Loving My Best Friend

by Reid, Roxy

  I think of the pile of crap in my living room. All the things I kept because they were practical.

  I don’t want to be practical tonight.

  This time, I’m the one who kisses him. I climb onto his lap, take his face in my hands, and kiss him like it’s New Year’s Eve and he’s my resolution. I drag my hands through his hair. I whisper a few more fantasies in his ear.

  Jack’s hands bite into my waist, but he lets me set the pace. He lets me drive us both a little wild until he can’t stand it anymore. He slips his hand beneath my panties and strokes me like I taught him until I’m shattering in his arms, gasping from pleasure. I don’t have time to recover before Jack strips us both. I’m trying not to salivate—Jack looks good naked—and then he’s inside me, rocking me to my second orgasm on my boring, practical comforter.

  Okay. Maybe it’s not so boring after all.

  My future husband comes with me, gasping and digging my nails into his ass, and then we fall fast asleep in each other’s arms, not thinking about the future at all.

  11

  Jack

  Hey, Mom. Guess what? Eva Price goes to Columbia, too! She didn’t have any place to go for Thanksgiving, so I’m bringing her home. I know you said no girls at family holidays, but Eva doesn’t count as a girl.

  Also, please don’t be weird.

  —Jack McBride, text to his mom, November of his freshman year at Columbia

  I take the next few days off and convince Eva to take time off, too. When I call to tell my assistant June to reschedule my meetings, I casually mention I’m helping my fiancée, Eva, move since she’s been helping me out at the office lately.

  June is a brilliantly efficient woman who has known me since I was ten. She’s also a horrible gossip and incredibly loyal to my family. By the time Eva and I get back to work in a few days, the entire hotel will have heard June’s rose-colored version of our engagement.

  We put what little furniture Eva’s keeping in storage in the basement of my building. Then, we make another trip in my car to get her clothes. I could call movers, but I like working with Eva like this. I like the simple, easy rhythm of being with her.

  I’m enjoying it so much, I forget to worry about what she’ll think when she sees my apartment.

  “Huh,” Eva says as she stands just inside the door of my apartment, surrounded by boxes. “So, this is where you live.”

  Her eyes sweep over the vast—for Manhattan—space, made even bigger by an open-floor plan. The bathroom, bedroom, and guest room are closed off, but the rest of it is just stylishly arranged space. There’s the kitchen that I rarely use, then the leather couches in front of a giant TV, and an office area beyond that. My cleaning service keeps the whole place spotless.

  It’s also somewhat lacking in personality, now that I think about it. My office actually looks like me. This looks like who I wanted to be five years ago. Untethered, easy, trendy. Watching Eva take it in with her eyebrows raised, I can’t remember why I wanted to be those things.

  I do love the floor to ceiling windows looking out over the city, though. I pretty much bought the place for those windows. It’s hard to feel alone when you’ve got the city at your feet.

  Except, I’m not alone anymore. I’ve got a roommate for the next year and a half.

  “It looks better with the lights on,” I say and hit the light switch.

  If anything, it looks more empty with the lights on.

  Eva sets down the box she’s carrying and starts exploring the apartment. She tries out the couches and deems them each comfortable. She runs her fingertips along the glass window, then snatches her hand back like she’s scared of leaving fingerprints. She’s impressed by my fully stocked spice collection and collection of high-end kitchenware, but when she opens my fridge and sees there’s nothing in there, she cries out, “Ah-ha!” like a detective who solved the crime.

  The case of the deceptively put-together bachelor.

  She pokes her head into the guest room. She surveys my dark, clean bedroom like it’s about what she expected. Then she gets to the bathroom and gasps. It is a great bathroom. I’m partial to the walk-in shower. None of the leafy green plants the stylist put in are dead yet. But that’s not what has Eva’s attention. No, she’s staring at the sunken jacuzzi bathtub next to a wall of floor to ceiling windows that look out over New York.

  “They’re tinted,” I explain. “No one can see in. Also, you won’t get skin cancer.”

