Just a Boyfriend Read online

  “Would you mind asking him? We’ve got so much going on today I don’t want to forget. You know how my chemo-brain works. And it’s time for dinner. Did you find that platter?”

  The platter. In my hurry to escape Bash, I had totally forgotten it. And there was no way I was going back to get it. “Didn’t see it. Sorry.”

  Letting out an exasperated sigh, Mom left.

  Lauren grinned maniacally at me from across the room. I had forgotten she was even there.

  “What are you smiling about?”

  “This is going to be so good,” she said. “I can’t wait for all the drama.”

  “Okay, that’s enough from the peanut gallery. I already told you that there’s nothing going on with me and Bash. This dance thing doesn’t change that.”

  “If you say so.” Lauren smirked again. “But if you do get pregnant, I think you should name your first daughter after me, the sister who called it and saw it all coming.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  EMBER

  My mother reluctantly tasked me with rounding up the Sebastian clan and directing them into the dining room to the table of food they’d set up buffet-style. People were going to have to sit wherever they could find room. There wasn’t enough table space.

  I came across Bash in the family room, where he was being tackled by a bunch of tiny people. They were all laughing, and Roscoe was busy licking Bash’s face, since he was on the floor.

  My hand went over my heart, as if I could keep it in my chest. This strange surge of energy started in my feet and head simultaneously and then melded together dangerously close to my heart. I didn’t stop to examine what the feeling was because, seriously, how were my ovaries supposed to stand the sight of him wrestling with a bunch of giggling toddlers while my puppy licked his face? It was too much.

  Another thing I loved about him. He was capable of such gentleness and tenderness, which was sometimes at odds with his appearance. He was ferocious on the field. Nobody hit as hard or as often as he did. But then those same large hands that would pull a wide receiver to the ground could also hold a toddler above his head so softly and carefully.

  It did make me momentarily sad that Bash might not get to meet his new siblings. They would adore him.

  I cleared my throat when my powers of speech returned. “Time for dinner!”

  Bash got up off the floor, shooing the children toward the direction of the dining room. They happily scampered off, Roscoe in tow.

  “Hey, after you grab some food, I need to talk to you,” he said.

  “Well, that’s good. Because I need to talk to you, too.” His eyebrows rose in surprise at the anger in my voice. And I didn’t know what I was most mad about—that he was adorable and children loved him, that he knew how to ballroom dance and hadn’t mentioned it, or that I had been talked into dancing with him and was equal parts dreading it / looking forward to it with so much anticipation that it felt a little like Christmas.

  I stomped off toward the dining room, waiting for my turn in line. Bash stayed at the back, which was probably a good thing so that the rest of us would have a chance to eat.

  The kitchen, dining room, family room, and formal living room filled up really quickly. So I took a spot on the stairs. I probably would have risked sneaking off to my room if I thought my mother wouldn’t notice.

  Bash found me. Because of course. “Is that seat taken?”

  I scooted over as close to the wall as I could, but it made no difference. As soon as he sat next to me on the step, the side of his body was flush against mine, and everything inside me melted at his touch. I tried to ignore it, but couldn’t.

  He asked, “Have you said anything to Lauren about my mom? And the letter?”

  I was so fixated on the points of contact between us and how good it felt to be touching him that I had to concentrate in order to comprehend what he was saying. “No. Why would I say anything to Lauren?” It wouldn’t have been any of her business. Not to mention that I was currently annoyed with her.

  “Please don’t say anything. My dad hasn’t given Marley her letter yet. He’s waiting to see whether or not I want to get in contact first, and then he’ll go from there.”

  “Oh. What do you think you’ll do?”

  “There are a lot of things I have to figure out,” he said, and his words sounded heavy and dramatic. “But I haven’t decided yet. I need to. Decide. And deal with the fallout from there.”

  His words pierced my heart, and I wasn’t sure why. For some reason it felt like he was talking about me, even though he’d given me no indication that he was.

