Just Friends: NA Romance (Bending the Rules Book 3)

by A. M. Wray

  His “especiallies” were getting on my nerves. A lot. I wasn’t quite sure why it was grinding my nerves so much, but it really was. That text came from somewhere. I believed that he didn’t send it to me himself, either by accident or on purpose, but it did come from his phone. It had to be her. The way that he was acting, she’d done a good job planting the seeds that she’d needed. Maybe I was wrong, who knows? But there was one thing that I was good at and that was reading people. My gut was almost never wrong.

  Instead of lashing out against him, like I wanted to, I texted him back and told him that we’d talk about it that night. Maybe over dinner. I told him that I didn’t want to argue over it or anything else. My work day had gotten very busy with two more admissions, and I didn’t have time to worry over the mysterious sexual text that wasn’t aimed at me, or the mysterious ex-girlfriend that I didn’t know much about, but had made a miraculous recovery following a terrible beating.

  Chapter Nine

  Work got progressively worse with a lot of issues. I had a patient that hit his call light every ten minutes. Please keep in mind that he was a very mild patient. He had some pain that couldn’t be controlled and somehow managed to get admitted to the hospital. He was in his late twenties, fully mobile, no visible wounds. His pain was in his right arm, so I placed his bedside table on his left.

  He repeatedly called nurses in to give him drinks. His cup was full and placed well within arm’s reach. They were also asked to change his channels for him when the remote was in his lap. He wanted shaved, helped to the bathroom, and one of the nurses got hit on. When she refused him, it suddenly became my turn. I’d had about enough. I told him that we didn’t have to keep him and if he continued to be so incredibly rude and lecherous to my girls, he would find himself discharged. He quieted down after that, but that was several hours later.

  I went home to find Alex waiting for me on the couch. His car hadn’t been outside. How had he gotten there?

  “Hey!” he said with a big smile. “How was work?”

  “It was kind of terrible, but definitely not the worst day ever. Sometimes you just get those really awful patients that take everything you do for granted.”

  “I’m sorry, sweets. I got a movie for us to watch. Interested?”

  I made my way over to the couch. I wanted to sit down, but I couldn’t until I took a shower. The idea of touching any of my furniture before being cleansed of the day made me sick.

  “Very interested,” I replied. “Where is your car?”

  “Oh! Sara brought me. I let her borrow my car.”

  Total confusion washed over me. His words hit me like a bag of bricks, but the tone of his voice was chipper, happy. He sounded like he’d loaned the car to his mother and it was a sweet deed well done. My gut was rolling over. Was it jealousy? It had been so long since I’d felt it. Was that what I was feeling? Or was I getting a terrible feeling about someone that I truly believed might be up to no good? It was so hard to say, but I couldn’t make a huge deal about it, or risk hurting Alex unnecessarily.

  “You look like you’ve been punched,” he said. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” I said, having no idea what else to say. “I’m fine.”

  He gave me a knowing smile. “We promised to be honest with one another, remember?”

  I rolled my eyes. Whose stupid rule was that anyway? … Right.

  “Yes, we did,” I said, a bit of annoyance in my voice. Even I could hear it. “Look, I know that you think you know Sara and everything, but I have a bad feeling. I mean a bad feeling. I can’t explain it. I’ve only met her once, but something isn’t right.”

  I’d gone over there to pick him up the night we went to Jack’s with his friends. I’d met her briefly that night. She seemed nice enough, but she was just… Well, awkward is the only word that I could find for it. There was something about her that I couldn’t place, but I’d let it go. There was something really wrong going on with that text and it bothered me greatly.

  “I understand that you feel that way,” he started. “You have nothing to worry about, though. She’s a great girl. She always was, but she just couldn’t see the potential in herself. She’s taking a terrible situation and making the best of it.”

