Too Friendly to Date

“So...” Kelly offered.

“So what?” Leah crossed her arms defensively.

“Did you guys sleep together or something?”

“What?” Leah screeched.

“That was weird. Like...sex weird.”

“No, it wasn’t. We did not have sex, and we’re not going to have sex, you nut jobs. I just...asked him a kind of weird favor and we’re still working everything out.”

“Was the favor sex?”

“Good Lord. Do you have sex on the brain? And should you even be talking about sex around your baby? Isn’t that kind of wrong?”

Kelly shrugged. “Maybe.”

“He’s...just going to pretend to be my boyfriend while my family is here. It’s nothing. Except a little weird. But definitely not sex weird.”

Kelly and Susan exchanged a look and Leah groaned. “Save me your married looks and your disbelief. It’s just...it’s just...”

Kelly and Susan waited expectantly, but Leah didn’t even know what she was arguing at this point. She was flustered and embarrassed and about two seconds away from confessing the weird pseudokiss last night. Because these were her friends and usually she confided in them about all manner of man stuff, but this was all wrapped up in stuff she told nobody.

Besides, if she confessed the fake kiss, then they’d really think this was about sex. “It’s nothing. I have work to do.” She stomped off and repeated those seven words over and over in her head, hoping desperately that they were true.

* * *

LEAH WASN’T GOING to like it, but Jacob was used to doing things Leah didn’t like. And, okay, maybe he got a little thrill out of riling her up. Maybe.

He stood on her porch trying to ignore the prick of conscience. This was a little bit of a line cross, especially considering he’d kissed her last night. And she had acted incredibly uncomfortable around him all day.

He supposed that should bother him. But it didn’t. Not in the way it should. He didn’t feel bad or want to get rid of it.

He wanted to explore it. He wondered, way too much in the span of twenty-four hours, What exactly might be the harm? Aside from screwing everything up, remember?

He was having a hell of a time remembering.

He knocked on Leah’s door. Kyle’s and Grace’s disapproving faces annoyingly popped into his mind, but he pushed them away. He wasn’t a complete and utter moron. He could keep his hands to himself.

He could also not keep his hands to himself without ruining everything.

Okay, if history served, that wasn’t true at all, but he’d never exactly gotten handsy with someone he’d been friends with first before.

And when you were a twenty-eight-year-old man using the word handsy in your internal monologue, you really, really needed to get a grip.

“What are you doing here?” Leah demanded, not even opening the door the entire way. In fact, she seemed to be using it as somewhat of a shield.

Jacob held up his toolbox. “We have work to do.”

“I told you—”

“And you really thought I’d let that stand in my way?” He shifted from foot to foot. “I’m freezing very important bits off here. Please let me in.”

She cursed and grumbled, but the door swung open and he stepped into the warmth of her cluttered entryway. She was wearing an oversize sweatshirt, baggy sweatpants and her hair was a haphazard mess on her head.

He made himself look at her face instead of the freckled shoulder exposed by the too-big neckline of her sweatshirt.

“You know Friday is only three days away, right?”

She glared at him. “Cleanliness isn’t my strong suit. I get it. I’m trying to work on it, but—”

“But it’s impossible to put your shoes where they belong?”

“But I like doing things my way. Which is why I don’t want you butting in on that third room.”

“I can’t take it. It’s eating me alive. Just sitting there in disrepair. Let me. Please.” He grinned at her because he knew at least this was their common ground. House stuff. Restoration. They could disagree about everything but this passion they shared.

Do not think about the word passion.

She pressed her lips together in the way she did when she was trying not to smile. Some days he tried to poke out the smile as much as he tried to get under her skin.

“It is hard to say no when you say please.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” He didn’t exactly mean for that to sound suggestive; it just came out that way. She turned away and he wondered if she was blushing. Like this afternoon when she’d wiped baby spit-up off his back. That was a weird moment. Weird in its domesticity and proximity and everything.

Christ, what are you doing?

He was going to do a little restoration work, that was what he was doing. He nodded, following Leah to her extra room. He’d lose himself in measuring and planning and he wouldn’t think about Leah that way and if he did...

Grace’s words niggled at him. Be careful with her. I don’t want to see her get hurt.

