Loving My Best Friend

by Reid, Roxy

  “Oh. Right. Of course.” She looks down awkwardly. “I shouldn’t have assumed we’d be exclusive until the divorce. Your way makes much more sense…” she trails off as our eyes meet in the mirror, and she sees the thunder in my expression.

  “Jack?” she asks cautiously.

  My hands on her tighten. I can’t help it.

  “We’re exclusive until the divorce,” I say. It’s the tone I use at work when I’m making a final decision, whether my employees like it or not. I expect Eva to buck at the tone and challenge me. Heaven knows she challenges me in every other way.

  Instead, Eva just says, “Oh,” in that quiet voice of hers and relaxes into me.

  I’m immediately suspicious. Eva doesn’t give in that quickly. Not unless it’s something she wants, too.

  I turn her around so that her butt is pressed into the counter, and I’m pressed into her. I tilt her chin up. “Promise. Promise me we’re exclusive until the divorce.” Promise me you’re mine.

  “Even if this thing between us ends?” she asks skeptically.

  Especially then. I’ll need the time to make it right.

  “Even then,” I say firmly like it’s the demand of a completely rational man instead of someone like, well, me.

  Eva studies me. “All right, then. I see what you mean. It’s simpler that way. Less chance of it getting back to our families or the press. I promise. We’re exclusive until the divorce.”

  I step back to let her leave.

  Eva hesitates in the doorway, then looks back at me with a coy smile. “By the way? That thing you just did, saying you wanted to be exclusive? Definitely boyfriend material. You might be better at this relationship stuff than you think.”

  12

  Eva

  Today was a BIG DAY. I had my first sleepover at Estella’s house. We made cookies and watched the Parent Trap. And then everyone said their crushes. Everyone has a crush on Jack or Humphrey. I don’t have a crush on anyone. But it was a tie, so I said I had a crush on Jack so he could win. Then everyone talked about how he was officially THE CUTEST BOY IN CLASS, and a bunch of girls dared each other to kiss him at recess.

  I don’t think I like sleepovers. It’s more fun playing legos with Jack.

  —Eva Price, journal, second grade

  After I dry off and we both change into sweats and a t-shirt, Jack and I watch a movie and order takeout. It’s one of the superhero movies I haven’t seen yet.

  Jack’s not particularly into superheroes. He thinks Batman could be a lot more useful to Gotham if he just invested his wealth in improving infrastructure, but helping me move must have tired him out because instead of checking his work emails while we watch, he stretches out on the couch and puts his head in my lap.

  I pet his head absentmindedly, and he sighs in contentment.

  He hasn’t done this in forever. Not since college, when he’d show up at my dorm room late at night, either thoroughly exhausted or thoroughly drunk, wanting to just watch a movie, zone out, and cuddle.

  Mostly, I loved those nights, but I hated them a little, too. It’s hard on the feminine ego when you’re the only woman the biggest player on campus wants to platonically cuddle.

  Except what if it wasn’t so platonic?

  Right before he took me up to his hotel room, Jack said he was done waiting. How long has he been waiting? If he’s been waiting for a long time, does it maybe mean I’ll get more time with him? A few years instead of a few months?

  He says he wants to get better at relationships.

  Not with you, you dummy. Just in general. Live in the moment. Don’t. Start. Pining.

  The movie ends with a series of explosions, a big romantic kiss, and a series of quips. As the credits roll, I expect Jack to get up and turn off the TV, but instead, he stays exactly where he is, every limb in his body entirely relaxed. Like there’s nowhere else he’d rather be. It’s enough to trick a girl into pining if she’s not careful.

  I trail my fingers through Jack’s dark hair. “Why did your last relationship end? Her name was Ruby, right?”

  Jack stiffens. “Why do we have to talk about it?”

  “I’m trying to figure out why you think you’re bad at relationships.” Because you seem pretty good at it, so far.

  He sighs, and for a second, I think he’s not going to answer, but then he says, “She wanted me to stop being friends with you.”

