Page 97 of For You & No One Else (Say Everything 3)

“We were just supposed to be friends with benefits,” Eliza started. “It was supposed to be simple.”

“Oh Lord,” Hollyn said with a little laugh. “Been there, girl. I’m married to my former let’s-keep-it-casual guy.”

“Well, I’m not going to be marrying this one. He’s anti-marriage,” Eliza said.

Andi snorted. “Fun. One of those.”

“Yes. Or no. I don’t know,” Eliza said. “Apparently it’s because he’s been married before and it went badly, but I didn’t know that because…I never asked him why he felt that way. And that’s the problem. I was afraid to dig too deep on anything with him because I knew it wouldn’t last. It was fun, and I didn’t want to taint that with reality.”

“That’s understandable. It was new. You wanted to keep it low-key,” Andi said reassuringly.

Eliza swallowed another bite of cookie. “He said I cast guys in roles. That I expect them to let me down, to leave.”

“That’s not fair,” Hollyn said. “You’ve just learned from experience. Guys have let you down.”

“Buthedidn’t. He didn’t lead me on. I agreed to what we were doing. I knew where he stood. I signed up to be hurt in the end,” she said, looking back and forth between her two friends. “Why would I do that? Am I that desperate? It’s not like I don’t know that I can handle life on my own. I already do. Have for a long time. I don’t need a guy.”

“Of course you don’t,” Hollyn said, giving Eliza’s arm a little squeeze. “But that doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing to want love and a relationship.”

“And signing up for that kind of relationship doesn’t make you desperate,” Andi said. “It just means that you thought he was worth it. Something about him made you willing to take the risk. Would you have agreed to that kind of situation with someone else? If Will had offered some friends-with-benefits goodness, would you have done it?”

Eliza frowned. “No.”

“So that tells you something,” Andi said with a nod.

“It means you should follow the crazy,” Hollyn added.

Eliza looked to Hollyn. “What?”

Hollyn tucked her mane of curly hair behind her ears. “The way I could tell Jasper was someone special to me was because I was willing to do crazy things I would’ve never considered under any other circumstance. God himself could’ve asked me to do improv, and I would’ve told him no. But Jasper got me to try it. He coaxed me out of my comfort zone one painstaking step at a time, but I wanted to go there. Because he was there, holding my hand through it.”

Eliza’s heart squeezed.

“Same with Hill,” Andi said. “There was this trust there with him that I never felt with anyone else. Made me feel like I’d go anywhere with him.”

“That’s not what this is,” Eliza said with a headshake. “I don’t even know him. Not really. I was too self-centered to even ask him the most basic questions about his family or history.”

“That can come later,” Hollyn said, waving a hand as if to brush away that point entirely. “Those are details. How do you feel when you’re with him? What’s it like when you’re just hanging out and having a meal? Or chatting at work?”

Eliza leaned back on the couch and rubbed her hands over her face, trying to really think through the question, check her gut. “It feels…easy. Fun. Like I could say or do anything. Like if I made a weird joke, he’d totally get it. I feel with him like how I feel with you guys…except that I also want to lick all parts of his body.”

Her friends both smiled.

“What?” Eliza asked, giving them a suspicious look.

“You’re screwed,” Andi said, her smile turning knowing. “Completely and totally fucked.”

Hollyn reached out and patted her knee. “What she means to say is that you may not know his family history or have asked all the questions, but you knowhim. On some intuitive level, you get him, and it sounds like he gets you.”

“And I hate to break it to you but that, sugar plum, means you probably love more than the idea of him,” Andi said, tilting her head like she was delivering a death sentence. “So now we have to figure out what you want to do about it.”

“There is nothing to do about it,” Eliza said, letting that reality wash over her. “He’s pissed at me because he found out I was writing the book and that he’s in it. I can apologize again for that, but that’s only going to go so far because I’m also not quitting the book just because he said so. I’ll conceal his identity more, but he doesn’t get to make that call for me. It’s a project I feel invested in. I’ve worked hard on it.”

Hollyn nodded. “Agreed. Not his call. You have the right to write about your own experiences.”

“And even if I could get him on my side about that,” Eliza said, “it doesn’t change that he doesn’t want the same things I want.” She rubbed her forehead where a crying headache was forming. “To be honest, I’m not even sure what I want anymore.”

“What do you mean?” Andi asked.

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