Page 109 of Friend Me

Romantic.Old Marlee had read romance novels and seen love everywhere. New Marlee knew that not everyone got a happy ending. Including, apparently, New Marlee.

I scooted to turn my face away from him. Meanwhile, my stomach churned and my thoughts whirled. Why was he sitting next to me? Was this friendship? Or had he taken pity on me when he found me up here, half-frozen? I didn’t need his pity. After all, I still had some pride despite how I’d acted earlier.

“Look, I—” I began.

“Did you—” he said at the same time.

I leaned my head onto my knee and looked back at him, everything but my eyes hidden by the blanket that covered my shoulder. The moonlight gilded the tips of his hair, and the stars reflected off his glasses. His white shirt gleamed under his dark suit coat and tie.

“You first,” I said.

He tapped his finger against his knee and said, “Did you mean it when you said you love me?”

I resisted pulling the blanket up over my face. I’d said it out loud. There was no avoiding it. “I did. I do.”

When he touched my back between my shoulder blades, I twitched. “And not like friend-love, like you love Alicia?”

It would’ve been so easy to take the escape he offered. But I couldn’t lie to my friend. “Well, there’s that, too. But I mean romantic love. I-want-to-jump-your-bones love. I-want-to-live-happily-ever-after-with-you love. I was even planning a grand gesture to try to show you and then beg for forgiveness.”

“A grand gesture?”

“I was going to go to Texas for New Year’s. Find you wherever you’re going to be. Grovel like no one’s business. And kiss the hell out of you if you’d let me.”

“Marlee.” He leaned around so his face blocked my view of the horizon. “Listen to me. I don’t want something out of a fairy tale or a romance novel. No white horses. No boom boxes. No running through airports. No songs. No fucking Prince Charming. I want what’s real. Is this real?”

I shivered under the blanket. “By Lord Kelvin’s frozen left nut, do you think I’d be up here sniffling”—I wiped at the tears on my cheek—“and shivering my ass off if what I felt wasn’t real? My heart ripped out of my chest when you left. And again tonight, downstairs, when you walked away from me. I’m crying all my makeup off because I love you and b-because you don’t love me.”

I scrubbed my face against my knees to hide my ugly-crying face. I hated crying, and between my Dad and Tyler, I’d done way too much of it lately.

“Hey. Hey.” He rubbed my shaking shoulders.

“I don’t want your pity. You should g-go downstairs to the party. Where it’s warm. Be with Sam and the other developers. Say g-g-good-bye.” Maybe my heart would freeze up here, and it wouldn’t hurt so much that my friend was leaving.

“I don’t want to be with them. I want to be with you. And I’m warm enough for both of us.” He scooted closer and put his arms around me.

“What?” When I lifted my head, I saw I’d left a pale smudge of makeup on my black skirt.Great.

“I love you, Marlee. Since that day at the party when you were soaked in beer.”

“But you—” He loved me? “You walked away. Why didn’t you say anything downstairs?”

He twisted his lips in a wry smile. “I was so angry that day in Jackson’s office. But I read all your texts and listened to your voice mails while I was in Dallas. The song was a nice touch, by the way. Tonight, I’d hoped we could talk. Face to face. But then I saw you looking cozy with Cooper, and I—I lost it. I didn’t want to be second best. I won’t be.” The starlight illuminated the fierce set of his jaw.

I shook my head. “You’re not. Never.”

“Then when you said you loved me”—the other side of his mouth curved up now—“all I could think of was that I had to tell Jackson I wasn’t leaving Synergy. Not leaving you.”

“You’re…not?”

“Definitely not.” His eyes sparkled in the starlight. “It took longer than I expected because they’re giving me the promotion. And not as a manager. As a director.”

His smile was contagious, and the corners of my mouth tugged up.

He leaned toward me, his breath warm on my chilled skin. “Can I kiss you now, Princess?”

I rocked toward him and pressed my lips to his. He was right. He was warm and soft, all the things I wasn’t as a human popsicle stuck up here on the windblown deck. But when he cupped my cheek with one hand and slipped the other under the blanket to rest on my back, I started to thaw.

“I understand skin-to-skin contact is the fastest way to warm up another person.” I may have read that in a romance novel or two.

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