Page 61 of Just Enough

Us, Emily, us. Not just me.

Would you just open your eyes and see me, see us, for what we are, what we could be?

I opened my mouth to say just that, then snapped it shut. Like always. It was a risk I’d never be able to make. Losing her.

Chapter 20

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Emily

1 month, 1 week, and 5 days prior…

Benjamin was thevery definition of unsafe.

Who once was my safe place, was now all my restless emotions.I was hyper-aware of my attraction to him. I tingled and burned around him. I watched him as he walked through our apartment. I patiently waited for him to shower and come out with nothing but a pair of shorts or jogging pants looking like absolute perfection. I wanted him close, but at the same time hated it because I was so self-conscious of everything I said or did, thinking I might give myself away. I couldn’t remember who I was before this feeling burst through my skin. I also couldn’t understand how I’d never thought of him of anything beyond my Benjamin until now.

I supposed I kept him in a place that made us safe, just enough to keep us close. Now just enough felt like too little.Just enoughwas suffocating me in its confines.

But I didn’t know what to do except be us as best as I could be.

While in my head, I fell in love with the idea of us.

I poured what I craved into Gorilla Ben and Rosie. Then my skin burned some more as I thought of how much Benjamin wanted them together, not realizing it was us. It felt so wrong and so right. I felt so bad and so good.

He slept across the room from mine every night, and every night I felt restless and hot because my mind played out me sneaking into his room and being with him, over and over…

This wasn’t me. But it was.

I was fantasizing, obsessing, and craving my best friend. So much that I felt like a depraved person for letting our bodies graze each other while we were in the kitchen or innocently touching his arm or something throughout the day.

It was like I wanted to get caught. Or at least for him to notice me.

So it was arousing, to say the least, when Benjamin tossed a paper in my face and said, “Here, I wrote them a scene.” I looked up from the couch, expecting him to be goofy and grinning, but instead, he was looking the other way.

“Why would you do that?”

“Because you won’t,” he muttered.

“I just decided to turn their friendship into a romance. You gotta give me time.”

“Ben doesn’t have time. He was taken, and now he’s suffering in the white room.”

I smiled. “I’m aware. You know, since I’m the writer? How the hell do they have a ‘scene’ as you call it when they aren’t even together right now.”

“Just read it. I can give you some ideas at least.”

I grabbed the paper and lifted my hips to place them in my pocket. “I don’t need any ideas, I have plenty.”

“You’re not gonna read it?” He flopped down beside me. “Read it, Emily.”

I sighed. “I will tonight.” Just not around him where he could watch my reaction. Who knew what he wrote. It might do something to my already clouded head. “I don’t feel like reading first thing in the morning.”

“You work this evening?” he asked, and I nodded. “Guess I won’t see you until about eleven tonight then.”

“Go convince someone they need a car today,” I muttered.

He shook his head at me. I grabbed my coffee cup off the table and ignored him.

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