She’s sitting at my kitchen island, her bare feet swinging off the stool, barely visible because the long striped skirt she’s wearing is hanging down so low it covers most of them. I can only see her hot pink toes poking out. She’s leaning forward on the stool, which is causing the tiny, thin T-shirt she’s wearing to lift so I can see the soft, lightly tanned skin. Her dark hair is haphazardly twisted up in a knot on top of her head and about two minutes ago she reached into her bag on the counter and put on her glasses. She looks like a librarian in a porno. I’m fucking dying.
When the hell did this become my problem? Don’t I have enough to deal with? It used to be fairly easy to control any inkling of attraction to my closest female friend but now it is nearly impossible.
“I think we should make it an online RSVP,” she says. “It says on this Evite site that you can lock it down and give guests a password so that it’s not a public thing. That would work, right?”
She glances at me, dark eyes peering out from her dark frames as she absently chews on her bottom lip and waits for my response. I swallow—hard. “Does it taste good?”
“What?”
“Your lip,” I clarify and give her a smirk that I hope looks a lot more innocent than I feel. “Because you’ve been chewing it all night.”
She turns pink, which just adds more dirty thoughts to the ones already throwing a party in my head. I really wonder if she turns that delicious color when she comes.
She laughs. “I always do that when I’m deep in thought. I used to do it during tests in high school all the time.”
I clear my throat and jump off the countertop I’ve been sitting on for half an hour while we worked on the details of the invitation. I head to the fridge, yank open the door and glance inside. I’m not hungry or thirsty; I just need a distraction. “A password-protected online form seems like it’ll work.”
“Okay, I’ll register us now,” she replies and I hear her fingers start tapping away on the keyboard. I turn and steal another glance at her. She has this tiny beauty mark behind her earlobe that I swear to God makes my mouth salivate for some reason.
I close the fridge, walk into the attached den and drop backward onto the couch. The Silver Bay Times is on the coffee table in front of me. I haven’t read it yet so I pick it up and start glancing through it distractedly. Still, my mind can’t stop wondering how my dick got into this conundrum.
I was living in Quebec with my mother when the Caplan girls were shipped back to Silver Bay to live with their paternal grandmother. I met them briefly when I came to visit Jordan the summer I turned ten. All three of them were painfully thin, scruffy-looking things that I barely noticed. Girls, in general, were as interesting as brussels sprouts for me at that age. By the time I moved in with the Garrisons, when I was almost fourteen, the girls were pretty much as ingrained in the Garrison family as I was. Donna, who had been best friends with Rose’s mom when she was young, invited them to family gatherings, made them birthday cakes and drove them places when it was clear they were walking everywhere because their grandmother was ignoring them.
Cole and Devin treated them like favorite cousins. Jordan treated them like close friends, especially Jessie. I decided to treat them like nuisances. I picked on them kind of like siblings, the same way I treated Dev, Jordy and Cole. I made fun of Callie’s hair, which she was always dyeing, perming or cutting. I called Jessie “goody two-shoes” because she was always the teacher’s pet in school, and I made fun of Rose’s legs because, although her sisters were starting to fill out, she was still glaringly thin and awkward looking. No one got upset. They knew I was kidding and those girls gave as good as they got. Well, Jessie and Callie did. Rose just mostly ignored me.
But after my mom came to visit when I was fifteen, and Rose helped me deal with my mother’s alcoholism, it changed the way I treated Rose forever.
My mom had shown up drunk to one of my hockey games. Rose had found her after the game puking in the restroom. She’d come and got me and helped me sneak her out so that the team—and the Garrisons—didn’t see her. I was embarrassed and she kept me from being humiliated.
I had a frank talk with my mother the next morning and she explained that she and her second husband, Jean-Guy, were divorcing. She felt alone with me in Maine and she wasn’t handling it well. She promised me she would pull it together—and she did when she met another man to focus her energy on.
It was after that episode that I started treating Rose differently. I started looking out for her the way she’d looked out for me. I never told anyone why, but people noticed the shift. Jordan asked me once, “What’s with you and Rose? Why are you acting like she’s special?” I had simply shrugged it off and Jordan, never one to dig too deep into emotions—his or others—let it go.
She was filling out by then, and had developed this sexy way of smiling when she was embarrassed and a totally hot way of walking, swinging her hips and tilting her ass. But I decided when we were teenagers that I was on a mission to keep Rose from harm, and guys like me… we were harm. At least I would be to a girl like Rosie, who was so in love with the idea of love. Growing up, Rosie spent all her spare time reading romance novels and watching sappy chick flicks. She once told me that she believed in one true love and would settle for nothing less. I was seventeen when she told me that and I remember trying hard not to laugh out loud.
Thanks to my mom, I knew “true love” could turn into “true disaster” in the blink of an eye. Also, the idea of being with just one girl for more than a few weeks sounded like a prison sentence. I was young, horny and adventurous. When it came to women, I was like a kid in a candy store and I didn’t want it any other way.
I knew, even before the adorable drunk incident at the lake, that she had a crush on me. I also knew that if I had to make a play for her, she wouldn’t do it. Rose wanted to be swept off her feet. She wouldn’t be the one to do the sweeping.
It had been easy keeping my relationship with Rosie platonic. Maybe that was because once Jordan and Jessie imploded, the girls kept their distance. And then Rose graduated high school and she went away to Vermont and Callie left for L.A. Admittedly, I did look forward to seeing her in the summers, and she was still sexy and beautiful, but I managed to keep myself occupied with other women. I kept reminding myself Rose was too sweet, too gentle and too pure for a guy like me. Plus, I was in what I thought was a very simple, no-strings-attached relationship with Nessa. I got steady sex, I didn’t have to promise her anything and she said she was happy with that. I didn’t realize she was using my career to leverage her fame.
