One Big Mistake: a friends to lovers rom-com

by Whitney Barbetti

  I heard the crunch of Keane’s boots on the gravel just as he popped in the doorway, arms laden with pillows and blankets. “Here ya go,” he said, dumping them unceremoniously all over Tori. “There’s even a sheet in there, for you to put over the couch.”

  “That’s good,” Tori said, standing up and letting the blankets fall around her. “Good ol’ Casanova,” she said with a pat on the back of the couch. “It’s always smart to have protection.”

  Keane looked from me to her, and I turned to look at the floor. “Right. Okay. Ready, Navy?”

  I lifted my head, eyes locking with his. Was I ready? Not just in the sense of sleeping outside, but ready to think with my heart and not my head?

  “I think so,” I said, my words having double meaning. “Goodnight,” I said to Tori when I reached the door. Keane was already steps ahead of me.

  “Remember,” she said, very seriously. “Don’t gnaw on it like you did those hot dogs.”

  It took a second for her comment to register, and in that brief moment she laughed.

  “Your face. God, you don’t hide anything in your expressions, do you?”

  And that’s exactly what put me at a disadvantage. “Nope.” I closed the door behind me and followed Keane to the truck.

  Out here in the near wilderness, there weren’t any streetlamps. Just the one lone floodlight from the cabin illuminated our path to the truck. When the gravel disappeared on the ground, so did Keane. “Where are you?” I whispered loudly in the dark.

  “Keep walking straight,” his voice came from somewhere ahead of me.

  “It’s so dark out here.”

  “Yeah, that’s kind of what happens after the sun sets.”

  I giggled. “Shut up.”

  “There you are.” His hands clasped my shoulders in the dark. “You made it.”

  “Where’s the tent?” My eyes hadn’t adjusted to the night yet, so I squinted but all I could make out was his truck.

  “Well…” Keane gestured toward the bed of his truck. “I thought about that memory you have from high school—junior prom. I remember most of it—not the parts that you do, but I remember laying eight billion blankets down and French fries.” He slid his phone from his pocket and turned Get Lucky on. “Uh… this is not a euphemism. I just thought it would be nice to kind of recreate that night. No cheap movie seats.”

  “No,” I said, lifting my face to the night sky. “Just the stars.”

  He breathed out. “Exactly. So, you game?”

  I tilted my head so I could see him more clearly. In the pale blue light from his phone, I could see just how earnest he was. “I love it.”

  “Good.” He patted the tailgate. “I found this air mattress online; it’s supposed to fit the bed and accommodate the wheel wells. Thought it would be more comfortable than if we slept on a billion blankets.”

  As he waved his phone over the back of his truck, I craned my neck to better see. There indeed was an air mattress that seemed tailor-made for his truck. It was covered in sheets and blankets and pillows and looked like the coziest thing I’d ever seen. “Keane,” I said, unbelievably touched. “This looks incredible.”

  “The only thing is, if it rains, we’re fucked.” Keane laughed nervously. “They make tents for truck beds, but I chose the air mattress instead.”

  “You chose well,” I said and took the hand he offered for me to climb up. “If it rains, I guess we’ll have to run for the cabin.” I hopped onto the mattress, immediately kicking my shoes off. Keane climbed in behind me and we both crawled over the blankets until we reached the back. Even though it was an air mattress, it was incredibly comfortable thanks to the throws and quilts he’d covered it with.

  “I’ve even got a little lantern here,” he said, lighting up the battery powered contraption hanging above our heads. It cast a soft, yellow light over our heads as we exchanged identical grins.

  “You thought of everything,” I said, climbing under the blankets. Excitement poured through me. This brought back at least a dozen good memories of laying out under the stars on nights just like this one.

  “Well, I didn’t figure out a way to bring French fries and chocolate milkshakes with me.”

  “I’m stuffed anyway,” I said, rubbing my stomach. I settled the blankets around me and found Keane’s hand under them. He clasped mine immediately, and we threaded our fingers. I couldn’t stop staring up at the sky, committing the entire scene to memory. This was so perfect, I feared that if I closed my eyes, I’d forget it ever happened.

