Page 29 of Friend Me

All my happiness from dancing dissipated, leaving me with a heavy lump in my stomach. He was going home with Jamila.

“You aren’t staying? Alicia and Jackson will miss you at the brunch tomorrow morning. You won’t see them before they leave on their honeymoon.”

“No, I—I can’t.” He tore his gaze from the flowers and met my eyes. “Tell Jay to have a good trip. I’ll see you in the office Monday.”

I nodded but balled up my fists. My plans to talk to Cooper, to finally confess my crush and see if he felt anything close to what I did, had gone completely to hell. All I could do was move on to step two of the plan on Monday.

“Drive safely.” I forced a smile.

He turned and strode to the table where Jamila stood, tall, elegant, and, unlike me, still wearing shoes, talking to some Synergy executives. He put his hand on the small of her back and leaned to whisper in her ear. She twined her arm around his waist and presented her cheek for a kiss. Damn. They looked so comfortable together. Like lovers.

“What’s wrong?”

Unclenching my jaw and my fists, I tried to smile at Tyler, who’d approached while I was staring at them. “Nothing.” But I glanced toward where Cooper and Jamila stood, arms around each other.

He followed my gaze and tilted his head to the side, watching them. Then he held out two orange tablets and a bottle of water.

I swallowed the pills, wishing they could numb my jealousy, too.

“Let’s sit down until those kick in.” His tone was so gentle it made my eyes tingle with tears.

“Okay.”

Tyler sat in the chair next to me and pointed at my feet. “Mind if I—?”

“You want to touch my feet? But they’re sweaty.”

“And they hurt.” He reached for my ankle and set my heel on his knee. His hand stroked over the red furrow on my ankle where the strap had dug in. “Okay?”

“Y-yes.” His hands were warm, and he applied the perfect amount of pressure to ease the ache the evil shoes had left.

He continued down the top of my foot and smoothed his hand over the strap mark above my toes. I leaned back in the chair.

“Head still hurt?” he asked.

“Mmm-hmm.”

He pushed a thumb between my big toe and second toe and applied pressure. Letting a friend, a coworker, touch my feet was weird. But as he pressed between my toes, the pain in my head lessened. Since when did ibuprofen work so quickly?

“What—what are you doing?”

“Do you want me to stop?”

“No! It’s helping.”

He grinned. “Thought so. You can trust me.”

And I did. His thumbs moved over the top of my big toe, and then underneath to the ball of my foot. The band’s music faded, and so did the other wedding guests. The tension left my muscles, and I melted into the chair.

He’d surprised me twice tonight. First with his dancing skills, and now with the professional-grade foot massage. What other hidden talents did he possess? What else didn’t I know about my friend, Tyler Young?

Leaving my now-boneless foot on his knee, he reached for the other, caressing my calf. He used the same long strokes down my ankle and over the top of my foot, easing the taut muscles beneath.

He moved his hands to my instep and worked a spot there. Gently at first, then slowly increasing the pressure. The muscle eased and became pliant. I didn’t know a thing about bioenergy, chi, or prana, but something mystical was going on in my foot.

Not only my foot. A tingle crept up my ankle and held at the juncture of my thighs. Pulsing. Warming. I looked down to check that his hands were still on my foot and hadn’t traveled up my skirt, where phantom fingers touched me. As I shifted in the chair, my skin heated.

“Feels good?” He kept his head down, eyes on my foot.

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