Tequila Tequila

by Emma Hart

  “Be right back.” I pushed my bottle away and got up, following after her. The bar was freezing compared to outside, and I shivered as I approached the bar.

  Aspen was standing at the other end, handing the same guy who’d slipped her his number another beer.

  “Got a minute?” I interjected into the conversation.

  Her eyes flickered between him and me. “Can you give me a second?”

  “Nah, you’re good, darlin.’ Put it on a tab for me.” The guy shot her the kind of smile you shoot the girl you want to fuck and dump the next morning. He left us alone, shooting me a dark look as he left.

  I’m pretty sure the one I shot him was even darker.

  “What’s up?” Aspen asked me, a fake brightness in her voice.

  I turned my attention back to her. “You ignoring me again?”

  “Why would you say that?”

  “Well, for a start, you haven’t said a word to me,” I said, resting my arms on the bar and leaning forward. “And as soon as Will said that a woman had waved at me, you left.”

  She raised one eyebrow, grabbing a glass and wiping out the inside of it with a cloth. “Coming from the guy who saw me talking to another guy and walked out to sit outside.”

  “Not the point.”

  “Totally the point. You’re allowed to be jealous, but I have to like it that a random woman waves at you?”

  “I’m not jealous,” I lied. “I just don’t like the look of the guy.”

  “Mhmm.”

  “And you weren’t just talking. I saw him give you his number.”

  “Which I promptly dropped in the trash,” she replied smartly, putting down both the glass and the cloth. She gripped the edge of the bar and fixed me with a look that said she saw right through me. “Does that make you feel better?”

  Yes.

  “There’s nothing to feel better about. I’m not jealous.” I shrugged. “I just wanted to know if you were okay, that’s all.”

  “I’m fine. Better?”

  “Sure.” Pausing, I glanced over my shoulder at the guy who was watching us. “You really threw out his number?”

  She jerked one shoulder. “I didn’t want it. He just kind of shoved it at me.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Why does it matter, Mr. Not Jealous?”

  “It doesn’t matter. But, you know, just in case it did…” I leaned over the bar, cupped the back of her neck, and kissed her.

  Her cheeks flushed when I pulled back. “Yeah. Not jealous my ass.”

  I grinned, chucked her under the chin, and headed back outside to the guys.

  ***

  “A little birdie told me you kissed Aspen yesterday.” Mom slid a sandwich across the table to me. She had one eyebrow raised, and she was looking at me the way she did when I was a kid and she knew I was lying about something.

  It was her, “Tell me everything and I won’t get your grandmother with her flip-flop” look.

  It worked every time.

  “I did.” I took the glass of Pepsi she offered me and sipped.

  “Well? Is that all you’re going to say? You kiss your childhood best friend and that’s it?”

  “Who kissed who?” Abuelita demanded in Spanish, shuffling through to the kitchen in today’s bright outfit: a purple skirt with a green t-shirt and a yellow sweater.

  Mom glanced at me with an evil glint in her eye. “Luke kissed Aspen.”

  Abuelita stopped. She brought her wrinkled hands to her cheeks, her mouth dropping open. “You kissed Aspen?”

  I knew coming here today was a bad idea. “I kissed Aspen,” I confirmed.

  “Are you getting married?”

  Whoa.

  “We just kissed, Abuelita. We’re not getting married.” I bit into my sandwich.

  She rushed over to me and took my hands in hers, almost making me drop my sandwich. “This is wonderful!” She continued on in Spanish, telling me in no uncertain terms that I had to marry Aspen, have beautiful little babies, and buy a house and get a Labrador.

  “Whoa, whoa, Abuelita,” I said, ignoring Mom’s giggling from the sink. “We just kissed. Don’t plan out our future yet. We haven’t even had a chance to talk properly.”

  “You two might not have, but you’re the talk of the town,” Mom added. “I found out at the post office this morning.”

  “Really? People are talking about one kiss?”

  “Why? Have there been more?”

  “Do you really want me to answer that?”

  She paused. “The nosy person inside says yes, but as your mother, no.” She shook her head. “But yes, people are talking about it. Come on, Luke. You’ve been best friends since the day you started school, but then you lean over the bar and kiss her like you’re dating her? People are going to talk.”

  “I knew I should have moved to Austin after high school. Nobody there would care if I kissed her.”

  “Everyone here would still know. Don’t forget that Luisa is at college there.”

  I needed a smaller family.

  “So you aren’t marrying her?” Abuelita asked, finally letting go of my hands.

  “Not in the plans right now,” I replied. “But I’ll let you know if that changes.”

  The theme tune to Wheel of Fortune came from the living room, and that was thankfully enough to make my grandmother shuffle out of the kitchen and stop marrying me off to Aspen.

  I blew out a long breath and reached for my drink.

  “I don’t know if she’s happy you might be seeing Aspen, or that Aspen is finally interested in one of her grandsons.” Mom sat down opposite me.

  “Definitely the last thing,” I replied. “The last thing we need is the entire town gossiping about us when we don’t even know what we’re doing.”

