The Fourth Time Charm: A Friends to Lovers Romance

by Maya Hughes

  “It really was.” His lopsided grin made my heart do cartwheels inside of my chest.

  Third time was the charm, right?

  Pushing up on my tiptoes, I pressed my lips against his. He tasted like cinnamon sugar and root beer.

  His eyes widened before he returned the kiss—tentatively at first, before seeming to give in. His tongue demanded entrance to my mouth that I was all too happy to give. He groaned and I closed my eyes, sinking into this moment I’d never thought would happen.

  For so long, I’d wondered how it would feel for him to touch me like this. To make me feel like this.

  His arm tightened around my waist, tugging me closer against him.

  I yelped, the bruised extraction points grinding against the hard denim of his jeans.

  “Shit, sorry, I forgot.” He dropped his arms and took a step back, staring down at the floor.

  I rubbed my hand over the throbbing spot on my hip and tried to catch his eye. “It’s okay. I’m just still a little sore.”

  “I shouldn’t have…” He reached out, his touch skimming along the edge of my t-shirt.

  I peered up at him, my cheeks heating as he kept his hands on me. “Really, LJ. It’s okay. And thank you for everything.”

  His head shot up. “Of course. I owe you.” His smile sobered and he swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “You saved my dad’s life. The debt doesn’t get any bigger than that.”

  And with his words a chill ran through my body. My hand shot to my lips. His hesitancy came back to me. How much of this was because he wanted me too, and how much of it was because he’d written me a blank check for what he’d do to repay me for something I’d never had any intention of cashing in on?

  What happened if the transplant didn’t work? What happened if his dad got sick again and the Marisa Magic ended? How would they look at me then? How could I face him or his family?

  My throat tightened and I took a step back, letting his hand drop. “This—” I cleared my throat and blinked back the tears making it hard to see. “This was really sweet of you, LJ.”

  His eyebrows dipped. “What’s wrong?”

  I shook my head. “Nothing, I’m just tired. The doctors said I should take it easy.”

  His face fell. “Shit, you’re right. I’m sorry.” He rushed toward me.

  Stepping back again, I dropped my gaze as his searched my face. “Can you give me a ride home?”

  “Why don’t you stay here? Is your mom back yet? Did she message you?”

  My lips trembled before I slammed them together to keep in the sound trying to claw its way out of my throat. With a strained smile, I shook my head.

  I didn’t need to check. She’d turn up when she wanted, just like she always did.

  Staying here would hurt. It would shred my heart to be in the four walls with my best friend who gave in to what I wanted because of what I’d done for his family. I refused to use his gratitude to manipulate him into getting what I wanted. I wouldn’t be like my mother.

  But leaving and going back to my empty house would hurt more.

  “Do you want the bottom bunk tonight? Can you climb?”

  I forced the words out and mustered a pitiful smile. “I’ll be good. Then I’ll be out of your way.”

  His mouth opened and snapped shut.

  We walked up the basement stairs and through the indoor carnival he’d put together for me. On the second floor, I walked into his bedroom.

  It was huge compared to mine, big enough to fit the double bunk bed along with his desk, dresser, TV and two bean bag chairs.

  I went straight to the ladder and climbed up, crawling under the blankets.

  His head popped up at the top of the ladder. “Do you want to change? There’s pajamas in your drawer.”

  I curled the blanket tighter around myself. “I’m good. Just so sleepy all the sudden, kind of like I’m drunk.” Although I’d never been drunk. Other kids snuck into their parents’ liquor cabinet; I got in trouble for hiding my mom’s booze.

  “I’ll bring you up some water. Do you need anything else?”

  The concern in his voice turned my embarrassment into guilt.

  “No, just let me sleep it off, and tomorrow everything will be back to normal.” And we can forget all about our kiss. We can forget how I thought this would change everything. We can forget about ever being more than friends.

