Leah liked watching animal documentaries. It was all so basic and instinctual. Especially the ones about mating. (They weirded Helena out.) “Survival of the fittest. Sometimes I wish this was how humans worked. I would totally be a lioness.”
Helena snorted. “You’d be a hyena.”
Leah flashed her a toothy grin. “Well, you’d be a meerkat.”
“Meerkats are awesome.” Helena bit into a hot pocket with an emphatic nod.
Leah didn’t argue. She was just glad they were getting along again. She poured herself some wine and settled into the corner of their new—oh my God, so comfortable—sofa.
“So, I know I haven’t said anything all week,” Helena began, “but congrats on finishing the twenty weeks.” She leaned over to give Leah a quick squeeze.
Dangit. She had been trying to avoid thinking about it.
“Thanks,” she said, and injected as much cheer into her smile as she could.
The thing was that along with feeling relief it was finally over, she also felt a little disappointed. Not because she wanted to go back—definitely not—but because the thought of never seeing Blue Eyes again made her twitchy. Especially after she’d acted on impulse and kissed the guy.
She didn’t regret kissing him—he had clearly enjoyed it—but she did sort of feel guilty for putting them in such an awkward position. She bit her lip, remembering the feel of his mouth, his body, his hand on her thigh. She had no doubt that he wanted to finish what she had started, and she wouldn’t mind in the least.
But unless she went back next week, it might as well have been a good-bye kiss.
God, she was in trouble.
“I thought for sure you’d quit after the first couple weeks,” Helena said. “Thanks for sticking with it.”
“Does this mean we’re okay now?”
Helena looked surprised. “We were always okay. I mean, I was furious with you, but I wasn’t going to throw you out.”
No one could loosen that ache in her chest better than Helena. Leah didn’t know what to say, but her best friend understood her well enough to give her another quick squeeze.
Content, Leah selected a hot pocket and felt the last of her worries about their friendship slip away.
“Has Jay asked you out yet?” she asked, waving her hot pocket through the air to try and cool it off more quickly.
To Leah’s amusement, Helena turned pink. “Yeah, right. Lord of the Eyebrows? Did you see how squeamish he got that one time you started talking about sex positions? He’s so straight-laced, it’s embarrassing.”
“You could fix that,” Leah said with a smirk.
Jay lived on the floor above them. He moved in a year after they did, but they only met about six months ago when they all wound up needing to use the apartment washer and dryer at the same time. Since then, Jay became Helena’s go-to guy when she needed something heavy moved and Leah paid him for his time in baked goods.
“Don’t even! I’d never be able to take him out in public unless he let me attack his eyebrows with tweezers.” She made a face, and stuck out her chin. “Not that I’d want to.”
“Oh my God,” Leah said, laughing. “You totally want him.”
Helena’s last boyfriend had been six months ago. She dumped him after finding out he was a serious pothead. She and Leah had always drawn the line at drugs, no matter how wild things got in the past.
Six months was more than enough time for Helena to get a new boyfriend. For a while, she’d had a different boy every month. The only reason Leah hadn’t turned the accusations of sex addiction back at Helena was because she knew for a fact Helena hadn’t slept with any of them. Leah could tell when her best friend had sex because she was always unbearably cheerful the next day.
“I do not. And it’s not like it matters anyway, because Jay isn’t interested.”
“The guy came over and assembled all your furniture for you,” she reminded Helena. “Even though the directions were in Japanese. And he listened to you yell at him while doing it.”
“So maybe he’s a masochist,” Helena said, even as she hid a smile behind her wine glass.
“Or you’re both just dense.”
“Like you’re an expert. You’ve never had a serious relationship in your life.”
To her annoyance, Leah immediately thought of Will and what it would be like to be with him. Not just sex, but to really be with him. When she didn’t immediately recoil at the thought, she frowned and bit off a large chunk of her hot pocket.
“Anyway, how’s Elijah?” Helena asked.
Leah took a sip of her wine to wash down the chewy bread that was always too thick at the edges. But hey, it beat her ramen, eggs, and hot dog diet of a couple years ago. “He’s fine. My mom already made him dinner, so I just made sure he did his homework.”
“Your mom was home?” Helena’s brows rose. She had been a huge help in Elijah’s earlier years when Leah had been learning hands-on, with little help from her mother, how to care for an infant and then a toddler, still being a kid herself.
“I know, right? She said she just wanted a quiet night in. Whatever.” She shrugged and didn’t mention how Elijah had smiled all evening. It had pissed her off. Even though Leah had all but raised him, she still couldn’t one-hundred-percent replace their real mom. But if their mom was going to be absent, then she should just be absent instead of occasionally giving Elijah false hope.
“Well, glad to hear he’s okay. I’ll have to visit soon. Or you could bring him around.”
Due to Helena’s busy schedule, she hadn’t seen Elijah in a few weeks, and he kept asking after her.
“Actually, we should take him out this weekend,” she said, finally reaching for the remote to switch the channel away from the carcass the lionesses had left behind, which was now being picked over by vultures and other scavengers. “I’m not working.”
“I’m taking him to the observatory on Sunday. You should come along.”