  Get Lucky faded away and after a minute another song came on.

  I turned my head, looking at him in question.

  “Bloodstream,” he said.

  “I know the song.”

  “It was the last slow song of junior prom. You remember the after party—A.K.A. French fries and milkshakes—but I remember this song.”

  It was coming to me slowly. “We danced to this one.”

  He nodded. “Yep. Well, technically we danced to them all together. But you really loved this one because it was in that show with the vampires you like.”

  “The Vampire Diaries.”

  “Yeah, that’s the one. Anyway, you loved this song. We were going to leave after they crowned the royalty, but we stayed for this song.”

  It touched me that he remembered. Despite not wanting to before, I closed my eyes and willed the memory forward. Slow dancing with Keane, my head on his shoulder. Then, I remembered. “Tori was with…”

  “Tori?”

  “Yeah, you guys were off then. She went to junior prom with someone else. I can’t remember his name.”

  Keane sighed and let go of my hand under the covers to rub his hands down his face. “I wasn’t even thinking about Tori.”

  Part of me wanted to apologize for bringing it up and ruining the memory. But it was an insecurity of mine. For so, so long my focus and affections had been solely directed to Keane. And his hadn’t been toward me. It was hard to believe that his past wouldn’t loom over us, in whatever us we would be from here. “Well, she was always there.”

  “You were always there.”

  I shook my head. My heart, which had felt so light, suddenly felt so heavy. “There was Tori. Then Anna. Then a few other girls I can’t remember. Suzie. Megan.”

  “No. Tori wasn’t first.”

  “Yes, she was. Unless there was someone else you didn’t tell me about.” I shivered, but it wasn’t cold.

  “There was. You.”

  “Keane. We have always been friends.”

  “You’re the prettiest girl, Navy.”

  My heart stopped beating. “That’s what you said.”

  “It’s still true. You’re the prettiest girl. When we were kids, I probably mostly talked to you because I liked you. But after a while, the friendship was stronger than those other feelings. And in high school, it was easy to rely on you as a friend only. My brother had just gone off to a war zone. His friends started coming home in fucking body bags. I wasn’t in the right headspace to potentially lose a friend, too. I was a dumb ass in high school.”

  I kept my mouth shut, simultaneously wanting him to continue and wanting him to shut up.

  “I was a dumbass,” he repeated. “And a coward. It was easier to keep you as a friend and see you as only a friend. I think my brain just sort of went autopilot on that. Like, Navy equals friend.”

  These were things I had wanted to hear for years. So why did hearing them now make me feel hollow?

  “In high school, when you told me you had a crush on me…” He sighed. “After I…”

  “Nicely rejected me?”

  “Yeah.” He swallowed loudly. “That. Did you get over it quickly?”

  How honest could I be here? It was only my pride, after all. “I’m not sure what you’d define as ‘quick.’”

  “When did you get over it, then?”

  “I mean, it stung for a few years after you turned me down. Of course it did. Every time we wer
e at a party together, I waited for the moment when your eyes would seek out mine, and then I had this image of you smiling your perfect smile—the one you reserved for the girls you chased—but at me this time.”

  “I don’t chase girls.”

  “Well, then, whatever you did. Passively pursued girls.”

  “I like that phrasing. Passively pursued.”

  “You’re welcome,” I said, and fluffed my pillow.

  After a moment, he said, “For a few years?”

  I closed my eyes tight and opened them again. “Pathetic, I know.”

  “Not pathetic. But the fact that you didn’t tell me…”

  “Oh come on, how was I supposed to? ‘Hey, Keane, I know you turned me down two years ago but I’m still a bit sad about it. How can I get over it?’ That would’ve ruined things between us. You would have felt too bad to keep breaking my heart and I couldn’t stand to see you give me attention you didn’t feel.”