  9

  LJ

  PRESENT

  Laying in my bed, I stared up at the ceiling. Marisa had been back for three weeks. I’d played three games—well, not exactly played, but suited up for and bench-warmed. We edged closer to the end of September and the season was already a quarter over.

  Brutal would be the only word to describe this semester. If Coach Saunders’s sidelining me and Monday dinners didn’t kill me, Marisa would. There had been a Monday dinner reprieve for the last two weeks with all the beginning-of-the-season work Coach had going on, but this week, I wasn’t so lucky.

  My arms and legs were tight and climbing out of bed in the morning would take a solid ten minutes of psyching myself up for my screaming muscles. Working out in the gym seemed to be the only way to expend all the excess energy, since I wasn’t on the field. At least we were winning. It was tighter than last season, but we were pulling out wins, which didn’t make me feel any better about my chances of getting off the bench.

  If we could win without me on the field, he’d keep me out for the rest of the season.

  There was a knock at my door and it opened before I could say come in. Only one person would do that.

  “LJ, Ron messaged to say dinner is at four on Monday. Of course he doesn’t give a damn what I might have going on, but it is what it is. You know you don’t have to come, right?” Marisa walked in wearing her pajamas. The long sleeve t-shirt and shorts combo had always been killer, but it was even worse now. She’d fling her legs up over the side of the couch while studying or hop up on the counter while I was cooking, swinging her legs back and forth. Or, worst of all, she’d burrow her feet under the side of my leg when we watched TV.

  That usually meant I spent the rest of the show with a pillow welded to my lap, or I’d find a reason—any reason—to head upstairs straight into a cold shower.

  Bed head Marisa. Falling asleep on my shoulder on the couch Marisa. Studying intently at the kitchen table Marisa. They were all driving me crazy.

  “That’s fine. My last class finishes at 3:45, so I’ll meet you there.”

  She sat on the edge of my bed in her pajama shorts and long sleeved t-shirt. “There’s a new application up for the Guggenheim Fellowship in Venice.”

  Her luggage had arrived a couple days after she landed. Her wearing my clothes while we waited for her bags to be delivered to the house had stirred up all kinds of feelings I’d worked too hard to smother. It hadn’t worked. The shorts inched up higher as she shifted her legs. Her smooth legs that had been all tangled up with mine under the blankets last year. The ones I wanted to run my hands over and finally show her how much I’d missed her.

  She drew her legs up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them and dropping her head to her knees. “What do you think? Should I go for it?” She nibbled on the inside edge of her bottom lip.

  Shit. She’d been talking the whole time and I’d been fixated on her legs.

  “You loved Venice, right? Spending more time there would be a lot of fun. You could explore even more old paintings and sculptures.”

  Her breath hitched and she stared at me intently like she wasn’t sure she’d heard me right.

  “Every time we talked you kept bringing up how hard it was to leave. Going back seems like a great opportunity.”

  We’d have the spring semester after the Combine in April after I’d signed with a team, if I ended up getting drafted at all. A month and then the summer off and as long as I needed to convince her how much she meant to me.

  Once her Italian summer was over she’d come back in ti
me for my first pro season to start. With her away in Venice, focusing on training camp would be my sole focus.

  “And you’d be fine with me going?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be? It’s not like I’m not going to be busy. A new season. A new team. A new city. Who the hell knows where I’ll end up? We probably wouldn’t get to see each other much anyway.”

  She slid off the bed and kept her back to me. “You’re right. It was stupid to second guess it. It’s an amazing opportunity” Folding her arms over her chest, she cupped her elbows and glanced over her shoulder at me. “Night, LJ.”

  “Night.”

  As I lay in bed, a new set of implanted Marisa-centered images filled my head. Marisa’s new sleep shorts. That birthmark high up on her thigh that I hadn’t seen since the summer between seventh and eighth grade when she swapped from her one piece bathing suit to swimming trunks and a bikini top with a rash guard shirt.

