Flirting with the Frenemy

by Grant, Pippa

  Beck heaves a loud, annoyed sigh and climbs off me. “Fine. Have your pity party. But if you don’t get up, I’m calling Monica, and you know she’ll skip her honeymoon to be here.”

  “Dick move. And you’d put her on a private jet and upgrade her to the fanciest cruise in the world to make it up to her.”

  “Yeah, but she won’t know that when she comes running.”

  Which is why she’s my best friend.

  My best girl friend.

  My best friend friend might be—dammit.

  “And I’ll send Mom,” he adds. “Oh, and by the way, Wyatt was pissed when he found out Cooper lives so close. Dude thought he was bicycling up the mountain to deliver you donuts because he’s angling to get into your pants. Isn’t that a hoot? Ten minutes, Ell. And then I’m singing again too.”

  He heads out the door whistling like he has fucking sunshine in his sparkly bright soul, and I realize I’m naked.

  I’m naked, with a healing black eye, a sore hip and thigh, and a big ol’ pile of ash in my chest.

  But that’s how it has to be.

  Because I’ve hurt enough people in my life.

  I won’t put Wyatt in danger. He deserves better.

  Twenty-Nine

  Ellie

  I’d planned to stay in Shipwreck through the weekend for recovery time, but with Beck back, the odds of having a minute of peace are nil. Not because he’s always as annoying as he was this morning, but because he’ll be calling anyone he can to hang out while he’s in town, which will undoubtedly be three days or less.

  And I don’t want to be in the house when he sees the new high score on Frogger.

  Too many memories.

  So I convince my dad to ride with me back to Copper Valley before lunch.

  When we hit the 256 loop around the city, my eyes sting, because we’re officially now out of the country and out of the mountains. It’s back to the hustle and bustle. Traffic. Billboards. Skyscrapers.

  Dad’s quiet the entire ninety-minute drive. When I pull into the driveway of the red brick colonial in the middle-class neighborhood where I grew up, with the old basketball hoop still over the garage door, my eyes burn again.

  Dad squeezes my knee. “Been through a lot this year.”

  He doesn’t tell me I’m overreacting. Or that it’s okay to be scared, but not okay to let fear rule my life, or any of the other things I logically know.

  That’s not how Dad works.

  Probably because all the rest of us finally talked him into silence over the years.

  But he does offer me a scoop of homemade peach cobbler if I want to stay a few hours.

  So that’s how I find myself curled up on my parents’ couch, watching the Fireballs get creamed in high definition, while my dad cuts and sugars early season peaches for our late lunch of peach cobbler.

  I don’t realize I’ve drifted off to sleep until the doorbell rings, and when I wake up, I’m disoriented and confused, and it takes me a minute to remember why my heart hurts.

  Wyatt.

  He probably hates me.

  I hope he does. That’ll make it easier for him to move on.

  I curl tighter into a ball. The game’s over, and now an old Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks movie is on.

  “Ellie, I’m going for a walk,” Dad calls from the front door.

  “’Kay,” I answer, frog voice and all.

  I haven’t had any peach cobbler yet, but I should go home. I don’t have any food. I need to do laundry. And catch up on work email.

  Plus, I could stop at a pet shelter on the way and ask to play with the dogs for a few hours. Guaranteed pick-me-up.

  Since Beck sometimes shares my social media posts about dogs that haven’t found their forever homes—always with a caption like Sharing for my sister, who wishes she’d been born a dog so it would be socially acceptable for her to lick my face—I’m undeservedly welcome at all the shelters in the metro area.

  I’m staring blindly at Meg Ryan’s profile on the television when the hairs on the back of my neck prickle, and the pile of ashes in my chest gives a big ol’ whomp.

  There’s a shadow in the doorway.

  A Wyatt-size shadow. Or possibly more than a shadow.

  That whomp turns into a staccato beat of whomp after whomp after whomp.

  “Please,” I whisper, and I don’t know if I’m asking him to stay or leave. I just know it hurts.