  “So what you’re saying is…”

  “The last time we were honest about our feelings for one another, it changed us. It turned me ninety degrees one way and you ninety degrees the other way. It’s been hard to reach you ever since.”

  “And here I thought it’d been hard to reach you for the last two weeks.”

  “Try years.”

  “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. I needed those growing pains. And at least you stuck around as my friend.”

  “You wouldn’t be able to shake me loose.” His hand found mine again under the blankets and his eyes met me under the soft amber light. His gaze strayed to my mouth. “Is that lipstick meant to be a deterrent, so I won’t kiss you?”

  I hadn’t even thought of that. “No.” I touched my lips.

  “Okay. Because it wouldn’t matter anyway, to me. I still want to kiss you.”

  Oh, why did my heart go all crazy against my ribs? “Keane, you can’t say that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because,” I said, but it was hard to remind myself of the reason why. “We haven’t had that talk yet. We can’t just fall into something together without talking about it.”

  “We did a couple weeks ago.”

  My cheeks warmed. “Yeah, I know we did. And then things got weird. We owe it to ourselves and our friendship to talk about things before we repeat that.”

  Keane sighed. “I guess you’re right. But still, just throwing it out there that I want to kiss you again.”

  I couldn’t tell him I wanted that too. Because I very much did want that, but with my life as messy as it was, I couldn’t handle losing my best friend the way I’d felt I had after we’d had sex. If we repeated it, without guidelines in place first, I wasn’t sure how we’d survive it.

  And as my eyes traced his face, I didn’t think I’d survive the loss of Keane. The risk wasn’t worth potentially losing the one constant in my life right now.

  “You look different with lipstick.” His eyes traced my mouth so slowly I swore I could feel it.

  “You’ve seen me in lipstick before.”

  “Maybe. But it’s such a bold color.”

  “You don’t like it?”

  “I don’t think you need it.” He scooted closer to me, making the air mattress squeak obnoxiously loud in the truck bed. We both laughed and then I pressed my lips to the back of my hand.

  “I don’t even like lipstick.” I didn’t know why I’d slicked it on in the first place, or why I’d repeatedly reapplied it throughout the evening. I licked my lips but knew that wouldn’t suffice. “I wish I had a makeup wipe.”

  “Here.” Keane leaned forward, bringing him a whisper from me. All I could see was him. All I could smell was the aftershave I recognized. All I could hear was the pounding of my pulse in my ears. And all I could feel was his warm thumb brushing across my lower lip gently.

  With one sturdy hand, he held my jaw as he meticulously removed the lipstick from my mouth. First the lower lip then the upper. Was it my imagination that I swore I could feel every ridge of his thumbprint as he traced my cupid’s bow?

  I was completely unraveling. When I was alone, I could tell myself that what was between Keane and I was friends only, that my feelings weren’t building with every single touch. I could convince myself that being friends was enough. That this was all I wanted; this was all I needed.

  But when I was in his presence, all of those thoughts dissipated like the lies they were.

  If he came any closer, I swore I’d crumble.

  He made a tsk sound and cradled my jaw with both hands, lifting my chin infinitesimally. “You even got it on your face,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Yeah. Right here,” he said, pressing his thumb against my cheek. “And right here.” He pressed his thumb to my temple. “And even here. How silly.” He tapped the tip of my chin.

  “You just put lipstick thumbprints all over my face, didn’t you?”

  He wrinkled his nose. “No, that doesn’t sound like me.”

  “You dick,” I said with a laugh, playfully hitting his chest. “Now I’m going to look ridiculous in the morning with lipstick smeared all over my face.”

  “Okay, fine,” he said and before I could steel myself, he was leaning over me, pressing his lips first to the place he’d pressed his thumb on my cheek, then his lips found my temple, where he laid soft kisses across my eyebrow, and back down until he kissed my chin. I didn’t breathe, didn’t move a single muscle.

  It was too much. It was everything.

  “Keane…” I breathed when his mouth hovered over mine.

  “You said no cuddling.”

