“He wouldn’t have much option since I have the bedroom next door. But it’s more than that. He’s…” How could I put it? “Emotionally distant with them, I guess.”
“But not with you.” She pointed a red-tipped finger at me. “So this could be perfect.”
“Not with me now. While I’m his friend. But if we started sleeping together, who knows what would happen.” If it all went pear-shaped, I could lose my best friend. Not to mention my home and my icemaker. “I’d rather be his friend than his girlfriend, no question. They come and go, but I have him all the time.” I had a permanent Scarlett-shaped place in his life.
She leaned back and lifted her feet onto another chair, as if the problem was so big, she had to get settled in. “Okay, if getting involved is off the cards, then kissing was a mistake.”
“A monumental mistake,” I corrected.
“Okay, a monumental mistake. So what will you do now?”
“First, I have to stop thinking about it.” Given that had proven impossible so far, my optimism wasn’t high.
“That good, huh?” she asked with a goofy grin.
“Hell, yes.” I folded my arms on the table and dropped my head down.
She patted my head, as if I was a puppy, and gently asked, “And if you manage to stop thinking about it, what then?”
“I have no clue.” Even after spending all night thinking about it. “Something to get us back into the friend zone.”
“Okay, here’s an idea.” She sat up straight in her chair, and I looked up to see her fix me with a sure gaze. “You need a date, and quickly.”
A date? When I was this messed up? I shook my head. “I’m not sure I’m in the headspace for that right now.”
“Your headspace is exactly the problem. You need a date, and you have to kiss him. Then your most recent kiss flashback will be that guy, not Finn.” She crossed her arms and sat back, looking altogether very pleased with herself.
“Supersede him.” It made sense. Supplant one memory with another. Then I could go back to thinking of Finn as my roommate and friend and everything would be normal again. “Okay, I’ll do it. How do I find someone quickly?”
“How about David? I could set you two up on a date.”
Her boss, David, was gorgeous and successful, but he worked here. “If I’m trying to fix something where I’ve crossed a few boundaries, then the solution probably shouldn’t be to cross more boundaries.”
“You’re right. Someone away from work.” She tapped her chin as she thought, and I tried not to feel too pathetic at her having to find me a mercy date.
I glanced at the clock on the wall. It had been ten minutes already. “I have to get back to the front desk. But thanks for the chat.”
She grabbed my wrist. “I’ve got it. My boyfriend’s friend, Peter, just broke up with his girlfriend. I bet he’d love the chance to get out of the house and dip his toe back in the dating pool, so you’d be doing him a favor, too.”
“Sure, that would be great,” I said, pretending to be enthusiastic. “Thanks.”
“Just make sure you kiss him,” she called out as I reached the door. “Something that creates a new memory.”
I waved and hurried back to my desk with no conviction whatsoever that this plan would work. But it was the only plan I had, so it was at least worth a shot. Losing Finn from my life was not an option.
Finn
Turning my mountain bike into our street, I eased off on the speed. I usually biked to uni on weekdays because parking was difficult, but tonight it also served the purpose of exhausting my body. An exhausted body was a quiet body, and a quiet body would hopefully be unable to make suggestions about what it wanted to do to Scarlett when I got home.
Well, that was the theory. Once I’d dropped my bike off in the garage and found Scarlett up in her attic art room, painting, I realized exhaustion was going to be no help whatsoever.
She hadn’t seen me, which gave me a few moments to observe her in her element. She had purple paint smeared in her blond hair, and there was a glow coming from within as she painted—it was what she was meant to do with her life, I had no doubt. But other than the glow, her face was filled with the emotions she was infusing into the painting. That was the thing about Scarlett—she wore her heart on her sleeve, let everyone know what she was thinking. The complete opposite of me.
Girlfriends had accused me before of being aloof, and I supposed that was a fair call. I’d had a hard time letting anyone get close since my parents died. My sisters were different—I was halfway between a brother and a parent to them, and there was nothing I wouldn’t do for either one of them. It had been a rocky road for all three of us, but we’d muddled through—Billie, with the tried and true teenager coping mechanism of locking herself in her room with her music up loud, and Amelia with her dancing.
And I’d had my history books.
Any spare moment my sisters hadn’t needed me had been spent with the people of ancient Greece, Egypt, Rome, and Mesopotamia. Modern people—school principals, dance teachers, extended family wanting to help but not knowing how—were more problematic.
Things were different with Scarlett, probably because of the way we’d met—she was the only new person I’d really let past my guard since I was eighteen. She’d become family. An honorary little sister. Obviously she wasn’t a real sister, so it had been a little tricky at first. There are certain rules a guy needs to have in place to keep a friendship alive with someone he finds attractive. To keep the relationship firmly in the friend zone.
The walls around our relationship had worked out well for four years. They kept me seeing her as my friend Scarlett, not as a gorgeous girl.
Until that kiss…
Now we had a problem.
I could have My Friend Scarlett, who I saw as a little sister, who was as important to me as the rest of my family.
Or I could kiss her again, maybe even sleep with her, and turn her into someone I could date. Potential Girlfriend Scarlett.
But I couldn’t have both.
Potential Girlfriend Scarlett would have an expiration date. Even if I wanted it differently, I knew myself. As soon as physical intimacy happened, I shut down the emotional connection. I’d tried to not do it a couple of times, but it was pretty much beyond my control. Some sort of self-defense thing kicked in within minutes of sex finishing.
So there was no other choice I could make. Scarlett had to go back into the Friends Only box. And I had to stop thinking about that kiss. Or thinking about taking it further. With her naked. In my bed.
As if she’d heard my thoughts, she suddenly looked up and our gazes collided. They held, for about three seconds too long, before she finally looked away.
“Hey, thanks for that lesson last night,” she said brightly over her shoulder. “I think I’ll be fine from here on.”
I cleared my throat. “Okay, good to hear.”
“My friend at work, Cathy—I think you’ve met her a couple of times?—she’s going to set me up on a date with her boyfriend’s friend. So I’ll get to try what you taught me out on him.”
“That’s, er…great,” I mumbled. Everything inside me screamed to stop Scarlett from trying out anything on some random guy, but that was me thinking about Potential Girlfriend Scarlett. Since she was My Friend Scarlett, I should be glad she was moving forward.
I smiled, knowing it was probably more of a grimace. Needing to change the subject, I glanced at her canvas. She followed my line of sight then jumped into action, turning the easel away. “You can’t see!”
This time I grinned properly. It was a teddy bear, and my birthday was coming up. Given that she’d painted me a teddy bear for all the birthdays and Christmases since we’d met, it was a reasonable assumption the painting was for me.
“You know I don’t even like teddy bears, right?” I said for the forty-fifth time.
“Just because you don’t like them, doesn’t mean you don’t need them in your life,” she replied, the same as she always did.