What Are Friends For?: A Friends to Lovers Romance

by Sarah Sutton

  Elijah pressed his fingertips against my cheek. “I mean, come on, Rem. I knew your bra size.”

  I snorted again, and the noise caused a wide smile to break across his face. Gosh, he was so handsome. And I couldn’t just attribute it to the suit he wore. No, it was his crooked nose, the freckle underneath his eyebrow, his uneven eyelashes. It was the way he smiled when he sculpted, the way he drove with one hand always resting on the gearshift. It was his clay-covered fingers, the way he laughed, the way he loved. It wasn’t just his looks—it was just him, all of him, making my heart pound a mile a minute.

  “Give me a chance,” Elijah said softly, ghosting one fingertip down the slope of my neck. “A chance to take you shopping, to get ice cream, to fix your front door, and to kiss you,” he added with emphasis, “and kiss you, and kiss you. I think I’m getting pretty good at it.”

  To kiss you, and kiss you, and kiss you. I wanted nothing more. But something held me back. “What if it doesn’t end up working? What if it just falls apart and is super gross and ruins our friendship, and then you stop talking to me and we have to awkwardly avoid each other for the rest of our lives?”

  He blinked, probably because I’d spoken rapid-fire. “I’ve spent my entire life with you, Remi,” he said. “If I stopped talking to you every time you did something gross, we’d have stopped being friends when you ate worms.”

  “And I’d have stopped being your friend when you spewed pop all over the cafeteria table in the sixth grade.”

  His lips twitched before faltering. “But you’re still here, and I’m still here. For as long as you want me.”

  For as long as you want me. He said that—he really said that. When I looked up at Elijah’s face, choking on the air that I tried to bring into my lungs, I nearly burst into tears. This was actually happening. I wasn’t dreaming, and there were no rugs about to be pulled from underneath my feet. Elijah was here, wanting me, offering himself to me for as long as I wanted him. And I would want him, until the end of time.

  To keep myself from crying, I leaned forward in the darkness of the closet and pressed my mouth against his.

  His mouth was still as soft as I remembered, so perfect against my own. I felt his lips curve underneath mine as he reached out and pushed my hair back, fingers spreading across my jaw. I pressed closer, wrapping my arms around his neck.

  This was our first kiss that wasn’t all heat and passion—not to say that those weren’t great—but this felt softer. Sweeter. Less about need and desire, but steadier, filled with the warmth of love. My heart swooned in my chest, the happiness in my veins sending it into overdrive.

  Elijah leaned forward to touch his forehead to mine. “I think I’m starting to get the whole appeal of this Lip Locker thing.”

  “I think this is how you’re supposed to do it. You know, leave out the head trauma.” I couldn’t wipe the smile from my face, curling my fingers. “Kiss me again, Elijah.”

  His laugh sounded ghostly, slipping across my skin. Against my lips, Elijah murmured, “Don’t mind if I do.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “Stop doing that thing with your leg.”

  My leg, which had been bouncing nervously up and down, froze. I glanced to the boy beside me. “I’m nervous.”

  Elijah placed his hand on my knee, either a show of support or to make sure I wouldn’t twitch anymore. Amusement flicked across his gaze. “I can tell.”

  “We’ll set the record straight,” Mom said from the chair on my other side, her own legs crossed. She’d pulled her short hair back into a tight bun, making her look serious. Or so she said. Between that and her pantsuit, it looked like we were about to walk into court. “My little girl is no cheater.”

  The weekend had flown by. It felt like just yesterday Principal Martinez called me to her office and accused me of cheating, sending me home with a suspension and the dooming fate of missing graduation. Friday and Saturday held their own struggles as I tried to come to terms with my life falling to pieces, but Sunday had been a day that I needed. Desperately. Mr. and Mrs. Greybeck had come over and surprised Mom with an indoor picnic, Elijah in tow. I invited Eloise, too, since I felt so bad for ditching her the night before at Jeremy’s party. By the time Elijah and I emerged from the closet, nearly everyone had gone home.