  “You should have thought about that before you kissed her in public.”

  She had a point. “Yeah, well, I wasn’t thinking about that. I was thinking that the jerk who was hitting on her needed to back off.”

  Mom laughed. “Aw, my little boy—all jealous.”

  “Not jealous,” I replied. “And I haven’t been your little boy since I was eight and was actually smaller than you.”

  She leaned over and pinched my arm. “Don’t sass me. You were jealous. You’re allowed to be jealous, Luke. You care about her.”

  “Yeah, but I’m used to caring about her as her best friend. Not like this. I don’t know how to handle these emotions where she’s concerned.”

  “Roll with the punches. You don’t have a choice. If you both feel the same, which I’m assuming you do, then you have to learn how to navigate your changing relationship together.”

  “I know that, but it’s the learning part that’s hard.” I picked a slice of tomato out of my sandwich. “We’ve had a status quo for so long. We know the boundaries of our friendship, but now they’ve been crossed.” Epically fucking crossed. “I don’t know how to be anything but her best friend.”

  Mom sipped her Pepsi. “You can still be her best friend. That doesn’t have to change just because your emotions have.”

  “That doesn’t help.”

  “Do something different.” She clasped her hands in front of her. “Do something together that you wouldn’t do as friends. Treat your changing relationship as you should. If you were starting to date a stranger, would you lie around on the sofa, watching movies in your sweatpants?”

  “Sounds like the perfect first date, if you ask me, but I think I see where you’re going with this.”

  Her lips pulled up to one side. “Exactly. You’d do that later when you’d formed a friendship with them. You and Aspen already have that friendship, so that means you need to step out of your comfort zones. Take her out on a date. Don’t take it for granted that you can make something romantic work just because you know each other inside out.”

  “I’m not. I think it’s going to be harder than anything to make a romantic relationship work with her because if anything goes wrong,
we’ll never be able to get our friendship back to how it was.”

  “Sometimes that’s a risk you have to take,” Mom continued, her eyes gentle. “You can always turn back now. You don’t have to take it any further than you already have.”

  Easy to say when she didn’t know just how far we’d taken it.

  “But, if you really want to take a chance that you could make it work, you have to be ready to put in the effort. Think about it this way.” She rested her hand on my arm. “You don’t need to impress Aspen. She already knows all the good and bad parts of you, and if she can put up with you for twenty years, she’s probably the kind of girl you really do need to marry, Luke. Not many others are going to cope with your crap.”

  I smiled. “Thanks, Mom. You know how to make a guy feel good.”

  “She’s right!” Abuelita yelled from the living room. “Did you go shopping, or do I need to cook for you again?”

  Mom might have had a point…

  ***

  Me: I have an idea.

  Aspen: …Don’t think too hard. You might hurt yourself.

  She was a regular old comedian, wasn’t she? I shook my head and tapped to open the keyboard again on my phone.

  Me: I spoke to Mom earlier. She suggested we go on a date.

  Aspen: That’s not you having an idea. That’s you stealing your mom’s.

  Me: Semantics.

  Aspen: Important semantics. Are you asking me on a date, or is your mom doing it for you? Kind of like how Abuelita cooks for you.

  Me: She cooks for you, too.

  Aspen: I know. I’m eating her food right now. By the way, did you know that you kissing me at work is basically the talk of the entire town? Thanks for that.

  Me: I did know. How do you think my mom found out?

  Aspen: Does that mean Abuelita knows?

  Me: Yes. She’s already planning our wedding. She’s ecstatic you’re finally interested in one of her grandsons.

  Me: Although, she did seem a bit put out that it’s the one she’s never tried to set you up with. She thinks she’s losing her touch as a matchmaker.

  Aspen: She never had a touch as a matchmaker. Did she?

  Me: No, but do YOU want to be the one to tell her that?

  Aspen: No. She’d cut me off. I need more quesadilla.

  Me: You ate them all already?

  Aspen: Are you judging me? Cuz I already get that from my jeans. I don’t need it from you, too.

  Me: Your jeans judge you?

  Aspen: THEY SHOULD MAKE THE WAISTBANDS STRETCHY OKAY

  Aspen: YOGA PANTS DON’T JUDGE ME

  Me: I’d be okay with it if you wore yoga pants all the time.

  Aspen: You and most other red-blooded men. I work hard for my ass.

  Me: I don’t want to hear about any other men.

  Aspen: Oooh. Are you getting jealous again?

  Me: I wasn’t jealous in the first place.

  Aspen: You’re so full of shit there are aliens in another galaxy who can smell it.

  Me: Smells like cotton candy.

  Aspen: No. I’ve used the bathroom after you. It does not.

  I laughed. She wasn’t wrong.

  Aspen: You said something about a date?

  I took a deep breath. It’d seemed like a good idea before we’d gotten sidetracked, but now, I just felt nervous. I knew Mom was right—if we were going to date, we needed to act like it. We needed to push through the awkwardness to see if we really could be more than friends.

  And the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to be.

  Fuck, I wanted to be. I didn’t want to think about her being with anyone else.

