Whuck?
“Why would you even ask me that?”
“Well darling,” said my Mom, in her calm-down voice. “No need to get upset. You do remember your father and I were there at your wedding.”
“Marriage ceremony.”
“Yes, and we saw the way you looked at him and heard what you said in your vows and the way you were together—it was so cute and wonderful. And that kiss! My goodness. I mean. I know it was all for show, but I get all flushed just thinking about it, even now!” She fanned herself with her paper napkin.
And that is why I will never watch that video.
“Alright, alright,” my father grumbled.
“I’m sure he’ll come around eventually. Men are slower to figure these things out than women are. Isn’t that right, Dad?”
“We’re not the brightest creatures when it comes to matters of the heart. But, yes. I’m sure he’ll come around. You’re adorable.”
Great, so it was that obvious that Theo was not in love with me? Even to my parents—who are supposed to be delusional about how attractive I am to every single person on the planet?
“Um. I have to go pack. So you guys are okay with the Andrew thing? You’ll talk to Sandy and Gary about it?”
“Of course of course. It would be a nice gesture if you send them an e-mail or something, just so they know there’s no bitterness.”
“Sure. They still don’t know about me and Theo, right? The marriage thing, I mean?”
“No, it seems like Andrew never told them, so we’ve never mentioned it.”
“Okay.”
“Darling,” my Mom practically sang a lullaby. “Hang in there with Theo. He really is perfect for you. He’ll come around eventually.”
I took a deep breath, pushed my chair in under the kitchen table and started to walk out to go pack up what was surely going to be a much lighter suitcase than I came with because I was returning to LA with almost no remaining ego.
“Sure. Thanks.”
Did it bother me that my own parents assumed that I was in unrequited love with my best friend? A little…I just lied. It bothered me a lot. But only when I thought about it. So I was not going to think about it.
Did it bother me that hardly anyone had ever assumed that we were a couple when we were out together in LA? Yes, it did. Our neighbors never questioned our friendly housemate status. When we went out to grab a meal with Chloe and Ethan at Winsome, our place on Sunset, the waitresses did not hesitate to flirt with him when I was sitting next to him. I was not going to think about that either.
I guess it just never really occurred to me that Theo and I being a real couple was an option. Since other people couldn’t conceive of it, I figured he couldn’t either. Case in point: his nickname for me was Grandma. Betty White would probably have a better chance with him than I would.
Leaving aside the fact that I had a boyfriend when I met him—he had just hooked up with my neighbor. Nikki was a beach volleyball player. She was a tall, athletic, aggressively pretty Nordic goddess. I figured that was his type. I was a petite messy-haired brunette whose main form of exercise consisted of walking around campus and to the store to buy ice cream.
Once I became friends with him, he somehow managed to get me to go for hikes with him around Griffith Park and for the occasional dreadful jog around Elysian Park. He’d always used me to gauge the prototypes of his fitness tech products for “the fitness novice.” I usually just recommended that they should somehow make people feel better about their shape or fitness level no matter what. Yer welcome, world.
But now that I was a single lady in the city that never sags, I supposed I would have to up my game. By that, I meant jogging to and from the store to buy ice cream, and strolling around the house while eating it. I couldn’t believe I was technically single. Or wait—I was technically married, but I was single in practice. Emotionally single. Mentally single. Physically single.
Crap.
It was time to surgically remove that third nipple, so I wouldn’t cling to it as an excuse for never taking my shirt off in front of another man again.
That was why I purchased a journal at the Cleve airport bookstore and I was going to fill it with a list of all the reasons why we should always be Just Friends. Just friends who would be secretly married to each other for one more year, for reasons that had everything to do with friendship and absolutely nothing to do with romantic love or hot sex, or the fact that he had the most beautiful naked body I had ever blurrily-seen in person.