They lapsed into the first comfortable silence since that night Leah had screwed everything up. As Helena flipped through channels, Leah allowed her thoughts to return to what had happened at the meeting and what she wanted to do about it.
Of course, she didn’t have to do anything. It wasn’t like they had made any promises. She didn’t have to see him again.
But she wanted to. And she wanted to know his name. And to talk to him again. She had no idea what to do with that.
“What if...” Leah began, but then her face grew warm and she couldn’t continue.
“What?” Helena asked, putting down the remote. She had settled on a reality TV show about ghost psychics.
Leah bandied the words around in her head. It all sounded stupid any way she put it, so she blurted, “I know I’m banned from sex until you give me the okay, but what if I met someone?”
“Leah.” Helena’s voice held a warning tone like an air raid siren. “You just finished therapy.”
Leah winced. “I mean, really met someone.”
After a short pause, during which she could practically see the gears turning in Helena’s head, Helena’s eyes went wide. She leaned forward, clutching a beaded pillow against her chest. “As in … as in someone you think you could have a relationship with? That kind of ‘met’?”
Leah cringed. She was talking about feelings again. She hoped this wasn’t becoming a trend. “Maybe.”
“Wow,” Helena breathed, leaning back against the arm of the sofa. She turned her face into the pillow until only large brown eyes could be seen over the beaded edges. “You must really like this guy.”
“Enough,” she muttered.
Helena’s expression turned gleeful and she made a muffled squeal into the pillow. “Oh my gosh! You might actually learn how to care about a guy. You might even fall in love!”
“Okay, you’re getting way ahead of me here,” Leah said. She grabbed another pillow and smacked it against the one shielding Helena’s face. Who said anything about love? That was much
too strong a word to even think about yet for a guy she barely knew. Right now, she wanted him. And she couldn’t stop thinking about him and his voice and the way he looked at her or the easy way they’d talked about a less-than-easy topic.
She liked him. A lot. More than any guy she’d ever met.
“This has never happened in the ten years I’ve known you.”
“It’s never happened, full stop,” Leah said. Helena, on the other hand, had had enough boyfriends for the both of them, and she’d been in love no less than five times in the years since they’d met.
To Helena’s benefit, she had dumped one of them after he called Leah some choice words and demanded Helena choose between the two of them. She had been absolutely certain Helena would choose him because who in their right mind would pick her over the guy they claimed to love? She’d been shocked when Helena showed up at her parents’ estate and casually asked if she could sleep over before crying all over Leah’s bed. Leah might have cried too, but she’d deny it if Helena ever brought it up.
That might have been the moment she decided to hold onto Helena’s friendship no matter what. Besides Elijah, Helena was the one person who’d always been there for her without actually needing to be.
“So, what, you want to bring him with us on Sunday?” Helena asked, looking way too eager.
“Are you crazy? I’m not introducing him to you.” She hadn’t even decided yet if she wanted to see the guy again. She wasn’t about to bring him around to meet Elijah.
“What? Why?” Helena lurched forward until her face was inches from Leah’s. “I want to meet this guy! Details, Leah!”
Leah gave her friend a playful shove, and Helena retreated back to her side of the sofa. “I just wanted to make sure it was okay with you if … if I decided to pursue something. That’s all.”
With a giggle, Helena said, “You wanted my blessing?”
“Well, not anymore,” she said flatly.
Helena swallowed the rest of her laughter. “In that case,” she said, “I might make an exception, but Leah—” She drew a breath, and the humor faded from her face, which immediately made Leah wary. She looked concerned as she flattened the pillow in her lap and reached for her wine glass. “If you really like this guy, I don’t think you should just jump in bed with him. I know you don’t agree, but I really do think you have a bit of a problem in how you process emotion and sex.”
Leah wasn’t willing to go over this again with her, so she didn’t reply.
Helena continued on, “If you want something longer than one night with him, maybe you shouldn’t have sex. Not because I’m not okay with it. But because maybe you aren’t.”
Leah swallowed and looked down at her glass. For a moment, neither of them spoke, and the raised voices of the people on TV filled the silence.
Finally, Helena tossed the pillow aside and leaned forward to grasp Leah’s hand. “Just think about, okay?”
Before she could respond, Helena tugged at her fingers and raised them close enough to her face that she could examine Leah’s nails.
“You need a manicure. Wait here.” She hopped off the sofa and disappeared down the hall to retrieve her box.
Leah held out her hand, studying her nails, but all she could think about was the way it had felt to slide her fingers through his hair.
Chapter Nine
After a few days to clear his head and think about things objectively, Will realized he was an idiot. He was lucky the counselor hadn’t thrown him out of the program. If James found out what had happened, it was entirely possible Will would be reduced to doing nothing but checking footnotes until he graduated.
But that kiss … He couldn’t get it out of his head. It was easier to push it to the back of his mind during the day. But it rose, persistent, to the surface at night when he was left to nothing but the silence of his apartment and his own whirling thoughts. That moment when she had been pressed against him with only the barrier of their clothes to separate them remained suspended in his memory, a perfectly taunting reminder of what could have happened.