  There had been a ton of “I told you so” phrases coming from Eloise, and smiles. Big, big smiles.

  Elijah moved his hand from my knee to my fist now, unwinding my stiff fingers. “Want to go get ice cream after this?”

  I almost asked him how he could think about ice cream at a time like this, but then I realized that he only asked to take my mind off the situation at hand. “I think I’ll get chocolate this time, so you don’t have to share yours.”

  A smile sprung to his lips. “I never minded sharing.”

  Dad leaned out from Mom’s other side, catching my eye. “Does she normally make you wait this long?”

  “Brian,” Mom shushed.

  “What? We’ve been sitting here for about ten minutes.”

  He barely got the sentence out before the door to Principal Martinez’s office opened and she appeared. Her expression looked entirely different than it had on Friday; her mouth pulled up into a smile upon seeing my parents. She even showed teeth. “Mr. and Mrs. Beaufort, Remi, please, come in.”

  We all stood up, my grip on Elijah’s fingers tugging him to his feet as well. I let my parents walk past us, looking up into his beautiful brown eyes. The deepness of them grounded me a little as I searched them. “Will you still love me if Principal Martinez makes me repeat my senior year?” Because even though I probably could’ve only repeated the one class, I was preparing myself for the worst.

  Elijah’s eyebrows pulled down a bit, lips parting. “Remi.”

  “You’ll be off at college seeing college girls and going to college parties, and I’ll still be in high school.”

  “When did you become such a worrier?”

  When? Oh, just over the past few weeks, when my life slowly and surely fell apart.

  He placed his hands on my shoulders with a little pressure, grounding me. “You’re going to go in there, and you’re going to tell the truth. If they believe you, great. If they don’t, then they’re idiots, but it doesn’t change what really happened. Either way, yes, I’ll love you.” He finished off his sentence by leaning forward and pressing a kiss to the tip of my nose before pulling back completely. “Go. They’re waiting on you.”

  And they were. Dad poked his head out of the office. “You coming, Remikins?”

  I nodded, seeing Elijah give me one last supportive smile before brushing past him into the office.

  I jerked when I saw Savannah sitting in one of the chairs opposite of Principal Martinez’s desk. She had her chin down, gaze averted, but the mere sight of her had me hesitating in the doorway. “Uh—”

  “Sit down, honey,” Mom told me, patting the chair next to her. Mom and Dad’s chairs were positioned closest to the principal’s desk, and they were waiting expectantly.

  As I moved into the room, Savannah kept her gaze off mine, no matter how hard I tried to catch it.

  Principal Martinez closed the door before making her way to her desk, settling into the chair. She shuffled a few papers in front of her, as if taking that moment to orient herself. “Thank you for coming in, Mr. and Mrs. Beaufort,” she began, still holding onto her smile. “I’ve dug into the issue a little bit more since we last spoke, Remi, and a few things have come to light. And a certain someone has something to say to you.”

  “I’m sorry,” Savannah said from the other side of the room, finally glancing my way. She looked a little like she had Saturday afternoon. Her eyes were wide, the blood draining from her face. “I changed your grade, Remi.”

  No. No, no, that wasn’t what I wanted to happen. I didn’t want her to confess to anything. I mean, yeah, I didn’t want to repeat my senior year or have to take makeup classes, but I didn’t want Savannah to get
in trouble for it. It was my fault, anyway. I’d let my grade drop lower than it should’ve. The entire semester, I’d blown off art class. I led myself down this path.

  And I kissed her boyfriend. I deserved the consequences, the karma—not her.

  “Savannah, you—”

  “I was jealous,” she said, cutting me off, voice shaking a little. “Of you and Elijah. I shouldn’t have done it. I…I didn’t realize it would be so serious. That you would fail the grade.”

  Mom glanced my way as Savannah spoke, eyebrows drawn together. “It was just a big misunderstanding,” I said.

