Just a Boyfriend Read online

  Bash looked concerned. “Does it bother you?”

  “What? No! But I mean, does he know he wasn’t there to meet Bethany?” I handed him back the phone, again being careful to avoid any sort of physicality.

  “I’m not sure. I think so. Either way, I think he’s attempting to warn me off Bethany. The picture is so I don’t get any ideas. Which is unnecessary.”

  Why did I feel so relieved to hear that? “At least last night was good for something. For all we know we might have just introduced Todd and Bethany to their future spouses.”

  Bash swallowed a big bite, nodding. “Maybe we can hire ourselves out as reverse matchmakers. Can’t find love? Come on a double date with us and find the man of your dreams! Hint, it won’t be me.”

  As if. I nearly laughed out loud, but managed to refrain. Bash was the man of every woman’s dreams. He had starred in mine quite frequently.

  But of course, I couldn’t say that.

  So instead my brain decided to say something stupid. “We can only do it for a fee, of course. Bethany gave me her notes and some cookies to get me to convince you.”

  “She bribed you? With cookies?”

  “Crap. I wasn’t going to tell you that part. And don’t think of them as a bribe. Think of them as motivating incentives.” Chocolaty good ones that I was glad Bash never got to taste. Because if he had, I was pretty sure he would have been sitting here with Bethany instead of me.

  “Huh.” Bash rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “It sounds like you owe me some cookies.”

  Which, of course, brought me back to my not-so-subtle attempts to flirt with him last night, telling him he owed me a dessert and how he hadn’t reacted to my moves at all, and so I didn’t say anything in response.

  I just ate instead. Eating in companionable silence was something Bash and I had always done really well.

  “How’s your steak?” he asked as he cut into his salmon. “It looks delicious.”

  I held my fork and knife protectively over my meat, and he laughed.

  “Don’t worry,” he reassured me. “I’ll go get some of my own. I’m not Woodby. I know better than to ask you to share.”

  He always made me laugh, and filled me up with so much delight that I couldn’t help but ask, “Do you know what I love best about you?”

  What? How had I just said that? I didn’t say loved, past tense. I’d said love. As in right now. This very moment. I held my breath, wondering what he would say in response.

  But he didn’t seem to notice how I’d misspoken or that my cheeks were turning a bright red as he contemplated a response.

  “My devastating good looks? My incredible strength? Or my amazing dexterity and ability to tackle anyone, anywhere, anytime? My killer sense of humor? My willingness to drive you to the airport or help you move into a new apartment? Or is it my ability to eat the contents of an entire McDonald’s menu in one sitting?”

  I laughed again, my stomach hurting from laughing so hard. Heaven help me, I loved all of those things about him.

  When I could breathe again I said, “Actually, it’s your humility.” Now it was his turn to laugh, but I continued on before I lost my nerve. “You don’t try to monitor my eating habits. I can’t even tell you how many guys I’ve gone out with who acted like they were the food police and it was their personal responsibility to watch every bite that went in my mouth. Like I have some secret sign on my forehead that said, ‘On a diet, please help and monitor my choices.’”

  He actually stopped eating to stare at me, like he couldn’t believe that what I’d just said was true. “Are you serious?”

  I nodded. “I don’t know where it comes from or why some guys do it, but I don’t need their help. So thank you for not trying to correct me.” Like Woodby had done last night.

  “That would kind of make me a hypocrite, don’t you think? Besides, I like the way you enjoy things.” It was this kind of intimate remark that made my heart pound hard against my ribs, but then he waggled his eyebrows as if he meant it as a joke, and I didn’t know how to respond.

  Bash said, “I’ll get some of that steak the next time I get up.” Which was going to be soon, given his rate of consumption.

  “Tsk-tsk. Were you not paying attention last night? Eating meat is killing our planet.” It was one of the very fun things Woodby had shared while I was trying to enjoy my dinner. “But to be honest, I don’t want to live on the planet without meat.” Which I knew Bash got, because he would eat until the cows came home. And then he would eat them, too.