  My fingers still in his hair. “That’s not really reasonable. She should be secure enough to be okay with you being friends with other women.”

  “She was okay with me being friends with other women. Just not you.”

  “What’s wrong with me?” I demand, offended. I’d liked Ruby, and she broke Jack’s heart because he was friends with me? Bitch.

  “It wasn’t you. I canceled a date with her to hang out with you. It was last year when what’s-his-face dumped you. The first time.”

  “Oh. Well, I can understand why she would be upset. But still. Friendship emergency. She shouldn’t have dumped you over—”

  “It was her birthday,” Jack admits, pressing his forehead into my leg like he’s embarrassed to admit it. “Also, our sixth month anniversary.”

  “Jack! You ditched her on her birthday? Did you at least call ahead to cancel?”

  He doesn’t answer. I feel a sense of foreboding.

  “Jack,” I say warningly. “I can’t help you if you don’t tell me the truth.”

  “I forgot,” he admits sullenly.

  “Jack,” I say, exasperated. Okay, maybe Ruby wasn’t a bitch, after all. If my boyfriend did that to me, I’d draw the same conclusions she had. Even if, in this case, she was definitely wrong.

  Jack stands up abruptly and starts clearing the takeout containers. “It’s not like I was trying to be a dick. But when you say you need me, and I know you’re hurting, it’s like I can’t think of anything else until I’ve seen you and I know you’re going to be okay.”

  Oh. My throat tightens at the sweetness of that.

  He heads to the kitchen area to toss out the takeout trash, completely unaware that he just said maybe the sweetest thing anyone’s ever said to me.

  If he’d just show that side of himself to the women he dates, he’d have a real relationship in no time. My thoughts grind to a halt as I think back to when each of Jack’s three big relationships ended and start doing the math.

  One of those end dates lines up with the date I got laid-off from my first job, and Jack showed up at my place, and we spent the whole weekend planning how I could freelance to stay afloat in the meantime. A plan that eventually grew into my company, Price Consulting.

  The other date lines up with a truly epic surprise half-birthday party Jack threw for me because he missed my real one that year. A party he planned for the fourteenth of February. I have a dim memory of his girlfriend at the time hanging out sullenly in the corner, not even trying to fit in with our friends.

  “Jack,” I ask suspiciously. “How many of your relationships ended because they wanted you to stop being friends with me?”

  He suddenly develops a pressing need to dig around in his fridge. Since I know there is literally nothing in his fridge, it’s a pretty pathetic attempt at avoiding my question.

  I stand and follow him to the kitchen. “Answer the question, Jack.”

  He closes the fridge and faces me, looking a little harried. “Technically, all of them. But it wasn’t really the friendship. It was them feeling like they weren’t a priority. That didn’t have anything to do with you.”

  Bullshit. They didn’t feel like a priority because I was your priority.

  Jack walks away from me and heads for the bedroom. I follow and linger in the doorway, watching as he angrily gets ready for bed, jamming his phone into its charger, taking off his watch and slamming it down onto the side table, stripping off his shirt and sweats and hurling it across the room at the dirty close pile.

  I fear for the damage he’ll do to his electric toothbrus
h when he gets to that part of the routine.

  He stands in his boxers, scowling at the wall.

  “I think,” I say tentatively, “that you’re a lot better at relationships than you think. All you have to do is treat your dream girl the way you treat me. Trust me. No woman could resist the way you treat me.”

  He throws me a look that’s strangely anguished. “If I treat her like I treat you, she’ll think I’m just interested in friendship.”

  Ouch. So even when we’re fucking, I’m not even the running for a real relationship.

  I smile over my hurt. “Kiss her like you kiss me. She’ll get the picture.”

  Jack makes a tortured sound, somewhere between a groan and a small animal dying. He flops onto the bed, pulling a pillow over his face. “Trust me. She won’t.”