  “Deciding’s not really one of my strengths,” he said conspiratorially. “I’m much better with avoiding things.”

  That one stung. “Yeah, I noticed.”

  He seemed to realize his mistake as I stood up. “E, wait.”

  “I have to go put some more laundry in.” Now I was the one avoiding him. I had so little dignity left that I needed to fight hard for the bits I still possessed. I moved my wet clothes to the dryer and started another load of my delicates.

  By the time I’d regained enough of my composure to go back downstairs, it seemed the family football game was about to start. As Bash had predicted, the weather had cleared up. The snow had mostly melted, but it was still cold. Mom had set up a hot-chocolate station on a table in the backyard. Some of the younger kids were busy filling their Styrofoam cups with more marshmallows than liquid.

  Lauren and Marley had set up a couple of foldable outdoor chairs, and Marley had an entire pumpkin pie on her lap. “I read somewhere that guys don’t like smart girls,” she said.

  “Then I must be a genius,” Lauren responded.

  “What kind of patriarchy nonsense is this?” I felt compelled to intervene. “If a guy thinks you’re too smart, then he’s a loser, and you deserve someone a thousand times better. If they don’t appreciate what amazing women you are, then screw them.”

  “Oh, we know,” Marley assured me. “There’s a Valentine’s Day dance a couple of weeks from now, and we’re commiserating over the fact that we haven’t been asked.”

  “How is that possible?” Was every guy at their school blind? Okay, Lauren I kind of got. Even if she was beautiful and funny, she could be scary when she wanted to be and would easily swallow a man whole. But Marley was outgoing and bubbly and gorgeous. Teenage boys were the worst.

  Especially the one I’d been in love with.

  They didn’t have a chance to respond to my question before I continued on. “Plus, you guys are only sixteen. You have all the time in the world.” To find a man who would make them constantly question themselves and whether or not they were good enough.

  I should have taken my own advice. I should have forgotten about Bash and moved on. I had tried, honestly. It was just so much harder with him here.

  In my mom’s backyard.

  He stood in the midst of a group of men and some women. My eyes were drawn to him automatically, like he was a flashing neon sign that I couldn’t ignore.

  There seemed to be two camps of players—ones who were taking this seriously and wanted to win, and the other group, who just wanted to have a good time. No one could agree on how to choose teams, leaving them at a loud standstill.

  “Did you have a boyfriend at sixteen?” Marley asked me.

  “No, I didn’t. I was focused on volleyball and school.”

  “You’re saying you didn’t have a boyfriend, at all, when you were in high school?” Lauren gave me a pointed look, as if she already knew the answer.

  Little minx. Did she know something? Or was she just guessing? Either way, it felt like we were bordering on dangerous territory.

  I was saved by a mom interruption. She handed me a hot chocolate. “Would you go take this to Ian?”

  “Bash can get his own hot chocolate.” I took a sip of it. Delicious.

  “Ember, stop. I really want to make a concerted effort to make Ian feel welcome. To remind him t
hat this is his home. You especially need to make that effort.”

  Me especially? When had it become my job to make Bash feel welcome in his own house? Sighing, I headed out into the throng of people. I wondered why my mother was suddenly so gung ho about Bash. Did she suspect something? Or did she just think it was somehow my fault that he didn’t want to come home?

  I wondered if Doug had had a similar conversation with Bash. Was this why he was suddenly trying to be my friend? To make his dad happy?

  Now I really wanted to tackle him.

  I handed the cup to Bash. “This is from my mom. So you’ll stop being a baby and come home more often.” I paused. “That last part was from me.”

  “Yeah, I saw you enjoying my drink over there.” He smiled and took a big gulp, and I wondered how it didn’t burn the inside of his mouth. “I’m glad you’re here. We’re choosing teams. You should be on mine.”

  “No way. If I’m playing, I’m on the other team, whoever that is.”

  This somehow made his smile even bigger. “That works for me.”