By the time my plane had landed on the tarmac at the Burbank Airport, I had had two Bloody Marys, filled twenty pages of my new journal with excellent reasons why I should fall out of love with my best friend, and I was feeling pretty darned optimistic about my future. I was particularly excited about my near future. I hadn’t told Theo about Andrew, because he was busy being a workaholic up in the Bay Area all week and I didn’t want to bother him. I would have our floor of the house to myself, so I was going to ask the cab driver to stop off at Ralphs on the way home so I could grab some donuts and maybe a package of sliced cheddar cheese, then I would slip into my jammies and listen to break-up songs while writing in my journal in bed. It was going to be glorious, and Theo wouldn’t be around to tell me that I should be having a raw cacao/fresh mint/avocado/chia seed/almond milk smoothie instead.
As I rolled my carry-on bag towards the little baggage claim/waiting area of Terminal B, I feasted my eyes upon something even more glorious than a box of donuts and cozy pajamas. An A-plus man butt in a nice pair of black jeans. It belonged to a guy who was talking on his cell phone, wearing a black baseball cap, which he had on backwards, and it was making my tummy do somersaults. Goodbye useless third nipple, hello marvelous man butt.
His tight white T-shirt was stretched across his back so that I could see the outline of his deltoid muscles—or were those the lats?—and who cares because oh the beautiful tanned muscular arms and oh the way he was standing was just so…OH. SHIT.
He turned around, spotted me, smirked when he caught me checking him out. He told whoever was on the phone with him that he had to go and hung up immediately, never taking his eyes off of me. He looked happy to see me, and then he remembered that he was here for me because I was supposed to be sad.
I remembered that I was sad about Andrew and I was sad because I needed to distance myself from Theo and I was sad that it was going to be so hard for me to do that when he was so fucking considerate although I was furious that I’d just accidentally eye-fucked him in public and mortified that he totally saw it.
He was supposed to be in Palo Alto, frantically working on a presentation for his key investors. What was he doing at the Burbank airport having a cute butt and seeing me ogle it?! He usually wore an old Toronto Blue Jays baseball cap. I guess I’d never seen those jeans on him before. I suppose that ever since we’d moved in together, I’d been forcing myself to avoid looking in the general direction of his butt when his butt was around. He’d been out of town so much those past few months, I actually didn’t recognize him.
I stopped two feet in front of him, frowning.
“I told Chloe not to tell Ethan.”
“Of course she told him. He’s her husband.” He put his arm around my shoulder and pulled me in—in a brotherly fashion. “And I’m your husband,” he said, so quietly that I barely heard him. Then he winked at me and squeezed me closer. “You should have told me.”
My body tensed up, fighting this for about three whole seconds, and then I dropped the handle of my luggage and wrapped my arms around him, buried my face into his chest and burst into tears. For the fifth time in twenty-four hours. I was a mess.
“I’m fine!”
“It’s okay to not be fine.”
“I know. I’m fine.”
“Hey, hey…” He held me close and rubbed my back. “I’m sorry. I want to kick Andrew in the head, but I’m sorry. I also want to punch him in the balls. Sorry.”
“I’m
not even mad at him,” I mumbled into his shirt.
“What?”
“Nothing.” If I told him I wasn’t mad at Andrew then I’d have to explain why, and I couldn’t do that. “I can’t believe you’re here.”
“I can’t believe you still don’t understand how awesome I am.”
I can’t believe you still don’t realize how aware I am of how awesome you are, you idiot.
“I’ll have to go back in the morning and pull an all-nighter tomorrow, but it’s cool. I gave my guys the night off too. This way, my best friend and my employees think I’m amazing. Win-win.”
“What a wonderful world. Why aren’t you wearing your Jays cap?”
“I didn’t have time to change when I got home. I don’t wear logos at work unless they’re my own.”
He grabbed my carry-on bag and slid his free arm around my shoulder. I clutched my handbag to my side, because therein hid my brand new Just Friends journal.
“What kind of mood you in? Moody Judy, Negative Nelly, Raging Granny or Daisy Denial?”