Aaaand now he felt vaguely sleazy even if he did consider Grace’s admonitions ridiculous.

He needed to start dating again. All this alone time really screwed with his mind.

“Ah, my precious.” He set his toolbox down, immediately going for the measuring tape and notebook he’d jotted notes down in the other day. “How can you stand it?”

“The same way I stand a lot of things. Willful ignorance,” she muttered. Then she glanced around the room. “We have four days. What can we do?”

“I don’t have any pressing business this week. I can get the floor done tomorrow.”

“Too much damage to get it done in one day even if I help you. Besides, I don’t have the money for this.”

“Well...”

“No.”

He hated the way she shut him down before he even suggested anything. She was always doing that. As if she could read his mind. Except, obviously she couldn’t or they would be doing a lot more interesting things than talking about money and floors.

Or maybe she was just being sensible. Which was also quintessentially Leah.

“A loan.”

“You already sign off on my paycheck, asshole. You’re not giving me money.”

“Asshole? Seriously? Calling the man who signs your checks ‘asshole’ seems like a bad move.”

She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Oh, you are giving me a headache.”

“You invested in MC. We can cash you out.”

She dropped her arm, blinked incredulously. “So then I’m not invested in MC?”

Okay, he hadn’t thought that through. “Just take a damn loan, Leah.”

“Take a damn step back, Jacob.” She glared, so he glared back. This was often where they ended up. And yet, at the end of the day, they still walked away friends.

It was one of the few things in his life he couldn’t work out.

“Why are you really here?” she asked, sounding far more exhausted than she looked.

She looked rumpled and pretty. Usually she had that tough-girl exterior, all put together like armor. But in her slouchy clothes and with her messy hair, obviously tired and fed up with him, she looked infinitely touchable. “Do you really want to know?”

She looked away. “No,” she grumbled. “You’re right. I don’t.”

“Well, then let’s talk about drywall.”

“No. I’m closing the door. They’re not going to see it, and on the off chance they ask why my contractor boyfriend hasn’t had his grubby paws all over it, I’ll tell them the truth. I can’t afford it. I have one guest room suitable for my parents, and Marc can crash comfortably on the pullout couch. It’s fine.”

Another thing he couldn’t work out was how easily she irritated the crap out of him just by being so damn reasonable. Because she wasn’t wrong, and he wasn’t right and he hated that.

“Fine. You’re right.”

“I’m sorry—can you repeat that?”

He scowled. “Bite me.”

She smiled and it didn’t take that clingy red dress from the party for him to think about the fact her bedroom was right across the hall.

Yeah, seriously, why had he come here? Did he really think he was just going to walk in and redo this room? No, he’d been thinking...well, not thinking. Feeling. Restless.

Maybe he needed to tell Grace to be his babysitter because he couldn’t trust himself with the idea of a “thing” hanging between them.

“Why don’t we talk about why you really came here?”

“I thought you didn’t want to.”

“Well, maybe we need to.” She looked up at him, brow furrowed, blue-green eyes shading toward blue in the darker light. “Why did you kiss me?”

Full truth or half-truth? In this case, as much as he wanted to let the full truth go, the half-truth was the right way to go. Knowing Leah had some kind of low-level interest in him didn’t change a thing because she hadn’t acted on it. Not once in five years.

And he hadn’t, either. The red dress certainly wasn’t the first time he’d thought of Leah inappropriately. This whole pretending-to-be-involved thing was bringing it to the forefront, but he’d been reasonable for five years, too.

Maybe if he wrote it on his palms he’d remember that before barreling over here whole hog again. Yeah, half-truth was the way to go. “We’re going to have to.”

“Why on earth would we have to?” Throwing her hands in the air, she stalked away from him, then back. “People don’t make out in front of their parents.”

“It was a peck on the lips. Your parents are going to expect that. If there aren’t at least some teeny tiny gestures of affection, they’re going to think we’re not happy, and if your mom really is so desperate for you to have a significant other, she’s not going to want to see you unhappy.”

“But...”

“You know I’m right. I’m sorry kissing me was such a terrible hardship for you, but this was your idea.”

