Page 70 of Unless It's You
What other secrets are there? I might always worry that she’s deciding between me and Ben, but she explained what happenedlast time. That it was because Gemma told her about Helen and me getting back together, which didn’t even end up happening.
My hand pauses on the doorknob. She’ll tell me.
I pull the door open, but it’s not Stella.
It’s Helen.
All five feet of her, long dark hair in waves on her shoulders, her smooth and delicate face smiling up at me, a backpack on her shoulder.
“Helen. W-what are you doing here?” I stutter and blink a few times quickly to clear my vision and make sure I haven’t conjured her from nothing.
“Can I come in?”
“Of course.”
Helen steps into my flat, eyes scanning the living room, the hallway to the bedrooms, and pausing in the kitchen, where dirty dishes from last night are piled in the sink, next to Stella’s empty wine glass and my beer bottles on the counter.
She wiggles out of her backpack and turns back to me, posing in the middle of my flat in wide-legged ripped jeans and a cropped yellow t-shirt with Nirvana on the front. She’s adorable. Objectively good looking.
But she’s my friend. And that’s all.
“Is everything okay? Your mum? Henry?”
She nods, and I have déjà vu from the time she showed up at Ben’s and my flat years ago, when she told me she wanted him, not me.
I’m frozen at the front door, hand still on the handle, so she steps to me and puts her hand over mine, pulling it away and shoving the door shut with a click. She puts my hands on her waist. First one, then the other, like a girl teaching a boy how to dance, then she gazes up at me with adoring eyes, her hands splayed gently on my chest.
If it weren’t for Stella showing up back in my life three weeks ago, I might have been into this. I might have kissed Helen. Butnow... touching her feels wrong. Being with her in my flat feels wrong.
She’s the wrong girl.
“I’m sorry for the dumb shite I’ve done in the past.” Helen stares up at me intensely. “But you have been such a good friend to me these past few years, and Henry loves you so much. So does Mum?—”
“Hey,” I try to interrupt. Wehavebeen good friends, especially after she told me she had a baby at home. After that, it was purely friendship—on my end, at least. Maybe I’d let that slip these last months, after Mum died. I’d let my guard down, and she took that as an invitation.
“Shh, let me finish. I know we could be happy together.” She reaches up and runs her hand along my shoulder, reaching for my face, but not quite tall enough to get there. I lean back.
“Helen... I can’t do this.” I move my head from side to side and take half a step back, removing my hands from her waist and gently pulling her hands from my chest.
“I know last time it was too soon after Henry was born.” She closes the space between us again, more hesitation in her voice. “And I’m sorry about the time before that. When I chose Ben. You were always the one I should have stayed with. But I’m making it right now. You can trust me, I swear to it.”
I search Helen’s face. Trust is a terrifying thing. Without it, love can’t exist, can it? Only lust and obsession. But I’m also terrified of what I’m feeling for Stella.
If I want to be with Stella, I need to trust her. Really trust her.
I need to let her and Ben meet up without freaking out. I need to trust that she’ll choose me.
And once she does, I can tell her I love her.
“There’s someone else.” I wrap Helen’s hands in mine.
“Oh, bugger.” She deflates before me, and the intense look fades off her face, replaced by a frown and creased forehead. “I came all this way to get anotherjust friendsspeech?”
“We’re best as friends. I love you... but only as a friend.”
Her face falls. “Itisa friends speech.”
“Helen, you’ll find the right bloke, one who will worship you and Henry.”