  He agreed with me by saying, “You are preaching to the choir. And I’ll be right back.”

  I trained my eyes on my food so that I would not watch him walk away, given that his perfectly sculpted rear end was right in my sightline. Okay, fine. I might have stolen a peek or two.

  Or twenty.

  When he returned, he put a bowl filled with chocolate soft-serve ice cream covered in Reese’s Pieces in front of me. Just the way I liked it.

  A light, fluttery feeling roosted in my chest. He had remembered. I was so touched by his thoughtfulness that I wasn’t sure what to say. I couldn’t read too much into this, could I? “I, um, wasn’t done with dinner. I can’t have dessert yet.”

  “That’s the beauty of the buffet, E. You can have dessert whenever you want and still have more dinner. But as you’ve reminded me, I owed you a dessert.”

  My heart stuttered and came to a stop before bursting back to life. He’d called me E. Probably without even realizing it. Just a slip of the tongue, I told myself. It hadn’t meant anything. An old nickname that had surfaced for absolutely no reason at all.

  I also needed to ignore him mentioning owing me a dessert. Because that wasn’t a reference to my sad attempt at flirting last night, was it?

  Bash was a thoughtful guy who did nice things for people. That was it. I wasn’t allowed to try and read more into it.

  His phone buzzed loudly, and he picked it up to look at the screen. He frowned slightly. “Sorry. I hate when people do this. Let me turn it off.”

  As he shut it down, jealousy spiked through me as I wondered who had texted him and why.

  “That was from Woodby,” he said, without me having to ask for an explanation. Another thing I liked about Bash. He didn’t try to hide things. What you saw was what you got. “He now apparently thinks he needs to thank me, and he plans on doing this by fixing my ‘nutritional issues.’ He’s recommended a detox juicing cleanse that will, for a fact, clear out all my toxins.”

  “Again, I don’t think this guy knows what facts are, and juice detoxes are not a real thing. You may temporarily lose some weight, but wheatgrass, acai, and guavas are not going to clean out anything except your wallet.” I took a big bite of my ice cream, sighing as it made its delicious way down my throat. “Maybe I should do a retox. That’s where I plan on introducing lots of bad toxins into my body and seeing what happens.”

  “Are you hoping for some kind of superhero outcome?”

  “Mm-hmm. I’ll be able to eat all the junk food I want, and I’ll get the power to not gain weight. I’ll call myself Super Caterpillar. Because those things eat constantly and still turn into butterflies.”

  “But you’re already a butterfly.” He said it with his trademark grin, and the combination of his words and that smile made my heart feel like it was an actual butterfly, light and fluttery and about to take flight.

  I had to remind myself that Bash was a natural flirt. It was what he did. He couldn’t help but be charming and adorable. It didn’t mean anything. I needed to stop reading into this situation.

  “Yeah, well, when it comes to eating, someday we’re going to have to stop eating like this. When we’re no longer practicing or training every day and our metabolisms are shot. Or else we’re going to have some weight issues.”

  Bash lifted up his shirt and patted one of his hands against his washboard abs. “I think I’ll be okay for a while.”

  My mouth went dry, my ey
es practically bugged out of my head, and I wondered how rude it was to blatantly ogle him, considering he was the one showing off. I heard Deja warning me in my head about boys who worked for six-pack abs, but I did not care what the implications were. Only that Bash was seriously the hottest guy in the entire universe.

  And also, that I had not made an appropriate response to his statement.

  “Yep,” was all I could manage by way of agreement that his perfectly sculpted stomach was A-okay. Why was it suddenly so hot in here? It was snowing outside, and I was eating ice cream. How could I be sweating?

  When it became obvious that I currently lacked the ability to start up a conversation, Bash asked me about my major, what kind of classes it entailed, the requirements. “Like, do you still have to take a foreign-language class?”