  “One that almost kept you from graduating on time,” Dad pointed out.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you,” Mrs. Keller said, and I had to turn a little in my seat to face her fully. Her face softened, expression as open as I’d ever seen it. A fist of nervousness finally started to unclench inside me. “You’re going to pass this semester with a sixty percent, Remi. You made all of those snowflakes. As soon as you turned them in, I knew there had to be more to the story. It’s like you said. Would you have gone to all the trouble with the snowflakes just to cheat? I’m just sorry that I didn’t listen to you earlier.”

  She’d listened to me. I mean sure, it was a little delayed, but she believed in me. A huge wave of relief rolled over me, so painfully crushing that I almost burst into tears.

  “That we didn’t listen to you,” Principal Martinez corrected her, “but we’re listening now. And I hope you forgive us, and the school, when we say how truly sorry we are for this miscommunication. Although, Remi,” she added, “I expect you to clean up your act, or more detention may be in your future. None of this would’ve happened if your grade hadn’t slipped so low.”

  Yeah, yeah, rub salt in that wound, lady. “I know, and don’t worry, I’ll be better about it.” After all this, no way was I going to let my grades dip past a seventy ever again. No. Way.

  “Savannah, that will be all for now,” Principal Martinez said to her.

  Savannah stood from her chair on shaking legs, the quivering obvious. She glanced at me, at my parents, one final time before going to the door and letting herself out.

  Principal Martinez shifted behind her desk almost uncomfortably, and normally I would’ve loved to see her squirm, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the door. “I wanted to issue a formal apology, Mr. and Mrs. Beaufort, for our conversations last Friday. With so much confusion going on, it’s easy to get caught up in the moment and—”

  “I’ll be right back,” I said, not at all caring about cutting her off, rising to my feet. “Keep going, I’ll just—excuse me.”

  Elijah looked up as I exited the office, expression all sorts of confused. “What was Savannah doing in there? What’s going on?”

  I hadn’t told him about Savannah’s involvement with my malfunctioning grades, so he truly wouldn’t have known why she was in there. “I’ll explain but—just—stay here.”

  I hurried from the office and out into the hallway. All things considered, it seemed like a fair boundary between her and I. I kissed her boyfriend; she tanked my GPA. Fighting her about it would’ve made me feel wrong, guilty. And now that I had her boyfriend and a fixed GPA, I felt even worse.

  The halls were empty, which made finding the blonde girl walking away incredibly easy. “Savannah, wait!”

  I almost wasn’t sure she was going to stop, but she did. She paused long enough that I caught up with her. “We don’t need to talk about this,” she said as I got close.

  “We do.” I stared at her back, dropping my voice. “Why did you turn yourself in?”

  “You know, I didn’t like you. Before. And I didn’t know anything about you, I just knew that you…you were a threat. In my mind, anyway. You could’ve done it; you could’ve taken Elijah away.” Her hair moved back and forth as she shook her head. “I didn’t even bother getting to know you before I decided I didn’t like you.”

  I frowned a little at the confession, not sure where it was coming from. “I’m really sorry about how everything turned out, Savannah.”

  At the sound of her name, she turned, giving me a full look at her face. She wasn’t crying, but her nose looked red, as if she could’ve started. But her eyes remained dry. “I did do it. I changed your grade. I changed it enough that I knew they’d catch it. I thought, maybe if I change her grade, she’ll stop trying to steal my boyfriend.”

  “I wasn’t—”

  “I know. I know you weren’t trying to steal him.” She pressed a hand to her cheek, sighing. When her lips curled into an involuntary smile, I blinked, because it was the first real one I’d seen from her. I knew in an instant that it was genuine. “But I realized something after we spoke on Saturday. I realized I hadn’t changed your grade to keep Elijah. I didn’t do it because I loved him and because I wanted him. I did it because I just wanted someone. A boy to call mine. All this time I fought for him, and we didn’t even work well together.”

  “You did think his art was an annoying quirk,” I pointed out.

  The smile grew until she let out a chuckle. “I hated his art. The impracticality of it. The pointlessness of it.” Savannah looked at me for a long moment, the traces of humor fading from her face. “After we spoke, I realized that you weren’t the bad guy, Remi. I made you out to be one, but you’re not. I was the one standing in the middle of your story.”

