. She freezes, and I do the same as we share a minute of uncomfortable silence.

  “Sending you in for more of her stuff, huh?”

  With a deep breath, I watch her shoulders lift before they fall once more. I can’t be mad at Heather. Hell, I can’t be mad at anyone except myself. My actions caused this rift. I made a choice, the wrong decision, and this mess is all mine. If only Reese were still mine too.

  I don’t wait for her to respond before I move toward the refrigerator and grab a bottle of water. I take my usual position on the couch and allow her to do what she’s come here to do. I can hear her moving arou
nd, but I never look away from the TV. Lost in my despair, I never even register what is playing on TV. It’s just a welcome distraction.

  Each item Heather takes out it is another piece of Reese gone from my life. Seeing Reese’s things leaving our apartment is a sign that she’s moving out. Moving on. It feels like a punch to the gut and hurts like hell.

  “She found an apartment a few blocks from the school.” I look up to find Heather standing at the end of the couch, Reese’s pillow in her hands. I reach out, grab the pillow and pull it from her arms, tucking it in close to my chest. I notice the sad smile she offers me. “It’s a real shit hole, but she’s pretending to be happy about it.”

  “This is her home.” Fuck. The idea of her being anywhere but here infuriates me.

  “She thinks you slept with Renee, Dawson.”

  “What?” I slide forward on the couch and tuck the pillow at my side. The side furthest from Heather of course because she isn’t taking it. If Reese wants her pillow, she’ll have to come to get it herself. Childish? Hell yes it is. But I couldn’t give two shits right now.

  “She thinks that you left her that morning and ran back to the girl that you’ve never stopped loving.” Heather comes around the end of the couch and sits down near me. “In her mind, that’s why you lied to her because you’re still in love with Renee. By me telling you this, I’m violating my friendship with her and all the girl code. Seeing the two of you the way you are? It’s painful. I feel like if I don’t say something, then that’s wrong too.”

  “I didn’t sleep with Renee,” I assure her. “It was wrong of me to lie. I know that. I was trying to make excuses because I fucked up royally. I left here knowing exactly where I was going. I should’ve told Reese, but I think I feared she would think the worst, only see who I was going to see and not the reason I was going.”

  “She does.”

  “Renee needs help.” I want Reese to be the one I am telling this too, but it is apparent that I may now never get that chance. “She asked me to help her get treatment for her addiction to coke because she’d managed to get exiled from all her friends and her family. Had it been anything more than that and I would’ve walked away without a second thought. Heather, you know me. I feel like I always have to help people. It’s how I’m wired. It’s who I am.”

  “But you need to step back and look at this from Reese’s angle.”

  “I know,” I say in frustration, “I have.”

  I takes a few minutes just to breathe and I try to hold myself together.

  “I was only with Renee twice since that morning.” I turn to face Heather completely as I again hold Reese’s pillow in my lap securely. “The first time was at the hotel where we sat the entire time in the bar. Talking. Never once were we alone. The second time was when she took a cab here so that I could drive her to the rehabilitation center that I got to accept her on a six-week program. She knocked on the door, I stepped outside, and never once was she inside this apartment. This is Reese’s home, and I wouldn’t do that to her.”

  “Do you know how long I’ve sat back and watched her watch you?” Heather smiles, and again I am baffled by the idea that I’ve missed all the signs I’d wished for often. “When we’d go out, and a girl would flirt with you, Reese would watch from the corner of her eye with an uncomfortable look on her face. Almost like she was silently praying the entire thing would backfire so that you’d go home alone.”

  I look away from Heather, feeling embarrassed by the things Reese had witnessed over the years.

  “But even during the times you didn’t go home alone, I’ve never seen the look on her face that I saw that morning when she watched you with Renee. The difference is that you once loved Renee. Whether you still do, I don’t know. But you did. She knew that, she watched it. Reese was a witness to all the times you and Renee shared. She watched you fall apart when it all ended. You can’t expect her to be okay with you lying about going to meet the one girl to whom Reese always felt inferior.”

  I want to argue and tell her that what I feel for Reese is so much more than what I ever felt for Renee, but I can’t. I understand what she’s saying. It all makes sense.

  We sit side by side for a few minutes before either of us speaks again.

  “I’m gonna need that pillow.” I look over to find Heather holding her hand out toward me with a knowing smile on her face.

  “Reese’s pillow stays with me.”

  “Really?” Laughter escapes her.

  “If she wants the pillow, she can come to get it herself.”