  It hurts to think about hurting him.

  It hurts to think about losing him.

  And it hurts to be terrified that disaster is waiting around every corner if I reject both of my first two options.

  He steps slowly into the room, eyes trained on me, searching, asking.

  I don’t even have to look him in the eye to know.

  He’s not afraid.

  He’s not afraid of anything.

  “You okay?” he asks, and that voice.

  God, I love his voice. Rich and smooth and warm, like hot chocolate after a day playing in the snow.

  “Fine,” I say hoarsely, and we both know I’m lying.

  I can’t tell if he’s tired, frustrated, or all of the above, but I do know the yellowing bruise on his eye is all the reminder I need of the danger of the two of us getting together.

  “Where’s Tucker?” I ask, and dammit, there’s another flame attacking the ashes in my chest.

  “With your dad. He’s not too happy about the drive coming up.”

  The drive.

  He should’ve already left.

  Instead, he’s still here, lowering himself to the couch on the opposite end of where I’m curled up, and it’s all I can do not to crawl across the cushions and into his lap to hold him and tell him how sorry I am.

  For everything.

  For being a shithead when we were kids. For seducing him at Christmas when we were both hurting.

  For not answering his phone calls after the accident.

  For pushing him away.

  “I love you,” he says quietly, his voice husky but strong. No hitch. No hesitation. “I’ve spent my whole life afraid of what it would be like to love you, but I do, Ellie. I love you.”

  “You shouldn’t.” He’s going to break me.

  “I never thought I was built for marriage. I never believed in forever. But I look at you, and I can feel it. I can see it. You? You’re everything I never knew I wanted. Never knew I needed. I didn’t believe in forever until I believed in you.”

  Break me? No. Destroy me. “We’re—we’re dangerous, Wyatt.”

  “If there’s anyone in the world who can give the universe a middle finger and tell it to kiss your ass if it thinks it’s going to stand in your way, it’s you.” He sets a piece of paper on the cushion between us. “I don’t care if it takes you two hours or forty years. I’ll wait. You will always be the only woman I’ll ever love.”

  My breath hitches when he takes my hand and kisses my cheek, because yes, he’s everything I want.

  Everything.

  But I’m terrified.

  My entire life, all I wanted was to meet the goal.

  Of course I dated Patrick. He checked all the boxes. Handsome. Successful. Smart.

  We could’ve had a lovely marriage where neither of us actually had to love each other, where there was no danger of a broken heart, because all we wanted was someone to be married to.

  But I could have so much more.

  Laughter. Joy. Tears. Heartbreak.

  With a man who knows me. Who gets me. Who accepts me.

  All of me. The good and the bad. The pretty and the ugly. The broken and the whole.

  If I’m willing to go for it.

  Wyatt doesn’t pause on his way out the door.

  He doesn’t have to.

  Because he’s tossed the ball back in my court. And left his address, his home phone number, and his work phone number on the couch between us.

  It’s my turn to decide what to do.

  If I’m going to do anything at al
l.

  Thirty

  Wyatt

  I fucked up.

  I fucked up hardcore. And I hate fucking up.

  I also hate hundred-degree weather with humidity so high you can’t get your balls dry when you get out of the shower in the morning, but that’s life in Georgia.

  I hate hearing from my colonel that there’s nothing we can do right now to reapply for early release from my service commitment.

  I hate that I’d be arrested for being AWOL if I left fucking Georgia forever anyway in August when I have to take Tucker back to Copper Valley.

  And I hate that I feel like a shitty parent because I hurt, and I don’t know if I’m making this the best or the worst summer of my son’s life.

  “Wow, Dad, you missed that by a mile,” he calls with a laugh as I jog after a baseball in my backyard. The live oaks provide enough shade to block the sun from helping the grass grow. Or maybe the grass has also lost the will to live in the fucking heat.

  My hand’s sweating so bad my glove can barely stay on.