  I didn’t need his permission to choose the team I’d be on. I got on the serious player team, which I figured didn’t bode well for me since I’d never actually played football before.

  My team had the ball first and conferred for a few minutes about who would be doing what. My job was to block or to try to get to the quarterback, depending on whether we were offense or defense. After the roles were handed out, we lined up, and members of the fun team called out who they had.

  “I’ve got Ember!” Bash said, lining up in front of me.

  “That’s hardly what I’d call a fair fight,” I said.

  “All’s fair in love and football.”

  Then the game started, and while the defense counted before rushing the quarterback, I quickly discovered just how unfair it was. Despite me using all of my considerable height and strength, Bash easily bypassed me on each play and got to the quarterback.

  When his team went on the offense, it only got worse. When I tried to get around him, he wrapped his arms around me, making it so I couldn’t move.

  “Hey!” I protested, but I couldn’t help but laugh at how ridiculous he was. I’d gone into this game annoyed at him, but his teasing playfulness lightened my spirits.

  “Is something wrong?” he wondered aloud. “Why aren’t you getting the ball?”

  Then during the next play, he grabbed me by the waist and threw me over his shoulder. I couldn’t stop laughing and kept trying to call for fouls, but nobody seemed to be paying any attention to us. I was so tall that I’d often loomed over other guys, and I loved the way Bash felt so much bigger and stronger. How he made me feel delicate and feminine.

  So while everybody else played, Bash and I messed around. I hadn’t had this much fun in a long time.

  Until it was the last play of the game. My team huddled up because we had the ball, and if we scored, we would win. Which was very important to the serious players.

  Our captain, whose name was Chad or Brett or something like that, leaned in. “Bash is our biggest problem. We’ve got to keep him away from our QB so we can score. We need to distract him.”

  One of the teenage boys said, “Maybe Ember can flash him or something. But then everybody on the field would be distracted.”

  He said it matter-of-factly, as if this were a viable option, and while I was saying, “Hi, I don’t need my boobs to play football,” all of the older men around him were correcting him and directing him to apologize to me. He did so sheepishly.

  “Awful suggestion aside, I think Ember could successfully distract Bash. What do you think?” one of the older guys on the team asked.

  Chad/Brett directed his response to me. “You could tackle him if you catch him off guard. Just go low, aim for his midsection. Hit with your shoulder, and just drive.”

  “Tackling’s against the rules,” someone else said.

  “In case you haven’t noticed, Bash hasn’t really been following the rules.”

  “That’s true. I vote tackling him, then.”

  No, Bash hadn’t been following the rules. Instead he’d been driving my internal temperature up to volcanic levels by grabbing and holding me close. Even if it had been done playfully.

  Maybe flashing him wasn’t too bad of an idea, after all. He deserved a little payback.

  But I had promised him earlier that I would tackle him. And I liked being a woman of my word, so . . .

  “I’ll give it a try,” I told them.

  We lined up, and Bash waited once the ball was snapped, counting until he could run at the quarterback. He wasn’t even looking at me.

  I knew I had little chance of success but decided to try it anyway. I’d spent most of my time attempting to bypass him so that when I did decide to run straight at him, he wasn’t prepared for it. I forgot to aim low like my teammates had advised me, and I crashed straight into his chest, wrapping my arms around him and throwing all my weight against him. I totally knocked him over!

  And then we were falling together. I felt Bash’s arms go around me as he landed flat on his back. He made a sound on impact, but his arms stayed tight, locking me in place.

  Keeping me from getting hurt. My face hovered over his, and his eyes were closed. Wow. Had I hurt him?

  “Is tackling fair game now?” he asked, his expression amused as his eyes reopened.

  “I was supposed to distract you.” It was the only thing I could think to say being pressed against him like this. Bash was everywhere, enclosing me completely, and I couldn’t get enough. I loved the feeling of his hard strength against my curves. My heart was beating erratically. I’d thought it was from the running, but I knew it was all due to his nearness.