  “Yeah. It’s called math.”

  His laughter was starting to help my too-thick tongue to shrink in size, but he was still doing the heavy lifting. “I have to say, I’m surprised that you’re not planning on being a writer. I remember how I used to see you in the hallways at school, writing in a notebook. I always wondered what you were writing.”

  Um, mostly odes to how hot he was. “I did use to do that. I can’t believe you remember that.” But then another thought occurred to me, something that I couldn’t make line up with our past timeline. “But I did that before you and I, you know . . .” I was ridiculous. I couldn’t even say when we used to date.

  He rolled some lo mein around his fork like spaghetti noodles. “I noticed you a long time before I worked up the courage to talk to you.”

  My heart butterfly mutated into one big enough to take down New York City, making it impossible for me to breathe. I was about to say something sappy and really embarrass myself. I would ignore those giddy, sighing feelings I was having that made me want to climb over this table and throw my arms around his neck. Because seriously, he had noticed me for a long time? He was afraid to talk to me? He might have had a crush on me for as long as I’d had one on him?

  When and why had all of that changed?

  Needing to keep things lighter and more platonic, I ignored my heart, which was currently begging me to ask him questions. What had we been talking about before? Right. My major. “I got into nursing after my mom’s first round of chemo. The nurses in the oncology department were so amazing that I decided I wanted to do that for other people. Besides, it’s really hard to make a living as a writer, and I enjoy things like having a place to live and stuff to eat. And because it was my dad’s thing.”

  I hadn’t meant to say the last part out loud. I’d never admitted that to anyone before. I loved reading, I had adored writing. But writing was what my father had been famous for, and the absolute last thing I wanted was to follow in his footsteps. Or for him to get any posthumous credit for how I turned out as an adult.

  “That makes sense.” Bash nodded. “But poetry’s not the same thing as fiction. I know that because while I have loved many books, I can’t think of a single poem that I love.”

  It proved nothing and was utter nonsense, but I appreciated him trying to make me feel better. “All poems? Even the ones that start with there once was a girl from Nantucket?”

  “I will confess to a certain amount of admiration for limericks,” he said with a wink.

  “Well, I’ll confess that I know it’s stupid and I shouldn’t care what anyone else thinks. But I don’t want people to draw comparisons between me and him. I mean, if I was a good enough writer to even get published.”

  “That’s silly. You’re good at everything you do,” he said, and I could hear the sincerity in his voice. Even if it wasn’t true, he meant it. My mutant-butterfly heart started banging against my rib cage, trying to get free and go to him. “I get it, though. Coach has rules about not partying, and it’s been surprisingly easy to keep. I never wanted to drink or do drugs because I didn’t want to end up like my mom. And yet, that’s why I got featured on ISEN when my last coach kicked me off the team. For listening to an idiot teammate who said it worked for him and thinking it was a good idea to use marijuana to try and fix my medication problems. It’s now what I’m known for.”

  Without thinking I reached across the table and put my hand on top of his. “That is not what you’re known for. You’re one of the best inside linebackers in the entire country. You’re a good person with a big heart. You are kind and sweet and a good son and a good brother. And a good friend.”

  He turned his hand over so that we could hold hands for a moment. He squeezed gently, and I was filled with so much warmth and love for him that I had to pull away before I did something idiotic.

  “Thank you.” He stared at the plate in front of him for a minute. “Did you know that my mom contacted me?”

  “What?” I did not know that. I remembered all of the pain he’d carried around with him as a teenager over his mom leaving their family. It had been something we’d bonded over, how we’d felt betrayed by two of the most important people in our lives.

  “Yeah. Basically she apologized, like it wasn’t too little too late. And then she said that she wanted to see me and Marley and that she’s gotten her life together and remarried. And I have a half brother and sister she wants us to meet.”

