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NOAH
I sat staring at my phone wondering if Dinah was going to text me back, but she was on deadline for her next book, so I knew she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t let me read this one yet, even though I told her I really liked the first one. She had been surprised that a dumb jock like me wanted to read a cute romance story. Like men didn’t want to have a happy ending too or some other bullshit. I ran a hand through my shaggy hair and took a long sip of my beer.
TJ slumped on the couch beside me. He glanced at my phone in my hand and rolled his eyes. “Dude, are you still pining?” he asked with a groan.
I shoved my phone in my pocket. “What?” I played dumb and took another huge gulp of my beer.
TJ raised a black eyebrow at me. “Come on, D has no idea you’re into her. You got to tell her.”
I shook my head.
I guess my subtle ways of telling Dinah I was interested hadn’t really worked. TJ was my teammate, roommate, and good bud, but Dinah was the first person in my life that I thought was my best friend. The first woman who looked at me not as Noah the hockey player, but Noah the person. When we first moved here, I was heartbroken when I found out she had a husband. Then he died tragically and she broke apart. I had sent her flowers, and tried to be a good friend to her. I even endured her insane family who instead of consoling their daughter and sister, told me to stop turning over the puck so much. Philly fans were something else.
She would only ever see me as her good bud and kid brother. Definitely not someone that she would ever wrap her arms or even her legs around if I was being honest with my fantasies.
TJ cocked a grin. “If she comes over, you have to finally make a move. You’re both single, it’s time, bro!”
I chewed my bottom lip.
TJ nudged me when he heard a knock on the door. He jumped up and answered it, before I could argue with him further.
He greeted Dinah with a wet sloppy kiss on the cheek. A stab of jealousy struck through my heart at the sight of it. She laughed at him and walked to the kitchen island in our open-concept condo and struck up a conversation with our teammate Benny. Which was hilarious because Benny at six-foot-four and her at five-foot-two, looked like the opposite ends of the height extremes in the room. I chugged more of my beer and amped myself up. This was it, I had to finally make a move on her, if not, she would never know and I would regret it for the rest of my life.
Probably.
Dinah was sitting on our kitchen counter, drink in hand and laughing hard at whatever TJ and our other teammate Hallsy was saying to her. Benny was no longer hanging in the kitchen, which I was kind of grateful.
Women loved Benny, and he was the kind of guy women could seriously fall in love with. He was a good guy, not the asshole playboy the media tried to paint him as. Ever since some racist-ass gossip columnist painted him as the “Latin Lover” he had developed a reputation as a playboy. One that couldn’t be further from the truth, especially since he was the only player I knew that didn’t do one-night stands. Like ever. Being a pasty white guy from Winnipeg, I was never going to understand what my teammates, Hallsy, Mac, and Benny went through being players of color, but I knew there needed to be a culture change in our sport. Especially after shit like that got published in the media about one of my best buds.
Hallsy’s girlfriend Mia was just shaking her head at all of them. Dinah looked up at me when I walked in, and I mean really looked up, because with my six-foot-two frame I tended to dominate every room I walked into. Her dark brown hair was pulled up into a messy bun, and she wore black leggings and an old-school Patrick O’Sullivan jersey.
Uh oh, she must have writer’s block if she finally came over tonight. She should have looked sloppy, but she looked comfortable, at home, and gorgeous as hell. I shouldn’t have been into it, but I so was.
She smiled at me, her green eyes looked like they sparkled underneath the lights of our kitchen. Damnit, I didn’t think I could tell her how I felt now. I finished my beer and took another out of the fridge, getting a second one for her. She laughed when I handed it to her and I bent over to hug her in greeting.
“Hey,” I whispered into her ear, trying to be all calm and cool. When really I was a ball of nerves.
She wrapped her small arms around my back as I hunched over to meet her small frame. “Hey,” she said back.
I pulled away and TJ was making this annoyed face at me. It wasn’t like I was going to make a move on her with everyone standing around watching. Mia was looking between me and Dinah carefully, and cocked her blonde head in question. I ignored it.