“Annoyed Annie.”
“Ah. I’ll let you project your annoyance onto me for about two minutes, but good luck with that once we get to my car.”
“Why—are you going to let me run you over with it?”
“I’m glad you still have your sense of humor.”
“I’m glad you don’t expect me to run you over. That will make it so much easier.”
While Theo was putting my bag in the trunk of his Prius, I walked over to the passenger side and felt my body tense up again, because DAMMIT he was right. I couldn’t be annoyed at him. Sitting on the passenger seat was a big teddy bear, a box of old-fashioned donuts, and a big package of sliced organic cheddar cheese.
I glanced over at him, frowning.
He was beaming and very proud of himself. He opened the passenger door for me, picked up the teddy bear, placed the donuts and cheese on the dashboard so I could get in. “Mi’lady.” He placed the teddy bear in my lap once I’d buckled my seatbelt.
I shook my head. Stop it. Stop being so freaking cute and perfect. Just stop it.
We didn’t say anything all the way home, as I finally relaxed and he quietly delighted in his own magnificence.
It’s less than an hour and a half flight time from Palo Alto to the Burbank airport. He would have had a car take him home, then picked up his own car, then stopped off at the market to get the cheese and donuts and probably bought the stuffed animal at a drugstore. He would have been on the phone with his employees the entire time. How is it possible that I knew him so well, but he had never stopped surprising me? How is it possible that he knew me so well but he had no idea how I really felt about him?
And yet, I knew that I would continue to hide my feelings as surely as I would eat all of that cheese and every single donut even though it would make me constipated for days.
I’ve been emotionally constipated for two years. Appropriate.
I burst out laughing at that thought.
Theo wrinkled his brow and glanced over at me as he pulled into the garage. He knew better than to ask me what I was laughing about. If I wanted him to know something I’d tell him.
When I’d put my bags and jacket and stuffed animal and donuts and cheese away in my room, and checked to make sure my level of airplane stink was not appalling, I found Theo leaning against the back of the living room sofa, waiting for me. He wasn’t even looking at his phone, he was just waiting.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hi.”
“So do you feel like talking about it or not?”
“Not.”
He nodded. “Okay.” He lifted his backwards baseball cap off his head, ran his fingers through his thick beautiful mess of hair, put the cap back on, then stroked his chiseled stubbly jaw with his fingers. “Is it okay if I say something?”
As long as it isn’t something wonderful that makes me fall more in love with you.
I shrugged my shoulders and shoved my hands into my front pockets.
He startled me by moving so quickly from the sofa, lunging towards me and wrapping his arms around my shoulders. “He shouldn’t have done that to you, Gem.”
I could barely breathe, he was holding me so tight. I wrapped my arms around his waist and this time I didn’t cry, because all I could feel was Theo. Theo’s biceps, Theo’s hands, Theo’s abs, Theo’s back, Theo’s deep voice vibrating through me when he said: “You’re the best person I know. No one should treat you that way.”
I laughed into his chest, because he was so concerned and what he was saying was so corny. “I’m really okay.”
He pulled back from me and lifted my chin up to face him. “I’m here for you, if you’re not okay. You know that, right?”
I nodded my head, but he looked at me so strangely.
“I mean I’m here for you,” he said again, only this time it seemed to mean something different. He looked confused, and I felt so confused, until suddenly I didn’t.
I knew exactly how I felt, and maybe, just maybe he was feeling the same way too?
He was lowering his face towards mine.
I tilted my head up, closed my eyes, offering my lips to him.
And then I felt his lips press against my forehead.
A forehead kiss.
He gave me a freaking forehead kiss.
I opened my eyes and shoved him away, humiliated.
He grabbed my wrist. “Hey.” He pulled me back towards him, but I tried to pull away and he grabbed my other wrist. He looked so perplexed. He never looked perplexed. Theo always had both feet on the ground and a good head on his shoulders. But right now it looked like I could knock him on his ass with two words.