  “This is better than a spa. Do you have trouble getting women to leave?” Eva jokes.

  “I never have women over,” I answer without thinking. Eva shoots me a look. “Not that I don’t spend time with women. It’s just their place, normally. Or a hotel.”

  Fuck, I sound like such a dick.

  I try again. “I don’t really like having people in my space. My life’s so public. It’s nice to have a refuge that’s just mine.”

  “Oh, and now I’m living with you,” Eva says sympathetically. “Look, I can keep to the guest room. It’s almost the size of my old apartment, anyway. I’ll do my best to stay out of your way. I’ll just move my boxes in there.” She tries to step around me.

  “No,” I say, panicked. “Don’t do that.”

  She looks quizzical. “Don’t stay out of your way?”

  “No.” I sound like an idiot, but as far as I’m concerned, the only upside of this whole arrangement is spending time with Eva, and now she wants to take that away. “You’re not the public. You’re … part of the refuge.”

  She’s watching me, eyes wide.

  “I mean, you can be. If you wanted to.” I’m babbling like an eighth grader trying to tell his crush he likes her.

  Why is it so hard to ask my best friend not to shut me out?

  Eva’s not saying no, but she’s not saying yes, either. I cup the back of her neck with a confidence I don’t feel, massaging that spot where Eva stores her tension until she briefly closes her eyes in pleasure.

  Good. Better. Relax for me. Don’t think about the future. Don’t think about it until I’m so embedded in your life that you can’t imagine a future with anyone else.

  “Why don’t you take a bath?” I ask soothingly. “You’ve had a long two days, and you’re running on almost no sleep.”

  She hesitates. “I should unpack.”

  “I’ll unpack. You just take a bath. I’ll get you a bottle of wine.”

  She sighs in bliss at the idea. She drops her head against my chest. I take that small surrender as an opportunity to expand my massage, working my hand down her spinal column until she gives a delicious little shiver.

  “Why are you so good to me, Jack?” Eva asks.

  Immediately, I’m hit with a pang of guilt. I should have said no when she proposed marriage. I should have just told everyone the truth and let the chips fall where they may because, for me, an engagement to Eva isn’t an inconvenient solution. It’s an opportunity. While she was figuring out ways to save our reputations, I was thinking of all the ways I could get Eva to let down her guard, to fall in love with me, if she was living with me.

  When she said six months for the engagement, it felt like fate. I can get her to fall for me in six months, right? Then when we get married, it won’t really be a lie because we’ll both feel it, even if she can’t say it yet. Then all I have to do is spend a year making her so deliriously happy, she can’t imagine divorcing me.

  I’m such a manipulative bastard. What else am I supposed to do, though? Just put myself out there? Hope she’ll say yes?

  As if. Putting yourself out there and hoping for the best is how business empires fall.

  Since I can’t exactly answer Eva’s question with, “I’m trying to manipulate you into falling in love with me so I can keep you forever,” I just kiss her until she goes soft and pliant. It’s hard to express how much I love it when Eva softens for me.

  I start the bath, give Eva one last kiss, then go to unpack her clothes like I told her I would. I just did
n’t tell her I was going to unpack it all into my closet.

  * * *

  When I finish unpacking, Eva’s still in the bathroom, humming tunelessly to herself. I smile and pour us each a glass of wine. When I nudge the bathroom door open, Eva squeals and ducks beneath the surface of the water.

  I laugh. “Relax. I can’t see anything through the bubbles. Also, I’ve seen everything before.”

  “And you’re about to leave if you want to see it ever again,” Eva spits back.

  I hold up the wine in surrender. “I take it all back. I’ve never seen you naked before. I have no idea you have a really cute mole on your butt.”

  “Jack!”

  I wink and set down her wineglass near the tub where she can reach it, but as I’m crouching down, she splashes me, and it startles me so much that I fall over backward on my ass. Now, Eva’s the one who’s laughing, and the sound is rich and full as it bounces around the bathroom. I lean over to splash her back, but she’s too fast. She snags her wine and scoots back to the other side of the improbably large tub.