“What’s so funny?” I asked, trying to cut the tension in the room.
TJ’s eyes sparkled and I knew I was in trouble. “I asked D for relationship advice.”
A smile tugged at my lips. When we became friends, I had complained to her that girls were so complicated, but she explained it was pretty simple. I thought about her answer a lot. A LOT. Also maybe when I was horny and in the shower too. And maybe she was the star in those images I conjured in my head.
”Yeah? What’s that?” I asked, nervously pushing my brown hair behind my ear.
I turned to Dinah and she was chugging her new beer to keep from repeating it.
“Come on, tell him!” TJ egged on.
She gave him the finger, but sighed. “It’s really simple. Don’t cheat, eat pussy.”
Mia laughed a little too loudly. She cocked her head and eyed Hallsy. “You know, she’s not wrong!”
I laughed too, but it was that nervous laughter when I didn’t want people to notice that I was blushing so hard. Hearing that word out of her lips made me think things I didn’t want to. Things that made my cock thicken against my leg. It made me imagine what it would be like to have my face in-between her thighs giving her what she wanted. You weren’t supposed to think about your best friend that way. I felt a tightening in my pants, and shifted position to lean up against the fridge and hoped no one noticed. TJ was giving me the eye and nodded his head over at Dinah.
Mia was laughing a little too hard and Hallsy was shaking with laughter, his black corkscrew coiled hair bouncing around at the motion. I must have missed it. Dinah was laughing again.
“That’s it! It’s really not that hard. Just give her what she wants.” She took a sip of her beer again.
“That can’t be it,” TJ scoffed.
She sighed at him. “Or just go read a romance book and figure it out yourself.”
“A romance book?” Hallsy asked. He stroked his dark-skinned hand across his clean-shaven face as if in thought. His dark brown eyes twinkled with mirth at the thought.
Mia and Dinah shared a look. “Yes, because women always get what they want in romance books,” Dinah explained.
“And what’s that?” Hallsy asked.
“For you to touch her clit or eat her out!” Dinah exclaimed with another laugh.
TJ roared with laughter. He pointed at her. “Come on, you up for beer pong? Riley wants a rematch.”
She shook her head. “Nah. You know I’m bad at it.”
TJ grinned at her. “That’s why I wanted you to play on Riley’s team.”
She laughed some more. “It’s not like he isn’t going to team up with Benny. Man, their bromance is ridiculous.”
Hallsy had his arm around Mia, but he nodded to TJ. “We’ll play.” Hallsy and TJ shared a look, and Mia smiled at me. Oh no, I think they were all making an excuse to go back into the other room with the rest of the party to leave me alone with her. Seeing her here now, I wasn’t sure I could make the move.
They all filtered out of the room and Mia gave me a thumbs up. I internally groaned, was I so obvious to everyone? Except to the person who mattered?
I moved closer to Dinah, but she was staring into space now. I called this her “story plotting” face, and I had a feeling that was what she was calculating in her head right now. Her talent to pull characters and stories from out of her imagination always astounded me. Riley said he had a friend from back home in St. Paul, who was also a writer, and he asked her once how she came up with it. She had just shrugged and said, “It’s a gift.” I knew it was the same thing for the small woman in front of me, who was spacing out and not paying attention to the heated gaze I was throwing at her.
“Hey,” I nudged her with my shoulder. “You finish it yet?”
She pulled away from whatever dreamlike state she had been in and looked up at me with a smile and twinkle in her green eyes. “Yeah...but I don’t think it’s ready yet. I think I have a plot hole.”
I put a hand on her leg and squeezed her knee. She giggled, I knew she was ticklish there. God her laugh was like music to my ears. “Can I read it?” I begged.
She shook her head. “It’s a kissing book!”
I laughed and pushed my hair behind my ear again. “So? I read your first book, I liked it.”
She gave me a quizzical look. “Really? You did?” she asked in a small voice.
I had definitely told her this already, but maybe she didn’t believe me the first time.