  Me: Go to dinner with me? I’ll book a table.

  Aspen: Holy crap, you really meant a date-date.

  Me: I wasn’t talking about the fruit.

  Aspen: We’re really doing this?

  Me: Mom suggested we step outside our comfort zone. It’s not like we have to get to know each other, but if we lounge around at your place watching movies, that’s not really a date. We do that every weekend.

  Aspen: And we’ve never been to dinner, so that’s a logical step.

  Me: Exactly. Are you in? Friday night?

  Aspen: Are you picking me up? Do I have to dress up?

  Me: Yes, and yes. You wouldn’t wear yoga pants on a first date, would you?

  Aspen: If I could get away with it, you bet your ass I would.

  Me: You can’t. Don’t.

  Aspen: Fine. But you should know, I’m not putting out until the third date.

  Me: That only works if you haven’t already put out.

  Aspen: I’ll put out if you pay. And if it isn’t totally weird.

  Me: Ah. I might eat all your food, but I am a gentleman. You can pay for date two.

  Aspen: Okay, but I’m wearing yoga pants on that one.

  I grinned.

  I was fine with that.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN – ASPEN

  How To Date Your Best Friend

  I paced back and forth through my living room, clothes strung over the back of the sofa. I was wearing nothing but a t-shirt and my panties, and Blaire was flicking through a magazine like I wasn’t losing my mind over here.

  “You have got to help me!”

  Sighing, she put down the magazine and looked over at me. “You’ve been freaking out for hours. I don’t know what to tell you. But I’m sure as hell not reminding you of his name since you already bit my head off once.”

  I groaned and sat down on the sofa, burying my head in my hands. “This is insanity, Blaire. What am I doing?”

  “Yeah, this is the insane bit. You fucked your best friend, but going for dinner with him? Shock horror!”

  I tossed a cushion at her. “I know that, but it’s like… This is a date. A real date. We’re actually going to be on a date.”

  “Say it again. I didn’t understand that it’s a date.”

  I pressed my face into my hands. “Don’t. This changes everything, Blaire. Everything.”

  “So cancel it.”

  “I can’t!”

  “Why not?”

  “I just can’t.” I paused, slumping back on the sofa.

  She closed the magazine with a sigh and slid it onto the coffee table. “Do you have feelings for Luke?”

  I did. I didn’t know when they’d shown up, but they had. Yesterday, at work, when Will had said that some random woman had waved at him, a hint of jealousy had tickled across my skin. It’d been unsettling.

  I was still unsettled.

  If tonight went well—and it would, because it always did when we were together—it would mean we were officially dating.

  It was one thing to have feelings for your best friend.

  It was another thing entirely to date him.

  I hadn’t even come to terms with having feelings for him, never mind dating him. The whole situation was still weird to me.

  It didn’t matter that I’d liked it that he’d kissed me in the bar yesterday. In front of all the people. Especially the guy who’d given me his number even when I’d said no.

  Jealous Luke was a cute Luke.

  It was even cuter that he denied being jealous.

  “Aspen, listen. You’d feel like this no matter who you were going out with. Remember that guy you met on Tinder? You were practically shitting your pants before that date. What you’re feeling is totally normal.” Blaire met my eyes. “If you’re really weirded out by it, don’t take how you feel any further.”

  “I want to,” I said softly, stopping fidgeting for the first time in ages. “But he’s—”

  “Your best friend. I know. But dating each other doesn’t mean he can’t still be that. Tom’s pretty much my best friend outside you and Luke.”

  “But you dated first. The closeness of your friendship came after.”

  “So? Pretend you aren’t best friends. It’s stupid, but if you strip your relationship back down to basics, you’ll probably find it’s easier tha
n you think.”

  That wasn’t a bad idea. As dumb as it felt to pretend that we didn’t know each other, it would remove that element of our relationship that we relied on so heavily.

  It was ironic. The thing we were most comfortable with in our relationship was the thing making us so uncomfortable moving forward.

  “We could do that,” I said slowly. “That would make it feel more like a real first date and not two best friends playing relationships.”

  “See? I’m not just a pretty face. I have good ideas, too.” She got up off the sofa. “Now, let’s find a dress that will simultaneously knock his socks off and get his cock hard.”

  “Ah, the magic combination for a first date. A guy with an erection and no socks.” I grabbed a red dress from next to me. “Actually, that’s pretty much how my last first date went.”

  “Yes, but at least this time, you know you won’t be accidentally having dinner with a nineteen-year-old student pretending to be twenty-five.”

  Score one for dating your best friend.

  ***

  I was going to throw up. I was so certain of that fact that I’d put money on it.

  No doubt about it. I’d never felt my stomach roll like this before a date. Not ever. It felt unnatural. In fact, if it weren’t for the fact that my makeup was perfect, I’d probably run to the bathroom pre-emptively.

  I wiggled my toes inside my shoes—not an easy thing in heels—and stared at my front door.

  He was late.

  Why was he late?

  Had he changed his mind? Had he decided that dating his best friend was too much after all? I wouldn’t blame him. We could go back to normal.