“Sure. I love you,” he said quietly.
“You, too,” I said, and in that moment, I did more than ever. Forget my being needed by someone else; Josh was there for me when I needed him. If that was not a partner in the truest sense of the word, then what was? Besides, what if I couldn’t even get pregnant? Then I would’ve destroyed our perfectly good life for nothing.
I’d just wiped my eyes and stuck my phone back in my bag when I heard a voice. “Laine?”
Goose bumps scampered up my arms. Not here, I thought. Not now.
But this was happening here. Now. Because as much as I wanted to hightail it in the opposite direction, I couldn’t possibly pretend that the voice I’d just heard wasn’t one I knew nearly as well as my own.
And, of course, it belonged to Ben.
ELEVEN
LAINE
When I spun around, he was standing there smiling at me. His skin was several shades darker—probably all that time Down Under—and there were fine lines around the corners of his eyes that hadn’t been there the last time I’d seen him, which only served to remind me of how long that had been. His pale blue linen shirt was rumpled, but in the tasteful, intentional way that didn’t make me want to attack it with an iron, and his hands were in the pockets of his shorts like we were in the middle of a casual conversation.
Meanwhile, I was dressed in yesterday’s T-shirt and my nose was a faucet. And had I even brushed my hair or checked to see if my mascara had racooned me? Granted, Ben had seen me at my worst plenty of times. But this wasn’t the second first impression I wanted to be making. Not after the way we’d left things.
Shame and sorrow enveloped me as our fight came rushing back.
It was winter break of our senior year of college, and just like so many other nights, Ben had stopped by after dinner. He helped me do the dishes, and then we ended up in my bedroom. Since Hadley and I shared a room, my parents had never been weird about me having him in there—someone was always coming or going, and anyway, it was just Ben, who was practically the sixth member of the Francis family.
But Hadley was in Vail with the guy she was dating at the time, and Piper was in Europe for a shoot, and my parents were somewhere else—most likely my father was tinkering with something in his workshop while my mother was out with friends. So the apartment was unusually quiet, and Ben and I were lying on my bed side by side, listening to music. He asked me if I wanted to switch the CD. I did, but before I could add that I would take care of it, he leaned over me just as I was about to sit up, and suddenly our faces were two inches apart.
I remember that I could smell him. He always smelled really good—not like cologne, which I’d never liked; more like fresh spring air and the faintest hint of soap. One of us drew in our breath sharply, and I couldn’t tell if it had been him or me. I want to kiss him, I realized.
And before I could give it another thought, his lips were on mine.
Warmth spread through me like wildfire as our mouths parted. I’d dated several guys by that point, and even the decent ones hadn’t made me feel like this; my entire body was buzzing, and I had half a mind to devour him.
But as Ben and I broke apart seconds later, my desire was immediately replaced with panic. The attraction I’d picked up on at our graduation party had never disappeared, but it had simmered just below the surface, making it easier to ignore. Still, my mother had warned me. Several times, in fact—back in high school one night when she’d seen him with his arm slung over my shoulder, and more recently the previous summer, after Ben had left our house around midnight. “He’s not the one, Laine,” she’d said that last time, “so don’t ruin your friendship by getting involved with him.” I’d blushed and told her she was being ridiculous, but I couldn’t help but take her words to heart. After all, she was my mother, and she knew me inside and out. And my parents hadn’t been friends before they began dating. Though they weren’t exactly blissfully married, they were happy enough not to split up, whereas most of my friends’ parents were divorced. My mother obviously knew what she was talking about.
What had Ben and I just done?
“Um, hi,” he said, grinning at me from the end of my bed.
I couldn’t smile back. In fact, it hurt to even look at him, because I knew—the way you just know when you’ve been best friends with someone that long—that what I was going to say next was going to cause him pain. And yet my mother’s words had already been etched into my mind, and maybe even my heart. “We can’t do this,” I mumbled.
He pulled back a little farther from me. “Says who?”
“Says me. If we get involved, it’ll wreck our friendship.” After all, college couples almost never ended up married; everyone knew that. And after we broke up, it would be impossible to revert back to the way we’d been before we got physical. So if I had to choose between scratching this itch—no matter how long it had been present—and keeping things as they were, I was going to choose the latter every time.
“Come on, Laine,” he said. He wasn’t smiling anymore. “I know you better than anyone. You don’t really think that.”
I did. At least I was trying to, while there was still time to avoid disaster. “Wouldn’t you rather stay friends than date?”
“Why do we have to choose?” He propped himself up on his elbows and examined me. “Laine, I know you wanted to kiss me, so I’m not going to apologize for kissing you.”
I didn’t deny this. But I didn’t say anything else, either.
“Who’s in your head right now?” He narrowed his eyes. “This is about your mom, isn’t it?”
I had no idea how he knew that, but I wasn’t surprised. Like he’d said, he knew me better than anyone. “No,” I said softly, but as his dark eyes reminded me, there was no use lying to him. “Yes.”
“What did she say?” He sounded angry. But he never got angry—that wasn’t his way—and I was already thinking to myself, See? Mom was right. Just the hint of a conversation about love and we’re already fighting.
“Nothing. Just . . .”
“What, Laine? If you’re going to let your mom make decisions for you, you at least owe it to me to tell me what she decided.”
“That’s not what this is.” I sounded unconvinced, even to myself. “She just pointed out that love and friendship don’t mix.”
“Oh, because your parents are the gold standard,” he said, arching an eyebrow.
“That’s mean.”
“I’m sorry, but it’s true. You know I like your mom and dad, but they’re pretty much roommates who tolerate each other. Don’t you think they’d be doing better if they were actually friends?”
“Ouch,” I said as tears pricked my eyes. I wanted to remark that at least my parents still spoke—unlike his, who hadn’t been in touch in more than a decade—but I bit my tongue.
He reached out and touched my leg. His fingers were electric on my skin. I didn’t pull away. “I’m sorry, Laine. But seriously, who cares what your mom thinks?”
“I do,” I said quietly. I cared more about what she thought than almost anybody—because she was my mother. As she herself had remarked many times, I “got” her in a way that Hadley and Piper didn’t, and when she complimented me, it often felt like the sun on my skin on a cool day. I wanted to please her, and I wasn’t about to apologize for that. And—not that I’d ever say this to Ben—I had to wonder if he couldn’t understand that because his own mother had been out of the picture for so long.
“Well, you’re twenty-one years old. Don’t you think it’s time to let your mom stop manipulating you and make your own decisions?”
“That’s mean, and this is me making my own decision,” I said, even as my mental wheels were frantically turning. Was my mom being manipulative? This was turning into a terrible argument. How did I keep it from getting worse?