My hand roamed up her thigh, resting on her waist while my thumb absent-mindedly stroked across her hipbone. She had to know I was trying to make a move, but she wasn’t trying to stop me.
Why wasn’t she trying to stop me?
“Yeah, it was really good. You really know how to write a good love story,” I complimented her and it wasn’t a lie.
She put her hands over her face and looked at me in-between her fingers, but didn’t try to move my hand away. I kind of wondered if she noticed it at all. I moved so I was standing directly in front of her now, my legs squeezing in-between her spread thighs. I just wanted to scoop her up in my arms and take her to my bedroom, but I never would have done that without her consent. I wanted her to want me. I wanted to see her tipping back her head and moaning my name in pleasure, but I wanted it to happen because she wanted it to happen. Because she wanted me.
“You really liked it?” she asked again and pulled her hands away from her face.
I grinned at her. “Yes! Is this one about the best friend in the first one?”
She nodded. “He’s the love interest in this one, it’s about another girl.” She stared up at me for a moment and then she sat up straighter. “Oh my god!”
“What?” I asked.
She pushed me away and hopped down from off the counter. “I figured it out! I need to go fix something.”
“You just got here,” I whined.
She frowned. “Sorry, I’m chained to the muse! Give me like an hour and I’ll be back. Or just come over and get me. Okay?”
I smiled and nodded. I hunched down to hug her again and then she was off. I chugged the rest of my beer. I didn’t think I was ever going to be able to make a move on her. God, I wanted her to see me as an object of her desire, but she was always going to see me as just a friend. I didn’t believe in that crap about the Friend Zone. I mean, yeah I guess it existed, but women didn’t owe you anything just because you were nice to them.
When I looked up, TJ was standing in the kitchen. He had a frown on his face. “Dude, did you just blow it?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know yet.”
TJ groaned at me. “You’re hopeless! I love you man, but you either ask her out or you move on. I know something happened between you two already.”
Oh.
No.
After Dinah’s husband died, she was a wreck, and I tried to be a shoulder for her to cry on. I tried to be there for her as a friend. Then one night I came home early, while TJ went home with some girl he met at the bar, and I found her in the stairwell passed out. I ended up taking her to the hospital. I missed practice the next morning, because making sure my friend was okay when she needed me was more important than playing some game. I ended up getting benched a couple games, but I never told anyone what happened.
I had held her in my arms that night and let her cry onto my t-shirt over the baby she had lost. My heart snapped in half for all the bad luck she had to endure that year. I’ve never known the loss of a partner or a child, but I do know how my heart wrenched in my chest when I saw the pain and anguish etched across the face of my friend.
Riley and Benny walked into the kitchen with grins on their faces. “Was that the girl that you got benched a few games for?” Benny asked with a huge grin across his face.
“You’re still not hitting it?” Riley asked. He ran a hand through his blonde hair in frustration.
TJ laughed and pulled out a bottle of vodka to pour us shots. I glared at Riley. I didn’t like him talking about her like that. Like she was some conquest and not a person with thoughts and feelings of her own. None of those jerks deserved her, and none of them understood that woman like I did.
“It wasn’t like that,” I said through gritted teeth, balling my hands into fists.
Benny’s grin faltered when he saw my expression. His dark brown eyes bored into me with a question, but I wasn’t biting.
“Then what happened? Why did you miss that practice?” TJ asked.
“Did she tell you?” I asked.
He shrugged. “She just said that you helped her with something.”
He handed me a shot glass and the four of us knocked one back together. “Then, it’s not my secret to tell.”
Riley asked me cautiously, “So you won’t care if I ask her out?”
I nearly choked on air. “What?”
TJ pointed at me. “If you don’t make a move on her soon, Riley’s gonna ask her out.”
I poured myself another shot and clinked glasses with Benny who had gotten awfully quiet. He gave me a small sad smile of pity. I guess Benny knew all about unrequited love. He was practically in love with TJ’s sister. Too bad she hated his guts.