  The summer she jumped from ‘is Marisa getting boobs’ to ‘holy shit, guys are literally tripping over themselves in the hallway to watch her walk toward them’.

  Maybe we could take a trip after graduation. A slow meandering few weeks before she went to Venice for the summer and my workouts intensified. She could show me all the spots she’d explored this summer and I could set up some surprises along the way. I could make it a trip we’d both never forget.

  “I need more footage if we’re going to get you the invite to the Draft Combine in April. You were only on the field for one play in the last game.” My agent—it still felt weird knowing I had an agent—sounded even more upset by the one play I’d been on the field for in my last game.

  Inside the darkened interior of my car, parked in front of a white, two-story house with a Fulton U football flag staked in the front yard by the steps, I tried to calm him and myself down.

  These streets were quiet. It was mainly professors and other college staff here; no students streaking down the sidewalks or the low thump of bass rattling windows. I’d parked on a tree-lined road with manicured lawns and two-story houses with blue-and-white shutters.

  “I know.” I rested my head against the headrest, trying not to think about how just by being here, I was shoveling even more dirt for my own grave. But the couple dinners I hadn’t shown up at had required a double s’more recovery with Marisa after she swore her dad was going to pull her tuition waiver. It’s why I’d started coming. It’s why I had to keep coming until she got the final one for her last semester, which was also at the end of the season.

  “Are your workouts going well? What’s the friction you have going on with the Coach?”

  “There’s no friction. Everything is fine. I’m actually…” I stared up at the house. “I’m heading to dinner with him right now.” Our first in three weeks.

  Every dinner Coach seemed to say the wrong thing. Remembering the wrong major. Mixing up her time in Venice with Rome or Florence. Not to mention the times he’d had to cancel. But the two of them were locked in a battle of the wills on who could outlast who in the not moving an inch department.

  “Good, maybe you can ask him why he’s not playing the best inside linebacker in Fulton U history and why he hates shutting down offenses by not putting you on the field.”

  “I’ll get right on that.”

  A message came into my phone.

  Marisa: At the end of the block. Are you here?

  I swapped the phone to speaker.

  Me: Yes, I’m parked out front, just finishing up a call with my agent.

  “Are you listening, LJ?”

  “Sorry, yes, I’m listening.”

  “Do I need to send a bottle of whiskey or scotch for you to give to your coach?”

  “I don’t think he’s much of a drinker.” He hadn’t even taken a sip of the celebratory champagne after a championship win. If he got drunk, it would probably involve unbuttoning the top button of his polo and scribbling football plays on the windows with grease pencil. A regular party animal.

  A Marisa-shaped shadow walked past the back windows of my car and toward the mini-lantern-lit walkway to the house.

  “I’ve got to go. I’ll talk to you later.”

  I ended the call and jogged up the walkway, following Marisa.

  The front door opened.

  Coach Saunders’s face softened. “You’re here.”

  She nodded. From the tightness in her neck and shoulders, the frown she wore had to be as deep as the Grand Canyon.

  He pushed the door open wider, his reed-thin smile staying in place until my foot hit the bottom step leading up to his house.

  “And LJ.” He stared at me like I’d brought a casserole of dog shit to his front door, so exactly what I expected. After the first couple Monday dinners, it had sunk in that Marisa planned for me to come along to all of them, and that’s when things had gone south on my playing time.

  “Coach.”

  We walked inside. The second hand of the clock in the living room echoed in the silence of our steps.

  Marisa unzipped her coat, but kept it on, shoving her hat into her pocket and sitting in the chair beside the one at the head of the table. There were only three place settings.

  I took my coat off and hung it up on the back of the chair facing hers.

  Coach went into the kitchen and brought out a pan of lasagna in a foil tray from the straight-to-oven section of the supermarket, along with a loaf of garlic bread. There was a pitcher of water and iced tea at the center of the table.

  He sat down and slid the napkin off the table and onto his lap before jumping back up and rocking the tea out of the pitcher. “Damnit.” He grabbed the napkin and mopped up the spill. “Marisa, do you want some parmesan cheese? I’ve got some of that too.”