  But Tucker’s grinning and squealing and laughing while we play catch, which is really more him flinging the ball wildly about the backyard while I try to aim to gently toss a baseball into his mitt.

  I love Saturdays.

  And I hate Saturdays.

  “Does Miss Captain Ellie know how to play catch?” Tucker asks when I toss him the ball.

  “Yep.”

  “Is she as good as you?”

  “Don’t know, bud.”

  “Can I see her when I go back with Mom?”

  “That’s up to your mom.”

  “Ha! Dad, you missed again.”

  I sure as fuck did.

  I bend to grab the ball as my phone rings, and when I see who’s calling, I almost drop it.

  Both the ball and the phone, actually.

  “Hey, bud, I gotta take this,” I say. “Throw it at that back tree for a bit, okay? Be right back.”

  “Okay, Dad!”

  I angle around to the side of the two-bedroom brick house I’m renting a couple miles from the base and put the phone to my ear, my heart in my throat. “Ellie?”

  “I thought of you while I masturbated last week and then I ran over a squirrel.”

  My lungs freeze and I grunt out an unintelligible answer.

  She barks out a high-pitched laugh. “Kidding. I mean, not about thinking about you while I masturbate. I mean about the squirrel. Nothing bad happened.”

  “Fuck, Ellie,” I manage, because now I’m hard as a pipe and so fucking glad to hear her voice and terrified what she might say next.

  “And I’ve kissed your picture every night this week before I went to bed, and all that happened was I ran out of milk.”

  Her voice is wobbling, which is understandable, because my knees are wobbling too. “And?” I ask.

  “I miss you,” she whispers.

  “I miss you too.”

  “Did you know the odds of getting in an accident and having your house burn down in the same lifetime are less than your odds of getting struck by lightning?”

  I have no idea the real statistics. “Of course. I remember all the Trivial Pursuit answers I read.”

  She laughs, and it sounds watery, and I wish to fuck I could hold her right now. Or just look at her. “Shut up,” she says, but there’s none of the old venom or irritation.

  This is all playful Ellie.

  Hesitantly playful, but playful.

  “When I’m right, it’s my duty to tell you so.” My cheeks crack with the effort of smiling, and my heart’s buzzing like it’s hooked up to a car battery. But this is what we do.

  We give each other shit.

  “Fine, Mister Smartypants. What are the odds I’m in your driveway?” she asks.

  I freeze.

  But only a split second before I’m striding to the front of the house.

  The back bumper of a white Prius comes into view.

  My pulse amps higher.

  She’s here.

  Ellie’s here.

  I drop my hands to my side, just staring while she pulls herself out of the driver’s seat. She cut her hair shorter, so it’s framing her ears with crazy, beautiful curls. Her blue eyes match the deep summer sky, but the hesitancy in them almost makes my knees buckle.

  “You drove,” I say dumbly.

  Her lips hitch toward the sky. “The whole way. After I told the universe I was coming to talk you out of your pants. And no vultures attacked my car. Bears didn’t dash in front of me. Random ice storms didn’t pop up out of nowhere. My hotel didn’t burn down. And so I don’t have to interrupt the space-time continuum and bring about another ice age.”

  I’m supposed to smile, but I still can’t believe she’s standing here. “What—why—”

  She limps as she starts around the car, but holds a hand up when I move toward her. “Do you know what irritates the fuck out of me about you?”

  My eyes shift toward the side of the house, but I can hear Tucker still laughing in back, so he missed that little F-bomb. “How perfect I am?” I guess, even though I’m so fucking far from it.

  “Exactly. You even knew I was going to say that.”

  Her gait is smoothing out as she rounds the car.

  My fingers itch, and my arms are aching to hold her, but I wait, because I know she’ll read me the riot act if I try to make this any easier on her.

  “I’m not perfect, Ellie.”

  “Do you remember what you said? That if anyone would flip off the universe and do what I wanted anyway, it was me?”

  She stops inches from me, the waver still in her voice.

  I nod.

  “You forgot a part.”

  “What part?”