She didn’t say anything about it being a hardship or not, and maybe it was idiotic of him to hope she would. Maybe actually kissing her had killed whatever “thing” Grace thought Leah had for him, because it had been the lamest kiss of all time. And maybe that was a good thing. Too bad it hadn’t done the same for him.

“Who knew you could think like this?” she finally said.

“Like what?”

“Like...all devious and good at lying. I just... It’s not something I would’ve given you credit for.”

“Leave it to you, Leah, to give someone credit for being devious and good at lying. I told you I’ve had practice.”

“But you won’t tell me what. Is MC some kind of drug front?”

He spared her a withering look. “Really?”

She crossed her arms over her chest, stubborn glare fixed on her face. “Tell me.”

He could argue. He could walk away. He could do a lot of things, but, eh, why not tell her? Maybe she’d trust some of his suggestions if he did. “Okay, you asked for it. When I was in high school, my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer.”

Her expression, her stance, it all softened. “I...didn’t know that.”

“Neither do I, technically.”

“Huh?”

“Mom didn’t want to tell anyone. Not wanting people to worry and all that bullshit. Grace found out somehow, but they decided to keep it from me.”

“But you knew.”

“Of course I knew. But they didn’t want me to, so I pretended like I didn’t. I figured I could give them that. But, let me tell you, it wasn’t easy to do. It is not easy to watch your mom lose a ton of weight, not easy to pretend the wig she was wearing was real. And it’s really not easy to watch her pretend everything is fine when all the while she’s practically dying. It takes real skill to pretend that doesn’t exist.”

The silence between them filled him with an unfamiliar panic. He’d never told anyone that before. Mom and Dad and Grace still thought he was clueless. He’d never confided in Kyle or anyone else at the time, and it had never seemed pertinent after.

“Jacob.”

“It’s not a big deal.” He suddenly felt very uncomfortable. Uncomfortable enough that he had to move. And not look at her. And move. He walked around the room, poking at peeling plaster and warped floorboards.

But eventually the silence was too much, and when he looked up, she was still standing in the same place, watching him with a kind of pained look.

“What?”

“It’s...” She swallowed, and if it was anyone besides Leah he might think the bright sheen to her eyes meant she was about to cry. But Leah... He could not picture Leah crying.

“I think the fact that at sixteen or whatever you...carried that burden and didn’t tell anyone. I think that is really...amazing. I was not that together as a teenager. Not even a little.”

He shrugged because it hadn’t been about being together. It hadn’t been about anything except doing what they wanted. Sure, he’d been scared and it hadn’t been easy not to hug Mom a little more tightly, stay home instead of hanging out with his friends. It wasn’t easy, but it was just...what had to be done.

She touched his elbow, her fingers curling around his arm. She swallowed again. “I really do think that’s amazing.”

The compliment made his chest ache in a way that was entirely new to him. It wasn’t exactly a pain, just a kind of weird...pressure. The fact that she thought this was such a big thing made it feel bigger even though it was twelve years ago.

“Well, you know, you do what you have to do for family.”

She nodded. Obviously she agreed. They were doing this ridiculous pretending thing. But she wasn’t letting go of his arm. Her hand held him there in a tight grip.

And that meant he couldn’t step away, and it meant stepping closer was too tempting to resist.

Her eyes didn’t leave his, and she didn’t move away. They just...stood there, and all he could think about was last night when he’d kissed her. A nothing kiss. Seconds at most, born of some weird frustration and none of the heat or sparks he felt standing right here, right now.

He could kiss her this time and it wouldn’t be veiled in pretend, and it would be a hell of a lot better than a peck in the dark.

But in the heaviness of the moment, he couldn’t force himself to act, thinking or not. It felt too important. Everything between them felt too important to complicate with a kiss.

This was getting...out of hand. He wasn’t thinking, and that was just not something that usually happened. He was almost always thinking and planning and anticipating, but this was...

He cleared his throat. “Why don’t we talk about your family? They’re going to expect me to know some things, and I know nothing. Except you’ve had some problems.”

She took a step back. “Yeah.” She shoved fingers through her hair, loosening the tenuous pile even more. “And a drink. I need a drink.”

Yeah, he could definitely use a drink. Or ten.

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