  Leaving before she could answer, the kitchen door swung shut behind him.

  “Can we try this time to be a little conversational?” I sliced into the lasagna and served out a chunk of the barely-bubbling block of pasta, sauce and cheese to Marisa and myself.

  “That’s why you’re here. What the hell am I supposed to talk to him about? At least you two can talk football.” Her whisper-hiss turned into mild hysterics.

  “You know just as much about football as I do.”

  The kitchen door swung open and Coach walked out with a block of parmesan cheese and a grater. “Cheese?” He held it out to Marisa.

  “No, thanks.”

  I kicked her under the table.

  She glared and lifted her plate. “Sure, I’ll take some.”

  Coach grated cheese over her food and took his seat again.

  “Smells good, Coach Saunders.”

  He cleared his throat and turned to Marisa. “How’s the semester going?”

  My fork scraped against the plate. The second hand of the clock in the other room blared.

  Marisa’s hands tightened around her fork and knife. “It’s fine.”

  “How was Venice? It looked like you had a lot of fun.”

  Her teeth clicked together. “How would you know?”

  He reached for the brim of the hat that wasn’t there. “Your social media.” With a pained smile, he speared a chunk of his lasagna. “I looked through some of your pictures.”

  Beside me, Coach Saunders sawed across his lasagna like he was imagining my throat served up on his plate.

  “Why are you snooping?”

  My head dropped slightly. Every question he asked was always met with the same defensive snap. She swore she wasn’t doing it, but I had ears and eyes. That’s how I knew that mentioning anything about my game play would burn up even the smallest ground gained over the last two years, At least now she responded to him when he spoke to her.

  “Sorry, I didn’t realize posting something on a public website meant you didn’t want anyone to see it.”

  The silence suffocated. Outside, people walked past talking and laughing. Maybe I could blink out a message in Morse code and they’d send reinforcements. Maybe a face painter or a pony to break u
p some of the Titanic-sized icebergs floating through the dining room.

  “We’ll have to cancel next week’s dinner. We’ll be on our way back from Michigan late afternoon on Monday.”

  “Oh no, I’m so upset.”

  His silverware clinked and clattered against the plate. “I’m trying, Marisa. I’m trying with you.”

  “Fourteen years too late, Coach Saunders. I’m graduating from college in eight months. And I just turned in my application for the two-year Guggenheim fellowship in Venice.”

  I choked on my iced tea, shooting out of my chair. My chair flipped back, clattering to the floor.

  When the hell had she mentioned two years? That wasn’t part of the plan.

  The sweet liquid burned my nostrils. I grabbed my napkin and covered my mouth and nose, staring at Marisa across the table. “Two years?”

  My lips went numb.

  “Yeah, we talked about it last week. You said I should go for it.”

  Someone had slammed their foot down on the accelerator and I was careening toward a brick wall.

  “I thought it was for the summer.” Picking up my chair, the tips of my fingers tingling like I was winded from a 50-yard sprint.

  “No, I told you they liked me so much after the internship, they invited me to apply for the fellowship. It’s two years, and I’d get my master’s from the University of Bologna in the summers.”

  A firm grip tightened around my heart. I rubbed my fist along the center of my chest to ease the ache. My hand shot out and I grabbed my glass, chugging the water, trying to keep the sawdust feeling from making its way to my throat.

  I slammed the glass down, still trying to make sense of what she said. “I must’ve missed that part.”

  “I was talking to you about one of the biggest decisions of my life and you blanked out.” She flung her hands up into the air and glanced up at the ceiling.

  “Two years.” I sunk back into my chair, dazed, trying to picture my life without Marisa for 730 days.

  Her gaze skirted to her dad like we were a married couple fighting in front of company. “Two years. You don’t think I should go?” Her hurried whisper was a splash of water snapping me from my stunned stupor.