My Favorite Mistake: A Friends-to-Lovers Romance (A Love Like That)

by R. L. Kenderson

  “I haven’t decided what I want yet. I’ll send you some ideas soon.”

  I straightened, walked around to her side of the bar, and put my arm around her in a half-hug. “Sorry about your breakup right before your birthday.”

  She rested her cheek on my chest. “Thanks, Griff. It’s for the best though.”

  The same customer from the other end of the bar was starting to get impatient, so when she lifted her head, I kissed her on the temple. “I have to go help another customer. I’ll be back.”

  Three

  Madeline

  Griffin went to help another patron, and I took my phone out of my purse. I opened my calendar and began deleting all the things I had planned with Harris. After about the tenth event, I realized how many things I did for him. Only one thing on the calendar had been my request. My birthday dinner.

  With every hit of the Delete button on my app, I felt like I could breathe a little bit more. I had no idea what I was going to do with all my free time, but I sure as hell knew I was going to do something that I wanted to do.

  The door opened behind me, and I looked over my shoulder to see a hot guy walk in.

  Ooh. Maybe I’d get laid in my free time.

  I closed my eyes, remembering the last time I’d had really good sex. It had been too long.

  Maybe the hot guy would be interested. Sure, it was the middle of the week, but maybe he wouldn’t be against a quick one-night stand.

  Unfortunately, I lifted my lids just in time to see him walk up to a woman at a table. I crossed my fingers, hoping she was his sister. He leaned down and kissed her.

  Nope. She was definitely not related to him.

  I clicked my tongue in disappointment and turned back around, only to come face-to-face with Griffin.

  “Ah.” I slapped my hand against his hard chest. “You scared me.”

  He didn’t budge.

  “If you keep staring at my customers like that, you’re going to scare them. Away.”

  I shrugged. “I can’t help it if I saw a good-looking man. I haven’t been single for over a year.” I stuck out my lower lip. “I miss good sex, Griff.”

  He knew all about my bedroom troubles with Harris.

  “Sorry, babe. Maybe I can help you get some on your birthday. But if we do, it’s going to be somewhere that isn’t my bar.” His blue eyes bore into mine to get his point across.

  I knew he didn’t like his friends hooking up with customers, and I understood. If something went bad, it could reflect poorly on the bar. But it didn’t mean he wasn’t ruining my buzz.

  “You’re no fun.”

  He looked over at Albert, who was talking to another customer, and then back to me. “Well, Albert just told me he’s looking for a woman, if you’re interested.”

  “Ha-ha, you’re so funny. You know my age limit is seventy-five.”

  He shuddered. “And now, I’m picturing you having sex with Albert. Gross.”

  “You brought it up.”

  “As a joke.”

  I took a sip of my beer and tilted my head. “Is it gross because of Albert or because of me?”

  He cupped my neck and ran his thumb along my jaw. “Babe, you know it’s not because of you. You’re gorgeous. You know it wasn’t you who I said gross about.”

  I grinned. “Just making sure.”

  He shook his head. “Minx.”

  I laughed. “I just had to check if I still had it.”

  He looked me up and down in a way that made me understand how he got women to fall at his feet. “Always.”

  It also didn’t hurt that my best friend was over six feet tall, handsome, and muscular. He had brown hair and had recently begun sporting a beard, which women seemed to love; the contrast of his dark hair made his blue eyes stand out. I’d also seen him in his underwear. He had a big dick. His suggestive looks were just icing on a very sexy beefcake.

  “Damn, Griff.” I jokingly fanned my face. “You’re not so bad yourself.”

  He chuckled. “The only difference is, I know I still have it.”

  I playfully pushed his chest again because I was beginning to feel hot, and this time, he stood and backed away.

  “It’s a good thing I know you don’t actually have a giant ego.”

  He shrugged. “You know I hate that self-centered shit.”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  Griff’s older cousin had gone to our high school and was a narcissistic asshole. He was popular while being a bully to those weaker than him. Griffin hadn’t been one of his victims, but the two of them didn’t get along. Griffin had been popular, too, and played on the varsity hockey team, yet he’d never picked on anyone, and he didn’t approve of anyone who did.

  He eyed my almost-empty bottle. “You want another?”

  “Why not?” My plans had been canceled the second I broke up with Harris. I might as well hang out with Griffin for a bit.

  Unfortunately for me, the beer was going down too easy, and I realized that I needed to eat something, or I was going to feel horrible at work the next day. I worked in human resources. It would be highly frowned upon of me to show up hungover at work.

  I spotted the evening bartender, Mitch, coming in from the back, and I was about to ask Griffin if he wanted to grab something to eat while I waited for my buzz to wear off when our friend Troy showed up.

  “Hey, Madeline. What are you doing here?” he said. “If I had known, I would have brought Christina with me.”

  “Isn’t she doing some wedding planning stuff tonight with her sister?” I asked.

  “Yeah, but they could have done that another night.”

  “It’s okay. Coming here was a last-minute thing.”

  I saw Griffin reach for his coat, and I knew he wasn’t going upstairs to his apartment over the bar since he didn’t need to go outside to get there.