  “Gah! She’s just trying to impress you and steal you away!” Woops… That sounded a tad, no, it sounded a lot more jealous than I’d meant. It just pissed me off to hear him defend her more. Maybe I really was wrong, but he couldn’t defend her before even looking into it. He was a cop, for crying out loud.

  “Someone jealous?” he asked, a smile creeping across his face. Of course, he’d think it was funny.

  “No,” I snapped.

  “No? Not jealous? Remember, Andi. Honesty. You’re rules, now. Not just my own.”

  The pompous smile on his face made me want to hit him. It also made me want to kiss him. I sighed.

  “Come shower with me,” I said. “I want to talk to you and be close to you, but I refuse to sit on the furniture until I’m clean of the hospital.”

  He put the remote down and followed me without question. In the bathroom, we took turns undressing one another before getting in the hot water.

  “So, start talking,” he said as he worked shampoo through my hair.

  “You’re right. I promised to be honest. I just didn’t want it to cause any issues between us.”

  “What would cause issues, sweets? There is nothing that you could tell me that would make me think differently of you,” he said, placing a kiss on both of my shoulders.

  “I am a little jealous. I don’t know why. Lately, I have been feeling a little bit… closer than usual.”

  “Why haven’t you told me?” he asked.

  “I don’t know what it is. I don’t know if it’s the sex influencing my emotions, or if it’s the fact that there is another woman – an ex-girlfriend – living with you, or if it’s actual feelings. All I know is that I’m not ready. Why bring it up and confuse you and risk making things weird if I have no idea what I’m really feeling?” I took a deep breath after having said the majority of that in one breath.

  “Wow.” He seemed genuinely surprised. “I don’t know what to say. I’m kind of shocked, really. You don’t have to be afraid to talk to me, though. You know how I feel about you. That hasn’t changed. Not even a little. I lo…”

  “If you’re about to say what I think you are, don’t. You’re right. I do know how you feel about me. I just can’t let go, yet. I feel like I’m on the right road, but not yet. I know it’s a lot to ask, but please just look into the text message? There isn’t a fiber of my being that doesn’t believe you about the text not coming from you. I wouldn’t press it, but something is just nagging at me. I can feel it in my gut. If it didn’t come from you by accident, and it didn’t get sent a while ago and only just now deliver, then who the hell sent it? Because it came from your phone. No doubt about it. So, who sent it? There are only two people that had access to your phone. You and her. Whether you were next to it or not, I don’t think it would take much to sneak in if you were in heavy sleep.”

  He finished rinsing the soap from my hair, running his tongue up the side of my clean neck and to my earlobe. Pulling it into his mouth, he gave a gentle nibble.

  “For you, I would do anything. I’ll look into it. I promise.”

  I sighed in relief. “Thank you. If you find nothing, I promise that I’ll let it go. That is my promise to you.”

  He smiled, almost giggling a little bit. My eyes narrowed at him.

  “What?” I asked.

  He poked me a few times in the belly. “You’re jealous. You like me. You like like me, even.”

  “Shut up!” I laughed. I liked the playfulness, but I hated the topic. It was so weird to feel a bit jealous. It was even weirder to admit it out loud. “You leave me alone. I’m never telling you anything again.”

  “Oh, now. You stop that. What do you say that we finish washing up and get out of here? We have a movie
to watch and then I think we need to go to bed.”

  “Oh, do we, now?” I asked.

  His face became a bit more serious. “We do. Now that I know what I know, there’s something that I want to try with you.”

  “If it’s what I think, then you can stay away,” I said, laughing a bit.

  “No, no. Nothing like that. I’m being serious. I want you to let me take things slow with you. I enjoy our kinky fun, but I’d like for you to let me take it slow with it.”

  My face fell as I contemplated his words. “You mean that you want to make love to me.” It was more of a statement than a question.

  He nodded. “Yes.”

  Alex leaned forward and kissed me then, his lips soft and full of emotion. It had been a long time since I’d been touched in such a way. Maybe I could just treat it like an experiment and see how I felt after. Perhaps it would help me figure out more of my feelings, or it could make things worse. Who knew?