Kiss me.
I didn’t say it, but I know my eyes did, they were daring him to.
I let him pull me in again, as he put his hands on my face and stared at my mouth.
And then the phone in his pants started playing Let’s Get It On by Marvin Gaye, and I thought: “Yes. Let’s!”
But he froze, and pulled his phone out from his back pocket to check the caller I.D. “Shit. Shit!” His hand went to his forehead. “I have to take this—shit. Sorry.” He answered as he head into his bedroom and shut his door.
Reason number 26 why we should only ever be Just Friends: That.
I’d never purposefully listened in on his calls before, but found myself pressing my ear up against the closed door, because this had already been the shittiest weekend ever so I might as well.
From what I gathered, he had forgotten that he had late-dinner plans with a girl and she was at the restaurant up in San Francisco, waiting for him.
His voice was so different with this phone girl. He was polite, but sexy and commanding. He apologized twice, not at all profusely, told her that something came up at home that he had to take care of, but he could see her after the big meeting with his investors. Until then, he was fully-booked. She probably hung up on him. I didn’t blame her. He called his assistant to ask him to have flowers sent to Carly in the morning. “Nothing extravagant—just two dozen yellow roses.”
Carly.
This guy, with his Nikkis and Carlys.
I hustled over to the kitchen, to pour a glass of milk to go with my donuts and fury. I expected that Carly would be equally perturbed when she received yellow apology roses. Yellow roses symbolize friendship. I was the one he should have been giving yellow roses to. If I were designing a set for a character who’s received flowers from a guy she’s boning, I would suggest peonies of any color (if they’re in season), or lavender roses (because they aren’t a cliché). But I would not be advising Theo on this matter.
By the time he emerged from his room, looking somewhat sheepish, I had perfected my I Couldn’t Care Less About This facial expression, but my voice betrayed me. “Everything okay up in the Frisco Bay?” I practically growled.
He shrugged. “Yes and no.” He didn’t quite join me in the kitchen. He approached the counter
between the kitchen and the dining area. Despite being a runner, when Theo Walker walked, he took long, slow strides. It was like he moved in slow motion so you could get a good look at how sexy and beautiful he was. It seemed to take forever for him to cross the room, and I was losing my carefully-cultivated resting bitch face. I could feel it morphing into the Angry Sexually Frustrated Platonic Friend face that would surely become my mask for the foreseeable future. He pressed his hands down on the countertop. The bulging veins in his arms only made me angrier.
“So you weren’t going to work all night tonight anyway.”
“I was going to go back to work after a late dinner.”
“After dinner or after ‘dessert?’”
He gave me a quizzical look and then deftly ignored my question.
“Seriously—do you even like these girls that you bone?” I’d never straight-out asked him this before.
He looked at me cautiously. “Why?”
I shrugged, ever so nonchalant. “Well, I’m a single girl now, I’m just psyching myself up, getting super excited about what it’ll be like to date all those awesome single guys out there.”
His jaw clenched and his whole body tensed up. “Well, I really can’t speak for all the awesome single guys out there.”
“Speak for yourself, then.”
“Of course I like them.” He sounded annoyed with me now. “I’ve just never fallen for any of them and I’ve never liked them more than I like my work, so I make it very clear to them up front that it’s just going to be a fling. If they want to get all mad or emotional that’s up to them.”
“Wow. You’re so evolved.”
He watched me. I stared down at my glass of milk.
“Gemma.”
“No.”
“We should—”
“Nope.”
There was a tapping on the patio door. Chloe and Ethan were on the back porch. Thank God. “Hey!” I rushed over to unlock the sliding door, thrilled by this interruption. Theo stayed where he was.
“Hey,” Chloe said, hugging me. “I hope it’s okay that he found out. I specifically told my idiot husband not to tell him.”
Green: a friends to lovers romantic comedy Page 4