  “I didn’t realize you had plans,” I said.

  Griffin shrugged his arms into his jacket. “Nothing fancy. We’re going to grab some food and go shopping for a computer. I promised him I’d help him look.”

  “I get it, and I don’t expect you to cancel your plans because of me. But I don’t think I can drive home yet. Do you mind if I head up to your place and order takeout?”

  He smiled at me like my question was ridiculous.

  “Thanks, Griff.” I looked over his shoulder at the chalkboard on the wall as I slipped off my stool. “Oh, and my favorite color is teal.”

  When Griffin had begun making plans to open his bar, I’d jokingly told him to call it My Favorite Place. We lived in a suburb of Minneapolis, where it was close enough to go downtown to do things but far enough away that it had a small-town feel. I thought it would be funny for people to tell their friends they were going to their favorite place to drink when it was really the name of the bar.

  He’d liked it so much that he actually named it that. And so, now, every day, he wrote a question on the wall, asking someone what their favorite fill-in-the-blank was. Sometimes, it was a more in-depth one, like: What is your favorite quote? Today, it was an easy one: What is your favorite color?

  “I already knew that,” he told me. “And you’re welcome to my place anytime, babe. But you already know that too.” He looked over at Mitch, who was walking from the back of the building. “Everyone’s being taken care of right now. But keep an eye on Albert.”

  Albert looked over at Griffin upon hearing his name.

  “He likes loose women,” my best friend added loudly.

  Everyone in the bar cracked up, and I headed upstairs to Griff’s apartment.

  I had my own key, so I let myself in, and I immediately ordered delivery from the Chinese food place close by.

  I then turned on Griffin’s TV and pulled up Netflix. I’d forgotten how much I liked hanging out at his place, and I hadn’t realized until now how much I’d kept myself away because Harris didn’t like him.

  Such a shame that I’d let a man do that to me. It’d happened so gradually
that it snuck up on me. I hadn’t made it past the bar in at least a month. Before that, I thought I had come upstairs for all of five minutes.

  I knew that it was hard for men I dated to understand that Griffin and I were best friends, but some accepted it easier than others. It always helped when my best friend and my boyfriend got along with each other.

  In the future, if the guy I dated didn’t like my best friend, I wasn’t going to keep him around. If Griffin were a female, it wouldn’t be a problem, and I really hated double standards.

  As I kicked off my shoes and rested my feet on the coffee table, I thanked myself once again for calling my relationship with Harris quits.

  Fifteen minutes later, my food arrived. I ate way too much and almost fell asleep on the couch. With my last bit of energy, I went into Griffin’s room and pulled out some sweatpants and a T-shirt from his dresser. I brushed my teeth with the spare toothbrush I kept at his place, and then I slid into his king-size bed and sent him a text.

  Me: I’m sleeping over. Don’t bring any women home.

  He had two bedrooms but only one bed. The other room was filled with workout equipment. And there was always the couch, but we’d been sharing each other’s beds for sleeping for as long as I could remember. I knew he wouldn’t care if I stayed over.

  Griffin: Oh, darn. Hold on. I have to cancel the threesome I was going to have tonight. The ladies are going to be so disappointed.

  Me: Tell them hi for me.

  Griffin: They said to tell you to go to hell.

  Me: LOL.

  Griffin: Troy and I are almost done here anyway. I’ll be home soon.

  Me: Okay. Please don’t wake me.

  Griffin: You couldn’t pay me to wake you.

  I thought of myself as a fairly nice person, but wake me up when I wasn’t ready, and even I knew I was a bitch. It always took me about ten minutes to return to normal.

  Me: Ha. I’ll see you in the morning then.

  Griffin: Okay. Night.

  Me: Night.

  I turned my screen black and set my phone on the nightstand. I was out as soon as my head hit the pillow. The only thing that vaguely pulled me from slumber was the sound of feet shuffling on the floor and the bed dipping down beside me.

  Griffin was home, but he had the good sense not to disturb me.

  And I fell asleep once more.

  Four

  Griffin

  The sound of Madeline’s phone pulled me from sleep. I knew it was her phone and not mine because I would never have a ringtone that played Taylor Swift.

  “Hello?” she said from the other side of the bed.

  “Hi, honey.”

  Since the only sound in my place was the air blowing out of the vent in the floor, I could hear Madeline’s mom, Nora, perfectly.

  I opened my eyes and saw Madeline roll onto her back.

  She ran her hand across her face. “Hey, Mom. What’s up? You’re calling pretty early.”

  I looked over my shoulder at my alarm clock to see that it wasn’t quite seven.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Did I wake you? I thought you’d be up for work already.”

  “It’s okay. I was half-awake. I do need to get up and get ready anyway.”

  “I’ll make this quick then. On Sunday, it’ll be just you for dinner, right? I think you said Harris was going out of town. I wanted to make sure before I went to the store.”

  “Yeah, it’s just me.”

  “So, Harris is going out of town?”

  “He is. But it doesn’t matter because we broke up.”

  “Hallelujah. Your father is going to be so happy.”

  Madeline scoffed while I stifled a laugh.

  “Mom, really?” she said as she looked at me and pointed to her phone. Are you hearing this? she mouthed.