  We got out and he dried me off. I smiled at every touch he made. He was so very passionate and sweet. He wrapped me in a robe and we made our way back out to the couch to watch the movie that he’d brought over. We’d only made it about halfway through before he began kissing my neck. Then my shoulders. Very quickly we abandoned the movie to go to the bedroom.

  His touch was everything he’d promised. Slow. Sensual. My body responded like always, but my heart and head warred against one another for control. He pulled away from me, brushing his fingertips across my cheek.

  “You have no idea how beautiful you are,” he said. “Thank you for being everything that you are for me.”

  My breath caught in my throat as he continued kissing my body. Alex truly was everything I’d ever wanted in a man. I wanted to give myself to him completely, but I still felt the need to pull back. I always hated when women said that they could tell how much a man loved them by the way he touched her. That was never an accurate way to judge that. A man or a woman was capable of conveying anything they wanted if they were good enough at in the art of betrayal. Men and women were also capable of demonstrating great love through simple actions and gentle touches, something I’d long forgotten. My skepticism had long controlled me, but I was slowly letting that go. For him. Somehow, I found myself thinking that same thing about Alex. The way he touched me was nothing shy of loving.

  When it was all said and done, we relaxed in bed together, he on one side and me on the other. I found myself rolling over and placing my hand on his chest. He smiled as he looked at me, resting his hand on mine.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  I smiled. “More than okay. I feel wonderful.”

  “I’m glad. That makes me happy.”

  “Would you want to stay the night with me?” I blurted out. I wasn’t exactly sure what prompted me to ask, but once it was out there, I felt happy about it. I felt like we’d shared something special, and I wanted to pursue it further.

  Alex leaned forward and kissed me. “I’d love to.”

  Chapter Ten

  The next few days were amazing. Alex had promised to look into the Sara/weird text thing and he had. There still wasn’t any sign of where the text came from, but I felt much better just knowing that he was looking. After thinking about it, he said that he felt bad about how he’d handled things with me in regards to Sara.

  “I think I know why you were so upset,” he’d told me. “She hurt me. We were together and it went very badly. She proved herself to be a bad significant other. Maybe not a bad person, so to speak, but a bad significant other. When I stood up for her, I assume that it felt as though I was taking her side over yours, someone that has proven herself time and time again to be amazing in every way. If I’d been in your place and a random guy was hanging around you, I can’t say that I’d have chosen to act any different than you did. No, actually, I’d have been far worse. I would have acted foolish, for lack of a better word. You, however, would have acted very different than I did. You’d have taken care of it at the very first sign of my discomfort.”

  He’d been spot on with why I’d felt so terrible about it, with him choosing someone that had proven to be a liar over me, but it made me feel so much better that he’d apologized in that way. An apology was one thing, but understanding was much more. He seemed to understand.

  I hated using the phrase “chose her over me.” Some things were just hard to explain without using something familiar. I wasn’t his to be choosing and vice versa, but I did expect him to listen to my reasoning as a friend, just as I would his. It seemed like things were getting a lot better in that aspect, after he understood where I was coming from with it. It was nice to finally have our carefree fun back again. It was nice to just let go with one another and just… exist. It was relaxing after being so tense at work so often. We each worked way too many hours to not allow ourselves a bit of reprieve.

  Speaking of reprieve… My birthday had arrived! I quit making a big deal about it after the divorce, but screw it! I wanted a fun birthday. With everything that was going on with the wedding and the planning, Elizabeth and Jax wouldn’t be down. It was sad for me. It would be the first birthday that I’d have to spend without her, but I understood. She’d still called and wished me a happy birthday… at midnight. She wanted to be the first, not that I was surprised.