  I rack my brain, trying to give him the benefit of the doubt. It’s his life, after all. The more I think about it, the more I notice all the ways that Jack would be perfect to be in a relationship with. Just in the last month, he showed up when I needed him, got me a job, and planned the perfect birthday for me at the drop of a hat. Now he’s going above and beyond to help me get us out of the mess I made when I kissed him on the sidewalk in front of the hotel. He’s not even mad at me about it.

  Add to that he’s amazing in bed.

  I climb onto the bed and wrestle the pillow out of his hands so that he has to look at me. “Listen to me. Any woman would be lucky to have a man treat them the way you treat me. Plus, you’re hot, you’re funny, and you’re great in bed.” I punctuate each compliment by hitting him with the pillow. He rolls over to shield himself, laughing.

  I keep going until he wrestles the pillow from me and yanks me down for a kiss.

  The last thing I want to do is bring up some hypothetical woman when he’s kissing me like that, but I need him to understand how great he is. Yeah, maybe it’s his fault that those other women left him, but how could he make them a priority when none of them was the right woman for him?

  I break away, stopping his kisses with a finger to his lips. “I need you to hear me on this. I think you know how to be in a relationship. I just don’t think you’ve met the right person yet.”

  He searches my face like he wants to believe me but can’t quite convince himself. “What if, hypothetically, I meet this girl, and I’m treating her exactly how I’m treating you right now, and she still doesn’t see me as relationship material. What do I do then?”

  I snort. “That’s impossible.”

  “Hypothetically.”

  I blow out a breath. “Well. Hypothetically, you can’t make someone love you. Even if they should. If you’ve told her how you feel, and she doesn’t feel the same way …”

  He closes his eyes. “You’re saying the only way she’ll know I want a relationship is if I tell her, but if I tell her, she can say no.”

  I blink down at him. “Well. Yes. That’s generally how being in a relationship works.”

  He rolls us both so that I’m pinned under him. It’s almost the exact reverse of that first night in the hotel room—I’m fully clothed, while he’s almost completely naked.

  Jack pins my wrists to the bed. He kisses the sensitive spot just behind my ear, his beard prickling against the sensitive skin.

  “What if I can’t tell her how I feel?” he says into my ear, so low and gruff that I’m not sure I hear it. “What if I can’t risk losing her?”

  Okay, I’m starting to feel a little grumpy. He’s my best friend, and I want to support him as he overcomes his strangely specific neurosis, but also, I’m right here. Call me selfish, but I’d rather he focus on me when we’re making out.

  But this is Jack, and he’s not going to let it go until I give him an answer he can live with. I stare up at the ceiling, trying to focus on something other than his delicious weight on top of me.

  “I guess you could just bide your time,” I say at last. “Shower her with love and sex and friendship without actually saying how you feel. Then just hope that by the time you put yourself out there, she’s fallen, too.”

  He kisses my mouth. “And you think if I do that, she’ll fall?”

  I look up at him helplessly. Because what do I say? Yes, absolutely, she’ll fall. I would.

  I can’t tell him that.

  So instead, I wrap my hand around the back of his neck and guide his lips back down to mine. “I can’t promise anything, Jack.” I kiss him softly. “You’ll just have to wait and see.”

  Then I kiss him until he’s not thinking about anyone but me.

  * * *

  Afterward, in the dark, as we’re falling asleep, Jack asks me a question.

  “Did any of your boyfriends care that you were friends with me?”

  I’m glad he can’t see my face because the truth is that, yes, there were times when the boyfriends I’ve had over the years asked me to pick them over Jack. The difference is, I always picked them. Until the relationship inevitably ended. Then there was Jack each time, picking up the pieces, sacrificing his own relationships to help me.

  “Eva?” he asks. He’s quieter now. Like he thinks I might be asleep.

  It would be so easy to pretend I’m asleep. To avoid showing him why I don’t deserve his loyalty. I don’t want to lie to him, though, and he doesn’t deserve my cowardice.

  I roll over so I can face him in the darkness. My fingertips trace the contours of his face, simply because it gives me strength to touch him.