There was no point in denying that he liked her. More than that, he wanted to take her on a date. If sex was the issue, then they simply wouldn’t have sex.
Of course, one thing continued to bother him.
The object of his attraction didn’t know that he had come to the meetings as a fraud and that he had been taking note of everything. The only reason she opened up to him was because she believed him to be one of them. The longer he lied to her, the worse it would be when she discovered the truth. He had no doubt she would be furious. She seemed angry a lot of the time already.
Not to mention it was selfish wanting a girl who had problems with self-control and sex. Maybe she was really trying to get better, and it would be best if he didn’t go back to the meeting on Thursday.
But he knew that wasn’t even an option. He had to go back, and his job with James had nothing to do with it.
The kiss, his revolving thoughts, the guilt—it all wound round and round his head like the snake-patterned path that wended through campus and into the surrounding woods. An endless coil where you didn’t really know where you were going but couldn’t stop if you wanted to find your destination.
It took a few seconds of silence before he realized the sound of a pencil on sketch paper had stopped. He turned his head from where he was reclined on Finn’s sagging sofa to find the guy in question watching him from his scarred dinner table with one raised eyebrow.
“What?” Will asked, feeling self-conscious. Had his face given away his thoughts?
Finn shook his head and returned to drawing in his enormous sketchbook. Nearby, an easel featuring a half-finished oil painting stood on paint-spattered cloth to protect the floor. The painting sort of looked like a fish. A robotic fish. If you squinted and turned your head to the side. Will concluded it was abstract.
“You’re thinking about something really hard,” Finn said, sounding amused. “Nice change of pace, I bet.”
“Your quips have improved,” Will said, rubbing his forehead. He stacked his hands behind his head and returned to staring up at the speckled ceiling of Finn’s apartment. To keep Finn from further speculating on what he was thinking about, he said, “So tell me about this new role.”
“I’m playing the male lead,” Finn said.
Will could hear the smile in his voice, but there was something else there as well. He turned again to look at his friend. Finn was now staring intently down at his sketch. “All right? And?”
Finn wasn’t a drama major and, to the department head’s eternal frustration, Finn had no desire to be one. But he was such an expressive and talented actor that whenever the University put on a play, depending on the casting director, a part was always saved for Finn just in case. This time, apparently it was the lead. The actual drama majors probably weren’t happy about that.
“And it’s taking up a lot of time. So I’ve been staying up late to get my real work done.”
Will sat up and pushed off the sofa. “What are you drawing?”
Leaning back, Finn held up his sketchbook so Will could see. The girl on the page was skillfully rendered. The strands of her hair, the light reflecting in her eyes, the beauty mark on her jaw—the details jumped off the page. She was beautiful.
She also took up the vast majority of the other pages in Finn’s sketchbook.
“Her again,” Will said, leaning forward to get a closer look at Finn’s drawing. “Wow. That’s really good.”
“Thanks.” He sighed and dropped his sketchbook on the tabletop. Will gave him a sympathetic slap on the shoulder.
The girl’s name was Kat, and she was a drama major. He suspected the only reason Finn was so obliging of the drama professor was because it put him in close company with Kat, a gifted actress who often took leading roles in the University productions. Unfortunately, from what he’d heard, Kat was about as pleasant as chewing rusted nails. He was pretty sure she had no idea F
inn existed except in a peripheral way.
With Finn landing the lead role in this play, though, he had probably succeeded in getting her attention, although likely not in a positive way.
“Is she in the play too?” Will asked.
Finn nodded. “Female lead.”
“That’s great! Why are you shaking your head?”
“Because!” Finn shoved away his sketchbook and tossed his pencil on top of it. “She hates me. She doesn’t respect me because I’m not serious about acting and I’m taking the role from someone who’s actually passionate about it. And, I mean, she’s totally right.”
“Are you going to give it up?”
Finn shrugged. “I don’t know. I get to see her every other day now.” He dropped his head back and made a sound like a dying donkey. “And she already has a boyfriend. God, I’m pathetic.”
“A bit.”
His head snapped back up, his eyes narrowed. “You’re one to talk. You like someone at your sex therapy job, and you’re only there to spy on them.”
Squashing the immediate urge to defend himself, Will returned to his spot on the sofa.
“Technically, it’s research.” Which he supposed was a more acceptable, but no less culpable,
excuse for spying. “And I never said I liked anyone.”
“You’re transparent. Who is she? Is she older?”
Will sighed. Maybe talking about it would help exorcise the thoughts from his mind. “No,” he said. “She’s a student. She probably goes to REU actually, but I’ve never seen her on campus.”
“Hot?”
“Scorching,” he admitted.
“No wonder she’s a sex addict.”
He winced. “She sort of kissed me.”
Finn picked up the pencil he’d tossed down a moment ago and twirled it between his fingers. He gave a small laugh. “What do you mean ‘sort of’? How does a girl ‘sort of’ kiss you? Did she purse her lips at you?”
Will gave him a flat look, which only made Finn laugh again.
“Okay, smartass. She kissed me.”
“You’re getting way to comfortable with American swearing. So then what’d you do?”
Addicted to You Page 5