  I was the one standing in the middle of your story. I wasn’t sure I agreed with that—it definitely didn’t feel that way. The fact that she thought that made me want to reach out and hug her. Which was a strange feeling, given everything that happened.

  “Oh, don’t look so guilty,” she told me immediately, rolling her eyes. “We weren’t dating that long, and we were both miserable. We were just on a different wavelength. And you were right. Elijah deserves to have someone to listen to his stories and be excited about his art. He deserves to have you.”

  “Did you get in a lot of trouble for coming clean?”

  She waved her hand in the air, batting away the idea. “Don’t worry about me. I really am sorry for everything, Remi. I had no idea that would keep you from graduating. Honest.”

  I believed her. When I told her before that I wouldn’t be graduating, the shock on her face had been enough to make me pause even in that moment. I didn’t doubt her now.

  We stood together in the hallway for a beat longer, the silence between us thick. And then I spoke. “Do you want to go shopping or something sometime? Just hang out, talk. Be friends?”

  Savannah raised her eyebrows. “Don’t you think that’d be a little weird, all things considered?”

  “Maybe,” I said, “but I don’t have that many girl friends. Eloise and I go shopping pretty often. We’d love to have you come with.”

  “You know, I did hear that Liv’s is having a buy one, get one sale on tops and bottoms this week. We could start there.”

  I let out a little breath, my lips slipping into a smile. “Sounds great.”

  Savannah hesitated for a moment before heading off in the direction of her first period class. The lightness in my chest nearly had me laughing, a strange sort of feeling bubbling in my chest.

  Elijah’s knee was bouncing as I came back into the office, and it stopped when he lifted his gaze. “Everything okay?”

  I reached a hand out to him and immediately he laced his fingers around my own. The warmth of his skin jumped onto mine, like a little shock. “Yeah,” I said as I leaned into him, welcoming the heat his body produced. Surely the secretary was about to yell at us for PDA, but I was going to soak this moment up. I was going to soak him up. “Everything’s okay.”

  And it was. In fact, it all had fallen into place. My grades, Elijah, my parents, Elijah’s parents, Savannah—everything had reached its peaceful moment. I was a snowflake, falling, and I had finally landed somewhere okay.

  Elijah and I were together—something that seemed so impossible two weeks ago. But there we were, hands clasped,
gazes tangling up. In a way, it almost felt like nothing had changed. He was still my best friend; he’d always be my best friend. Only there was a depth to us now that left everything inside me feeling like a puddle of goo. And, you know, there was also the added perk of getting to kiss him whenever I wanted. I would take advantage of that every chance I got.

  Epilogue

  Elijah’s fingers combed idly through my hair, gentle when they snagged on a few tangles, massaging them out. I closed my eyes and leaned into his touch, a cat leaning into a scratch, a flower leaning toward the sun. The heat between our bodies had reached the point of sweltering, the blanket over our legs definitely not helping, but no way was I moving. Possibly ever.

  “Did you fall asleep?” Elijah whispered against my temple, shifting ever so slightly beside me.

  “Mmm, not yet, but I could.”

  We’d been curled up on the couch for almost an hour now, or maybe it just felt like it. The steady thumping of Elijah’s heartbeat underneath my palm, as well as his deliciously soft fingers, had lulled me into a state of bliss. “You can’t,” he corrected, voice equally tender. “We’ve got to leave soon.”

  “Your mom isn’t out of the bathroom yet,” I protested, curling closer over his body. My foot slipped against the smooth material of his dress pants, pushing the fabric up until I felt his bare calf. “We’ll move when she comes out.”

  Elijah laughed against me, drawing his fingers from my hair to graze my cheek. “I can’t even dream about napping right now. It feels like I just drank three cups of coffee.”

  I pried my eyelids apart to find his deep eyes slipping over my face, a tenderness in their depths that still managed to render me speechless. It felt like just yesterday we were on the floor of Jeremy’s closet, talking, confessing, kissing. But that’d been nearly two months ago.