  “Yes,” I confess. “Not because I picked them over you. Just because I love you, and they were insecure dicks.”

  He stops breathing. “Love?”

  “Like a friend,” I hurry to add. Then because that feels too small, I add, “My best friend.”

  He starts breathing again. “What did you do? When they wanted you to pick?”

  “I’d drop out of your life for a while. I never told you what I was doing. Partly because I was ashamed, and partly because I didn’t think it would be permanent. I figured I’d fix the problems in my relationship, and then when we were in a better place, I could have you again, too.”

  Jack sits up abruptly, turning away from me.

  “I’m so sorry, Jack,” I say, sitting up, too. “You were so busy, anyway. I didn’t think you’d notice. I didn’t know that all this time, you’ve been choosing me.”

  He doesn’t say anything.

  Suddenly, I’m angry. “You didn’t tell me, Jack.”

  He swings around to face me. “What would you have done if I told you? Stopped calling me? Just bought your own ice cream? Cried alone? Picked up the pieces by yourself?’

  “People do that all the time, Jack,” I say softly.

  “But we don’t do that, Evvie,” he says.

  Jack shifts until he’s sitting cross-legged right in front of me and takes both my hands. Suddenly I’m hit with an old memory of sitting like this in a closet with him when we were kids. We pretended the closet was our secret clubhouse since we couldn’t have a treehouse.

  We made a promise to each other.

  I reach out and trace an X on his bare chest, over his heart. “Best friends forever. Cross our hearts and hope to die.”

  He looks down at me in the dark, his eyes glinting.

  “You kept that promise,” I say, understanding. “No matter what it cost you.”

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

  “I don’t care what it cost me,” Jack protests.

  I look at him. Maybe the promises you make as a kid aren’t meant to last forever. I love it that he picks me every time. I love it so much I can’t breathe past it, but it’s not fair for me to ask that of him when it’s getting in the way of him finding a good woman to love and me standing on my own.

  I take his hands. “Maybe we need a new best friend pact.”

  “Okay,” he says skeptically.

  “We promise that we always come first with each other. Until we meet our true love
, and then we come second. When we have kids, we come third.”

  “So, when you have grandkids, I come forth?” he asks.

  “No. I think you come ahead of the grandkids. I didn’t decide to bring those suckers into the world.”

  He snorts out a laugh. “I’m not calling it true love. This isn’t a fucking Disney movie.”

  “Oh, get over yourself. It’s succinct and accurate. Plus, we’re swearing a pact here. The language has to be appropriate. Come on. Let’s do it.”

  I rise up on my heels so I can press my forehead into his. “Jack McBride, I swear you will be my best friend forever. Until I meet my true love. At which point, you come second.”

  I can feel him smiling in the dark.

  I whap him on the shoulder. “Take this seriously. It’s an important step in you having a relationship and me not giving you up for anything less than my one true love.”

  He sighs heavily. “Fine, but just so you know, I’m rolling my eyes. Eva Price. I swear you will be my best friend forever. Until I meet my true love … I don’t want to say this.”

  “Tough shit, McBride. Man up.

  “Until-I-meet-my-true-love-at-which-point-you-come-second,” he says in a rush. “Can we go to sleep now, you weirdo?”

  I smile. I feel lighter. Surer. Like I set him free, no matter how much it stung to rip off the band-aid.

  “Yeah,” I say. “We can go to sleep.”

  We get back under the covers. Jack spoons up behind me, wrapping his arms around me like he can keep either of us from meeting our true loves. Like if he holds onto me tight enough, nothing has to change.

  I let him. I’ve been virtuous enough for one night.

  “Too bad we’re not each other’s true love,” he whispers into the dark. “Then, I could keep you at the top of my list.”

  This time I’m the one who stops breathing.

  I can’t believe he just said that.

  I remind myself to breathe, and then I pretend to be sound asleep.

  Sometimes cowardice is absolutely the right way to go.