  “The part where I won’t have to do it alone.”

  “I thought that’s what you were afraid of.”

  “I don’t want to be afraid to live.”

  “That’s my girl.”

  “I love you, Wyatt.” She finally closes the distance between us and lines her body up with mine, her hands sliding up my chest. “Do you still want me?” she whispers.

  “Always.”

  “Even if always is only like thirty more seconds?”

  I laugh, because she’s teasing. And she’s here. “Ellie Ryder, I will love you long after my heart stops beating. And that, you can count on.”

  She pushes up on her toes while I angle my head down to meet her, and there’s no head-crashing, no black eyes, no sneezes, just her lips teasing mine, here, real, here, in the hot fucking Georgia sauna, her hands exploring while I crush her to me because I am never letting her go.

  Ever.

  “Dad! Are you—Miss Captain Ellie!”

  The joy in Tucker’s voice puts a lump in my throat, and I’m blinking hard as Ellie pulls back and leans down to hug my son. “Hey, kiddo. You teaching your dad to play ball?”

  “Yeah, he’s kinda bad. He keeps missing the ball. Are you better?”

  “Probably not.”

  “That’s okay. We have ice cream when you’re bad.”

  I choke on a laugh. “We what?”

  He grins hopefully at me. “Right, Dad? Ice cream. Miss Captain Ellie, can you stay for ice cream? My dad’s grilling burgers later too. You can have his. He’ll go to the store for more.”

  I gape at him, because he’s moving in and pulling smoother moves than I have.

  But Ellie hugs him again. “You are adorable.”

  “I don’t think he needs encouragement,” I tell her.

  She rises and smiles at me, but as she does, something white lands in her hair.

  My jaw slips.

  Her brows furrow, and she starts to reach for her head, but I snag her hand. “Don’t. Just… Hey, Tucker? Go get the gloves and bring them inside, okay? We’ll get ice cream. We’ll get ice cream right now.”

  He giggles. “Miss Captain Ellie, a bird just pooped in your hair!”

  “Go on,” I say, giving him a gentle shove in
the right direction.

  “Are you kidding me?” Ellie mutters.

  I can’t decide if I want to laugh or if I need to go into full-on overprotective mode, but as soon as Tucker turns his back, she lifts a middle finger to the sky. “Bring it, asshole,” she mutters.

  “If you really meant it,” I tell her, “you’d use both middle fingers.”

  Something squawks, and a bird bounces off the neighbor’s side window. It falls on the ground, leaps to its feet, bounces around like it’s dizzy for a minute, and then takes off again in the opposite direction.

  Ellie dusts her hands. “That’s right. Who’s in charge now?”

  I don’t bother stifling a smile.

  Because that’s my girl.

  Epilogue

  Wyatt, who most definitely put a ring on it a year later in a story for another time

  There’s nothing quite as beautiful as watching Ellie pause in her yoga routine next to the bar in Beck’s basement to smile at her ring. Tucker’s passed out cold upstairs after more fun at the pirate festival than even I thought possible, and though he’ll be up with the sun, I have plans for this pretty lady that involve getting her naked ASAP and neither of us sleeping for hours.

  “That as far as you can stretch?” I ask. “C’mon, Ryder. You’re barely touching your knees.”

  She rolls her eyes, but she’s still smiling. “With my nose, you big jerk. Like to see you try.”

  I settle on the ground next to her, on my hands and knees, and I bend over and kiss her knee. “See? Nothing to it.”

  “You goober,” she says with a laugh, rubbing my short hair and catching me by the back of the neck so she can kiss me.

  And so I can kiss her back.

  If I live to be two hundred, I’ll never get tired of kissing Ellie. I sometimes can’t believe I spent so many years thinking she was just an annoying twit, because this Ellie is all heart.

  And too many people overlook it because she’s also determination and grit and honesty. But it’s all driven by that heart that she puts into everything.

  She pushes me onto my back and straddles me. “Have I told you how much I love my rings?” she whispers, because yep, she got more than one.