  I nodded with a grin.

  I’d known Nora Campbell as long as I’d known her daughter, and she was like a second mother to me. And it was the same with Madeline and my mom. Madeline and I were only children, so I thought our mothers liked having both of us around. I thought our dads liked it, too, but they’d both come from a generation where men didn’t show their feelings as much.

  “I’m sorry, honey. I meant to say, this is unfortunate news. I hope you’re doing okay.”

  “Too late.” She rolled her eyes. “If you and Dad didn’t like Harris, why didn’t you tell me?”

  “It’s not that we didn’t like him. We didn’t like him for you. You two were all wrong for each other. But I knew it would eventually work itself out. I’m just glad it was sooner rather than later.”

  “Next time, just tell me how you feel, okay?”

  “Sure, honey,” Nora said in a placating tone.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  Nora laughed. “You’ll just have to trust me. We can talk about this more on Sunday. I’ll let you go, so you can get ready for work. I need to head out the door soon too.”

  “Okay.” Madeline sat up. “I’ll see you on Sunday.”

  “See you then. I love you, honey.”

  “I love you too.” She hung up the phone and looked over at me. “I can’t believe her. She had a mini celebration about my breakup.”

  “I don’t blame her. Your mom was right. Harris was all wrong for you.”

  Reaching behind her, Madeline picked up the pillow she’d just been resting her head on and threw it at me.

  I caught it before it could hit me in the face and tucked it under my head.

  “I’m disowning you both,” she said as she got out of bed.

  “No, you’re not. You love us all too much.”

  She snorted and pulled my T-shirt she’d borrowed over her head.

  The two of us were close and had never done anything sexually intimate in all our years as friends, but I sometimes thought Madeline forgot I was a man. I had a perfect profile view of her perky C-cup breasts, and best friend or not, it didn’t stop me from wondering what her pink nipples would taste like in my mouth.

  I looked away and subtly adjusted my dick under the covers. I was a red-blooded male after all, and a beautiful set of tits were still a beautiful set of tits, no matter who the owner was.

  When I turned back in her direction, she had thankfully already put on a bra and was pulling her shirt down over her smooth stomach.

  Unfortunately, my borrowed sweatpants were next. And even with her underwear covering her bottom half, it didn’t stop me from wondering what her pussy tasted like too.

  I groaned low in my throat.

  I needed to stop thinking about sex.

  I blamed it on my lack of caffeine and the fact that I’d just woken up.

  I pushed off my comforter and got out of bed, hoping my T-shirt was low enough to cover my hard-on.

  “Do you want coffee?” I asked her.

  Madeline bit her bottom lip and wiggled her eyebrows. “Are you happy to see me, or is that a gun in your boxers?”

  “You are such a dork,” I said as I walked past her and headed for the kitchen. “I take back my coffee offer.”

  She laughed as she followed me. “But I’m your dork, Griff.” She plopped her butt down on the stool at my counter. “Now, bring me coffee, Ol’ Hard One.”

  I busted out laughing as I shook my head. Madeline could always make me smile. She really was a dork sometimes and didn’t care if others thought so too. It was one of the things I loved about her.

  I grabbed the coffee grounds from my cupboard. “How are you feeling this morning?” I asked seriously. “Besides your mom and her revelation, are you regretting the breakup?” I grabbed the pot and started filling it with water.

  “Not at all.” She pointed to her phone on the counter. “Do you know he didn’t text me once after I left?”

  I winced.

  “Don’t feel bad. It only shows me how he really felt about me. Also, it shows me how I really felt about him because I’m relieved. I do not want another Elliot.”

  “I agree.”

 
; Madeline had dated Elliot for only four months, and the guy wouldn’t stop texting her for months afterward. I finally tracked him down and had a few words with him. Nothing threatening. I simply explained to him, guy-to-guy, how his constant messaging looked to a woman and how it was never going to convince her to give him a second chance. I didn’t know if he’d quite gotten it, but he’d stopped bothering Madeline after that.

  I pushed the On button and opened the fridge to get the coffee creamer she refused to go without. I noticed a couple of boxes of Chinese food in the fridge, so I pulled one out to inspect it.

  It was Madeline’s leftovers.

  I opened the other box.

  It was Hunan chicken. My favorite. And it was filled to the brim.

  I looked over the top of the fridge. “Did you get me Chinese food?”

  “Of course. I figured you could have it for lunch or something.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to take it to work?”

  She smiled. “I’m sure. I’ll take my leftovers though.”

  I pulled her box out and set it on the counter. “So you don’t forget it.”

  “Thanks.”

  “So, now that you’re single, are you changing the plans for Friday? Are we going to go downtown and hit up a club?”

  “Eh.” She shook her head. “I think I’d rather stay around here. Plenty of bars to choose from. My only request is, we go somewhere with a patio. It’s supposed to be nice this weekend, and it might be the last few warm nights until spring.”

  The suburb where my place was located was on a two-block radius with several other bars. Some had thought it was crazy to start a business with so much other competition, but it actually worked in our favor. People could go from bar to bar by walking, and they didn’t need to worry about drinking and driving.