  The warmth from his face this close to mine liquified my insides. I wanted to squirm, to move. To act unaffected. But as I shuddered out my words, I knew I sounded anything but unaffected. “And no kissing.”

  “Oh.” It was whispered across my mouth. “I’m not kissing you. Am I?” Our lips were not even an inch apart. If I tilted my head, we’d collide.

  “You’re kissing my skin.”

  “That doesn’t count.” He pressed a soft kiss to the angle of my jaw. “Unless you want me to stop.”

  It took me a long time to answer, long enough that he pulled away. “No,” I said quietly, though no one was near us to hear. “I don’t want you to stop.”

  “Okay. I’ll keep not kissing you then.”

  I let out a strangled laugh as he continued his onslaught, kissing up my jaw to the sensitive skin behind my ear, and down the side of my neck. He kissed my collarbone, the hollows and the ridges it created and then kissed back up the center of my throat until he hovered above my mouth again. My stomach was doing somersaults, vaulting my heart into unnatural places. And he hadn’t even kissed me on the mouth.

  His hand moved so that he caressed the side of my body, across my ribs and up between my breasts. He didn’t touch a single scandalous part of my body, but still I felt scandalized in the best way possible. His hand kept moving, up the column of my throat until he tipped my chin, angling my head back so that I stared up at the moon overhead.

  “Navy,” he said, his breath warm down my neck. “Tell me about your tattoo.”

  Of all the things I’d expected from him, that was the one thing I didn’t.

  “Here,” he said, moving his hand back down until he caressed the tender skin where I’d inked a tiny crescent moon.

  “You’ve seen it?” I was thankful for the dim light of the lantern, even though it meant I couldn’t clearly see his face. Because it also meant he couldn’t see mine.

  “Yes. A moon.”

  I wished I had something not pathetic to say, but pathetic was my word of the night, apparently. I wrapped my fingers around the arm he’d had tattooed with the planets. “Because you told me that’s where we went when we died.”

  His hand fell away from me.

  “Well, not the dying part. That’s not why.” I pressed my hands to my face, embarrassed. “When I lived with my aunt full tim
e, I didn’t know anyone here. You were the first nice person I met—the first person who was nice to me and not because they were obligated.” I sighed. “And I remembered, you’d just lost your grandma, and you thought I was sad because I’d lost someone too. Which I had, but not the way you thought. So you told me about the moon, and how that’s where we went when we died.” My hand went to my tattoo, and I laid my palm over it as if I was protecting it. “It gave me an anchor, I guess. Something that was always there, something I could count on every night. When you lived your whole life in endless upheaval, it was nice to look up to the sky at night and see something that remained unchanged.”

  “Wow.” Keane sat back, staring up at the moon with me. “That puts the meaning behind my planets and moons to shame.”

  “No, it doesn’t. You got them because you loved them. Because your grandpa instilled a love for them in you. I didn’t have a grandpa, but I did have you.”

  “I wish you’d told me,” he said, his hand grazing the side of my cheek.

  “Well, for one, it was in a place that I couldn’t have shown you without making things awkward. And, two, I didn’t want you to think I was getting the tattoo for you.”

  “Oof.” He pressed a hand to his chest like he was wounded. “Damn. Thanks for ruining my illusions,” he joked.

  “The tattoo was for me. That’s why I got it where I did; it’s not an area that’s seen too often. But I did get it in part because you gave me a good memory, my first stability after a life of inconsistency. So, thanks.” I rolled onto my side facing him. He stared at me as intently as I stared at him, but there was something in his eyes that made me feel like the low light was still too illuminating.

  “You twist up my insides, Navy.” It was whispered, like a confession meant to be carried away by the wind. But I’d heard it.

  “Oh.” It was the best I could say when my heart was in my throat.

  “Are you afraid?”

  I could only nod.

  “That makes two of us.” He held out his pinky. “Let’s make a promise.”

  He knew how important kept promises were to me. I looped mine with his. “What promise?”

  “Promise…”

  “To not hurt each other.”