  When I got to work that day, there was not one, not even two, but three dozen roses waiting for me. The first sat on the curb in front of my designated parking spot. I smiled when I saw them, hoping they were for me, then remembering that I worried about such things, so then I convinced myself that I didn’t want them to be for me. I was exhausting, even to myself.

  I’d parked the car and went to search for a card. I found the small white rectangle and pulled it from the vase.

  This is the first, but not the last.

  You might hate me, but I run very fast.

  I laughed when I read it. They couldn’t have been for anyone else. Who else “might” hate getting a dozen red roses? I picked them up and took them inside with me only to be met at the front counter. There was an even larger display. This one was full of white roses with smaller bluish-purple flowers mixed in. Blue irises, I thought they were. It was a stunning display.

  “Good morning!” Alice, the older woman at the front desk, said to me, a smile from ear to ear.

  “Good morning, Alice!”

  “I see you found the first one,” she’d said.

  I looked at her incredulously. At that moment, I couldn’t believe that there was another one. He’d broken the rule once. Surely, he didn’t plan to do it twice!

  I then made my way to the counter to find another card. Alice couldn’t stop smiling. It was as though the generous and very exaggerated display were hers. I kind of wished they were because it was just too much. Too sweet. My heart swelled as the scents wrapped around me.

  Please don’t hate me,

  But one was simply not enough.

  I have so much more planned,

  It’s all for you my… friend.

  Mmhmm. Friend didn’t rhyme with enough… Smooth. Very smooth. That was twice he’d only barely skirted around the L word. The first time was in the shower together. He’d almost told me that he loved me. Knowing it and hearing it were two different things.

  Alice helped me carry the second large display of flowers up to my desk – where I found the third display. That one was full of white roses with purple edges and baby’s breath. That one was my absolute favorite, and I hoped that it was my last. I couldn’t take much more. My heart was about to explode.

  The roses were surrounded with balloons, a homemade cake, a wrapped gift – like I’d needed it after what I assumed was at least a two-hundred-dollar display of flowers, and another card. The girls were all standing around the desk, swooning. Apparently, it had been Alex himself that delivered the last bit. He wanted to make sure that everything was set up to his liking. He’d instructed the girls to stay completely quiet and not breathe a word of it.
They said that he knew they’d tell me if a delivery guy showed up. Smart man… Very smart man.

  Happy Birthday Andi.

  You won’t let me say it, though I wish you would.

  Just know that I do. I hope your day is the best.

  At the bottom of the card was a tiny heart that was hand drawn. He didn’t know it yet, but it really was the best birthday ever, and it had only just begun. I couldn’t wait to see him. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to rip into him for being so sweet, or if I wanted to hug and kiss him. No one had ever done anything like that for me.

  When I finally arrived at his house that night, after what seemed like an eternity at work, I nearly knocked him down with how hard I wrapped my arms around him and kissed him. He laughed against me as I pushed him through the door and closed it behind me.

  “Well, hello there, birthday girl. How are you?” he asked.

  I smiled. “You’re in trouble. Do you have any idea how in love with you the girls at work are? They are all very jealous. They are also very angry at me now.”

  “Why are they angry?” he asked.

  “Because! They knew our arrangement. They thought it was a great arrangement until they met you! Now they are driving me nuts. ‘Why don’t you give that boy a chance? Why don’t you be nicer to him? Guys like that don’t come around very often! You don’t want to miss out on that one. Sexy and sweet? You just can’t find ‘em like that!’ That’s all I heard all day!”

  He laughed. “I do apologize. Next year I’ll send you a bag of flaming dog crap.”

  “I wish you would. It would be easier to explain.”

  We both laughed. It was so easy to laugh with him. I loved it. That man was magical.

  “What would you like for dinner?” he asked. “We can have anything you want. I can make it for you, or I can take you out. Whatever you like.”

  “Oh, no,” I said. “You’ve spent way too much money on me already. And the gift? Concert tickets and backstage passes? Are you serious? You’re not rich. You don’t need to spend that kind of money on me.”