  Since she scoots back to an area with almost no bubbles, where I can see almost all of her gorgeous, naked body, that suits me just fine. On an impulse, I take off my socks and shoes, roll up my pants, and scoot over to the edge, dropping my feet into the hot water.

  “Ah,” I sigh. I take a sip of my own wine.

  “You know, you could just get in,” Eva points out. “It’s big enough for both of us.”

  “If I get in, you’re getting ravished,” I say matter of factly. From the way her eyes widen, I’m pretty sure she’d be blushing if her cheeks weren’t already flushed a pretty pink from the steam.

  Eva sips her wine, trying to play it cool. “I see. And you don’t want to ravish me because …”

  Eva playing it cool is pretty fucking adorable.

  I lean back on my hands, letting my eyes drink her in—the way her hair is curling in the steam, how her bare shoulders look so innocent, the lush glimpse of her curves I get every time she moves and the bubbles shift away. When I finally meet her eyes, she shifts again, restlessly. Her lips are parted, and she’s staring at …

  She’s staring at my cock.

  Shit. Just like that, she flips the power dynamic between us. I know she thinks I’m the one with more power. I’ve got the money, the experience. We’re in my condo. But I want her so bad. I want her in my bed, and I want her in my future. I want to dance with her at a wedding and not have it be about playing mind games with each other. I want to dance with her just because I like her and my life’s better when I’m dancing with her.

  Really, it’s better when I’m doing anything with her.

  Six months, McBride. You just have to stay in control for another six months.

  So, instead of jumping into the water and kissing her until she can see how desperate I am, I lean back lazily and take another sip of my wine. I use the movement as an excuse to shift a little, so she can see where I’m getting hard for her.

  “See something you like?” I ask lazily.

  Her eyes jerk up to mine, wide and dark, like she’s been caught doing something naughty.

  Oh, honey. You can be as naughty as you want with me.

  “To answer your question…” I start, and she blinks, dazed like she’s already forgotten the question. I bite back a smile, feeling very, very masculine. “You asked why I’m not ravishing you now. It’s not that I don’t want to. It’s just that I used you pretty hard last night. And the night before. And this morning.”

  The nice thing about Eva being naked in a tub is that I can see when her breath starts to quicken.

  “I intend to use you again tonight,” I continue, matter-of-factly. “You probably won’t get much sleep, but the sleep you do get will be very, very sound.”

  I take another sip of my wine. “I figure it’s only gentlemanly to let your poor pussy have a few more hours off.”

  “So that’s why you don’t want me to move into the guest room. Because I’m your new sex-toy.”

  I spray out my wine in shock. “What? Eva. No. Not at all. No, no, no. Have I done anything to make you feel like my sex-toy?”

  “I mean, not in a bad way.”

  “Jesus.” I bury my head in my hands. I thought it would be easy, now that we’re having sex, to shift us into something more than friendship, but I’m making her feel … I close my eyes against the thought of how badly I’m fucking this up.

  I hear the water move, and when I open my eyes, Eva’s looped an arm over the edge of the tub. She places a reassuring hand on my thigh, which gets my slacks wet, but I don’t care.

  “What were you going for?” she asks gently.

  “I was just trying to have some fun. Make you feel good.”

  Eva beams up at me, and shit, I’m in trouble when she looks at me like that.

  I’m in love with Eva Price.

  It’s the first time I’ve said to myself. I’ve pretty much known it since I took her from Gabriel on the dance floor at Ally’s wedding. You don’t try to use a fake marriage to trick someone into staying with you forever unless you’re in love with them. But I haven’t said it to myself before.

  Maybe because the other two times I’ve been in love, it was like a thunderbolt realization. But this … this is a slow, steady tide that’s been rising my whole life. Now it’s finally over my head, and I’m helpless, drowning in this unrequited love with no real idea of how to woo her.

  No, I make her feel like a sex-toy. But in a good way.