  “Well, okay then, Love Dovey Dude, or should I say, Lovesick Dawson? ” Heather stands up and crosses her arms over her chest, and then gives me a wink. Lovesick Dawson? I have to admit that you nailed that one, Heather. “But just so you know that pillow was one of the things she was very persistent about.” A sense of excitement hits me because it’s the pillow she stole from me months ago and has slept with nightly since. Reese misses me too. Why else would she want a pillow that smells like both of us? Get ready, Reese. I’m coming for you and claiming you. All. Of. You.

  “Like I said,” I say with a smile that occurs for the first time in what feels like forever. “If Reese wants it, she knows where she can find it.” She knows where she can find me.

  With nothing more than a nod, Heather lifts the small box from the floor and then opens the front door. Looking back at me, she locks her gaze with mine. “I don’t think that you did anything with Renee, but I do think you made the wrong choice when you met with her. There’s no reason for me to tell you that though because I can see that you regret it.”

  And with that, she closes the door behind her, and I lean back, holding the pillow close to my face. Burying it against my nose, I sit in the silence, breathing in the scent I’ve missed so fucking much.

  Reese.

  Reese

  “Have you signed the lease yet?” Heather asks as she looks up at the building I’ll soon call home. “Because I don’t know about this, Reese,” she states with apprehension, wrinkling her nose as her lips turned downward. “It just seems like a place you’d run from, not move in to.”

  “It’s not that bad.” It’s not great either. But it is all I can afford.

  “You can still back out.”

  “Where else am I gonna find a place I can afford?” With school and working at the veterinarian hospital to get the experience I’ll later need, it leaves me with minimal options. Dawson refused to let me pay for rent so I used what little I made to buy food and other necessities.

  “You could just continue to stay with me until we graduate.” I look over at her with my eyebrow cocked. “Yes, I know I complain about the limited space. But if there is anyone I’d share it with willingly, it’d be you.”

  “Thanks, but I think I’ve already exceeded my welcome.”

  “Or you can go back to your place with Dawson.” I look away from her as I feel my heart plummet. “He misses you, Reese. So much. You didn’t see him sitting there on the couch like a abandoned puppy. He’s lost everything that’s ever meant anything to him.”

  “He can always call Renee. I’m sure she would be more than willing to help him pass the time.” When she doesn’t answer or make some smartass comment, I lift my gaze to hers once more. “What?”

  “I think you should talk to him.”

  “I think you should tell me what you know,” I counter, and suddenly she looks uncomfortable.

  “I ran into him yesterday when I was at the apartment getting you some of the things you wanted.”

  “You mean when you forgot my pillow?” So it was initially Dawson’s pillow, but that doesn’t matter. It is mine now.

  “He took it from me,” says as she shrugs but doesn’t look away. “He said if you wanted the pillow that you knew where you could find it.”

  “Are now you think I should talk to him?”

  “I’m just saying that it may not be exactly what you’ve imagined and that it could very well be a
huge misunderstanding.” I narrow my eyes at her because just a week or two ago she was going on and on about what an ass he was for the way he acted. Now she is retracting that opinion and is suddenly the captain of Team Dawson. “Nothing is justification for him choosing to lie. I’m still pissed at him for that. But I just think that maybe you should go over to the apartment and get your own pillow.”

  “Get my pillow?” I laugh at her craziness.

  “Yeah.” Again she shrugs as she leans back against the fender of my jeep. “And while you’re there, maybe the two of you should talk too. You know, clear the air so both of you can stop being so miserable apart. It’s truly a buzzkill, Reese.”

  I don’t know why I let Heather talk me into coming here. Now that I stand just outside the apartment door, the only thing I feel is the urge to run away.

  My nerves roll around inside of me, making me feel nauseous with worry. The last time I faced Dawson, I told him to let me go and let us go.

  I hear the sound of the television playing on the other side of the door, but nothing more. With a deep breath, I place my key in the deadbolt and turn the lock slowly. Taking another deep breath, I twist the knob and push the door open with caution.

  Dawson is asleep on the couch where it looks like he’s been using as a bed. The comforter from his bed is draped over the back, and mine is thrown over him. His head rests upon one pillow, and my pillow or the one I’d stolen from him is in his arms. It is hugged to his chest with his fingers linked together over it, almost like he is ensuring its safety. It’s actually pretty sweet.

  His whiskers have grown out, giving him a different look he doesn’t wear often. Dawson is usually well-groomed. I tease him often about the amount of time he takes to shave his face perfectly and to get his hair to lay just right. It doesn’t escape me how his appearance has changed. It is almost as if he hasn’t brushed his hair in days. His unkempt look is sexy.