  I was stunned. While my father had left and died not long after, I knew that some secret part of Bash had always hoped his mother would return. I had sometimes wondered if that was why he had moved out after our parents had married. Because a sad little boy inside him still wanted his mom to come home.

  “Wow. I don’t even know what to say.” He had left his hand on the table, palm still up, and I wanted so badly to put my hand back on his. To share what strength and compassion I had for him and his situation.

  Bash cleared his throat. “Nobody here knows about her. Not even my roommate. I talk about her like she’s still in my life. Stuff like, ‘my mom always says.’ As if she’s around and giving me any kind of advice.”

  “Why do you think you do that?”

  “I don’t know. Shame? Embarrassment that my own mom doesn’t want to be around me?”

  His voice caught, and it shattered whatever reserves I had about not comforting him. I took his hand again, and this time he gripped it, like I was his lifeline.

  “She does want to be around you,” I reminded him. “Maybe you should hear her out. See what she has to say about why she did what she did.” Maybe, if she was an actual human being with any sense of decency, she could give Bash some peace of mind. I knew he had often blamed himself for her leaving, as little kids do even when they rationally understand as adults that it wasn’t their fault.

  Maybe she could heal that piece of his heart that she had broken by leaving.

  He still squeezed my hand tightly, as if he’d forgotten how big and strong his hands were. “I’ve been thinking about it.”

  “I’ll go with you.” I should have regretted the words, but I didn’t. I knew how much she’d hurt him and how much he needed to heal. I would be happy to stand by him as he talked to her.

  So much for me keeping things light and platonic. I might as well have just told him I was still in love with him and always would be just to pile on to his emotional trauma.

  “Thanks.” The word was soft and heartfelt. Then he finally let my hand go, and I saw the change in his eyes, heard it in his voice, as he threw up his defense mechanisms and shifted from being sad to upbeat. “Tell me more about what’s been going on with you. Any shows you’ve binged recently that you’d recommend?”

  In between getting up to go grab more food, Bash and I talked. Really talked, in a way that we hadn’t in years. It made me feel like I was seventeen years old again, crazy in love, and wanting to know everything I possibly could about the person sitting across the table from me. We talked about TV shows and movies, his favorite football teams (go Seahawks and Jacks!), caught each other up on some of the things that had been going on in our lives the last few years, our classes at school, my part-
time job at the library, Bash’s declaration that bacon was the greatest food achievement of mankind (while I argued that it was actually cake), the kind of training we were doing for our teams, how I’d dealt with my mom’s cancer, which then led us into some dangerous territory. How things were going with our respective parents and our siblings.

  “Speaking of family,” he said, “my dad invited us up next week to take part in the Sebastian Thanksgiving football bowl.”

  “Shouldn’t that be at Thanksgiving?”

  “Since we didn’t have it last year, they wanted to get together and do one now. You should come and play with us.”

  I knew about the game because I’d celebrated the holiday with Bash’s family before (even though he wasn’t there). But I’d never participated in the game. I glanced at the windows behind us. “They do know it’s snowing, right?”

  “Sometimes it snows at Thanksgiving, too, and we still play. Maybe it’ll clear up in time for next week.”

  That was entirely possible. The weather in Washington State was often bipolar.

  But given all the feelings I was currently catching, I wasn’t sure that returning to my childhood home, a.k.a. the scene of our relationship’s biggest crime, was in the best interest of my emotional health. “I have a lot of work to do.”

  “My apologies,” he said with a flourish of his hand.

  “Apologies?” I repeated.

  “I didn’t realize you were a chicken. Afraid to play with the big boys.”

  While I knew what he was doing, I still responded. “I’m no chicken. And I am coming, and I am going to play, and I’m going to tackle you so hard your teeth will rattle.”

  “Ha. The last thing you tackled was a bag of Doritos.”

  Now I was definitely going. I was going to play opposite Bash’s team, and I was going to win just so that he would have to eat his words.

  Judging by his laughter from my expression, he knew what I was thinking.