  She stands up in the tub so that we’re eye to eye as the water sluices off her, and I close my eyes to keep from looking because I need her to know I want her for more than sex, but she’s so fucking hot.

  Eva smooths my hair back from my face. “It is fun when you let me know how much you like me. It makes me feel good.” She kisses me, and I slide my hands around her naked waist. Maybe this isn’t so bad. Maybe the sex-toy thing was just a miscommunication.

  So, I try communicating. Her wet hair falls long and heavy down her back, and I wrap my fingers through its ends, using it to tug her head back just enough so that she has to look at me.

  “What do you like best about being with me?”

  “Jack,” she protests.

  “Tell me,” I demand, and maybe she can see some of my hunger snapping under the surface because she gives in.

  “Okay. Let me think.” She leans in, sliding her hands around my waist. Everywhere she touches, she leaves a trail of hot water, and it’s hard not to feel like I’m being branded.

  “I like how hot it is with you. How exciting,” Eva says, and I relax. Exciting I can do. I can give her excitement for the rest of her life.

  Eva slides her hands up my back, and I grab her ass and tug her into me, surprising a gasp out of her.

  “Every time with you is like a one-night-stand,” Eva gasps.

  Everything in me goes cold. I know she means it as a compliment. Hell, if any other woman said it, I would take it as a compliment. This is Eva, though, and the only tool I have in my arsenal to make her think of forever is sex. Everything else I do, she’ll interpret as friendship. But sex with me makes her think of something temporary. Every. Single. Fucking. Time.

  The thing she likes best about being with me is how temporary it feels.

  She stills in my arms and pulls away enough that she can see my face. “Jack? What’s wrong? Did I say the wrong thing?”

  “No! No, Evvie, darling, you can never say the wrong thing with me.” I stand to grab the biggest, fluffiest towel I can find. I help her out of the tub and wrap her up in it. “Do you want something for dinner? I’ll order takeout. We can have anything you—”

  “Jack. Stop.” She lays a hand on my chest. I wonder if she can feel the way my heart is racing.

  She’ll keep pushing until I give her an answer that satisfies. The tricky thing about trying to seduce your best friend is that she’s known you long enough to see right through you.

&nb
sp; Eva stares up at me, patient—and stubborn—as ever.

  “I just realize that I’m good at friendship, and I’m good at one-night stands. Maybe that’s the reason it’s so easy with you, but I don’t really know how to do the other stuff. The relationship stuff.”

  “Friendship and one-night-stands are nothing to sniff at,” she teases with a gentle smile.

  “I know, but I’m thirty. At a certain point, I should figure out how to be in a fucking relationship.”

  “And being in a fake relationship with me for a year and a half basically means you’re losing out on time when you could be figuring out how to be in a real relationship,” she says, the smile falling from her face.

  “Something like that,” I mumble.

  Oh, someone just kill me now.

  Eva turns away and reaches for another towel to wrap around her head in that way that women do. She takes a washcloth and faces the mirror, dabbing at some smudges along her eyes where her make-up didn’t quite wash off in the bath. I lean on the doorway, liking the simple intimacy of watching her routine.

  Eva turns to face me. “Okay. Here’s an idea. You’re helping me figure out how to slow down and live in the moment. How about I help you figure out how to be in a relationship? I mean, every woman’s different, obviously, but I can show you what I like in a partner. Then, at the end of this, you won’t feel like you’ve wasted eighteen months.”

  I turn the idea over in my head. Obviously, I’d like to already be Eva’s perfect partner, but since I clearly don’t know how to get her to see me that way yet, this seems like the next best thing. Sort of like getting Eva to show me how she likes to be touched that first night. Only, instead of showing me how she wants me to handle her body, she’s showing me how she’d want me to handle her life.

  Eva turns back to the mirror. “Never mind. Stupid idea.”

  “No! Not a stupid idea. I’d like that very much.” I come up behind her and wrap my arms around her waist, dropping a kiss on her neck. “But just so you know, I don’t consider these next eighteen months a waste.”