“Done!” Rose exclaims, pulling me from my reverie. “And I created a new Gmail just for this that we’ll both have access to. I wrote the password down in the notebook.”
“What is it?”
“Chickenlegs,” she replies, not missing a beat.
I burst out laughing. She spins on the chair to face me in the den and grins in victory at making me howl. She then tugs on her dress, lifting the hem a little to reveal her long, toned leg up to the knee. “Still think it applies?”
She’s teasing me. Little innocent, sweet, demure Rose is fucking teasing me. On purpose. I sit up and let my eyes trail from her toes to her thigh. “I haven’t called you chicken legs in almost a decade, so I know you know the answer to that.”
She doesn’t say anything. She just lets the dress drop back over her leg. “You need to pick a reason for all this. Any thoughts yet?”
I sigh. “I can’t decide. I want to do something for kids but I also want to do something for adults and, you know, like… something that I could have used as a kid.” I pause and catch her eye. “Or something that would have helped you out.”
She looks solemn as she takes that in. She and I had different but similar childhoods. Both of us had dads who essentially abandoned us. My mother wasn’t able to be the mom I needed because of her alcoholism, and Rose’s mom had died. Either way, we both basically grew up without blood relatives. We both had to make our own families and we both picked the same people for that family.
“There’s this place in Portland…” She bites her lip again for a moment but when my eyes automatically narrow in on it she lets go and smiles sheepishly before continuing. “I was thinking of volunteering there if I came back here after my Europe trip. It’s called Hope House and they offer free classes and seminars on evenings and weekends on how to cook, do laundry and balance a checkbook. They have a resource center for how to write résumés and find part-time jobs.”
I stand up and walk toward her. “Who is it for, exactly?”
“The government can send kids there if they think they’re good candidates for emancipation but any kid can go there anonymously and get advice or help,” she explains, and I can see a light in her eyes as she talks. This is something she’s passionate about. “So if you’re being raised by, say, an alcoholic mom or a neglectful grandmother but you don’t want to tell anyone or you don’t want to be put in the system, you can go there and take classes to help you learn to fend for yourself. They even offer self-defense courses.”
She pauses and the deep, intense sadness that used to be her normal expression when she was a preteen skitters over her features again. This time it’s gone in seconds. “I don’t want to tell you to make them your cause. It’s completely your call, and there’s a ton of places that are good causes. I just bring it up because I know I would have killed for a place like that when I was a kid and I think it would have benefitted you too back then.”
“It sounds fucking perfect,” I announce, and I mean it. It is perfect. “How do I tell them?”
“Like I said, I’ve been in touch with them because I was considering volunteering there if I come back from Europe,” she explains and spins back to the kitchen island, where she picks up the pen and jots something down on the pad beside the computer in her bubbly print. “The person who runs it is a psychiatrist named Keith Duncan. Call him tomorrow and ask for a visit. He’ll walk you through the place and then, if you’re still interested, tell him you’d like to do this event for them.”
I glance over at the name and number on the pad and nod. When my gaze goes back to her, I have another question. “You’re still thinking of making the Europe trip longer than two weeks?”
“Yes. I mean… unless I have a reason to come back.”
We stare at each other and I suddenly realize I’m on thin ice here. My willpower feels paper thin. I can’t be her reason to come home. I don’t want to be. If I’m her reason to come home, then I’m also going to be the reason she realizes there is no Prince Charming and she’ll be the reason my team trades me. There’s no win here so I take a step away from her. “Tu vas trouver quelqu’un qui t’aimera—”
“Are you finally going to tell me what that means? And the rest of it too?” she asks, because on and off for years since I first whispered that to her at a bonfire I have been repeating it out loud. I always make sure to say it quick and low so she can’t catch all the words and Google Translate it.
I shake my head, smiling, and change the subject. “You’ll be able to afford staying longer than two weeks?”
“I’m saving way more than I thought I would,” she replies. “Tips are great and Jordan is letting me live rent-free. I’ll probably be able to scrape by for a few months if I eat frugally and stay in cheap places.”
I raise an eyebrow at that.
“You really don’t need to stay in hostels, Rose,” I remind her and she rolls her eyes with a smile. “I can give you some money, you know. If you need it.”
“What?”
I shrug. “So that you don’t have to worry if you stay longer. I don’t want you alone in another country and worrying about money. If you want, it can be a loan and you can pay me back whenever.”
She’s staring at me—just staring—and my spidey-sense tells me it’s not in a “wow, what a nice guy” sort of way. I rarely get those stares.
She blinks. “You want to give me money? So I can stay in Europe instead of being… here.”
I can tell by her tone this is a horrible thing. But I don’t know why. Wait… “Is this about treating you like a kid again? Because that’s not what I’m doing.”
She still doesn’t answer and I can’t read her face to save my life, so I keep explaining, hoping I say something that changes her expression to something I can read. “I’m treating you like one of my best friends. Because you are. I would lend money to Jordan or Devin or Cole. I’d lend it to Callie if I thought it would help her out.”
She blinks again. The silence is deafening. A dog barks somewhere in the neighborhood. She stands up and grabs her bag. “I’m going to go. Let me know how it goes at Hope House. If you pick them as your charity, I’ll set up the web page and finish the invitations.”
“Okay…” I follow her toward the front door like a puppy. “Where ya going?”
“Home.” She opens the front door and I follow her out onto the porch. She’s borrowed Jessie’s car and I’m disappointed that I don’t get to drive her home.
As she swings open the driver’s door I call out, “Are you okay? You seemed pissed off.”
“I’m nifty. Bye.”
She slams the door in a very not-so-nifty way and seconds later I’m staring at her taillights as she drives away. Why do I feel like I just had a fight with my girlfriend?