  “Good job,” he murmured.

  “Told you I’d tackle you.”

  He had a lazy grin. “Yes, you did.”

  We had been lying together for longer than what would have been normal or comfortable. But one of his cousins had scored a touchdown, giving my team the victory, and everybody else was either cheering or booing said cousin as he did a victory dance in the makeshift end zone.

  “You guys lost.”

  “I don’t know.” His voice came from deep inside his chest, making my insides tingle. “Right now it feels like I won.”

  My stomach tightened, and my breaths came out shaky and uneven. Won what?

  “Just think. Someday,” Bash said, “when I’m playing on an NFL team, you’ll be able to tell people that you tackled the leader in that season’s tackles.”

  Someday, when our lives were totally separate again. Because we didn’t have a future together. Suddenly I realized how this would look if anybody was paying attention to us.

  “We should, um, probably get up now.” I was happy where I was, but other people might get the wrong idea.

  “Right.” He reached up, and I felt his fingers against the side of my face as he brushed some hair out of the way, tucking it behind my ear. I wanted so badly to turn my head and press my cheek against his hand, or leave a kiss on his palm.

  I loved the feeling of him underneath me, the raw power that ran through his muscles, his heartbeat thundering beneath mine. Knowing that he could pick me up and carry me off without even straining himself was a really heady feeling.

  I was quickly losing control and was about to do something stupid. In front of everyone.

  “You can let go of me now.” I whispered the words, but it seemed to finally get through his head.

  “Oh. Yes.” His arms went slack, and he rolled to the side so that we could both get up. He stood up first and offered me his hand, but I ignored it. I brushed off my jeans when I stood and headed back toward the house. Bash got caught in the tide of people celebrating the win or lamenting the loss, and I could feel his eyes on me as I walked away.

  Lauren was sitting alone with an empty pie pan and said, “Just so you know, you and Bash are solely responsible for half of this pie being gone.”

 
; “What does that even mean?”

  “How long has this thing been going on for?”

  “What thing?” I asked in exasperation. Why was she being so weird and cryptic?

  “This thing with Bash. Recently? Since you were in high school?”

  “There is no thing with Bash. You’re like Roscoe with a bone, and you’re kind of driving me crazy.”

  She had on her best “wise woman” face. “You should never let anyone drive you crazy. Because crazy is always much closer than you think, and the walk’s good for you. And I am officially shipping you guys harder than FedEx.”

  My nerves were still trying to settle after the Bash encounter, and I didn’t have time for Lauren’s nonsense. Plus, thanks to the empty pan in her lap, now I wanted pie.

  I left without saying anything else. It didn’t matter if Lauren was suspicious or not. She might have loved drama, but I couldn’t see her causing any for no reason. She didn’t want to hurt or upset our mom, either.

  I found an untouched chocolate silk pie in the fridge and helped myself to it. I also grabbed a can of whipped cream. I planned on cutting myself a piece to be more hygienic, but literally every plate in this house was being used or dirty or in the running dishwasher. Same thing with the forks, so I found salad tongs in the drawer and used those.

  What other choice did I have but to dig in?

  “So you’re not even pretending to keep your healthy eating resolutions now?”

  I sighed, closing my eyes. I couldn’t escape him. “Nope. Today’s forecast called for a hundred percent chance of chocolate. You might as well know that I had Eggo cinnamon waffles with icing on them for breakfast this morning, but that’s because I think it’s important to support American businesses.”

  Basically, I was failing at all of my resolutions, especially the ones that included steering clear of him. It was like fate had decided we should hang out again and gave me zero say in the matter.

  Bash grabbed the spoon side of the salad tongs and said, “May I?”

  I hated sharing, but I was too worn out to fight him. Plus, I probably shouldn’t eat an entire pie by myself. Obviously it wouldn’t have been the first time, but it wasn’t good for me. “Whatever.”