Page 132 of The Naughty List

“Oh,” is all I can say.

“No more fighting. No more avoiding. Just two friends. Deal?”

I nod my head even though I don’t know why. Again, just me trying to give her anything she asks for.

“Good,” she breathes out. Then she pulls me in for a hug. Her heat consumes me. Her scent draws me in. My heart starts racing in my chest, begging me to lean in just a bit more and press my lips to hers. I’m craving her taste, her soft lips moving with mine. I need her more now than I’ve ever needed her before. There’s too much between us now to go back to how we were. There was too much before, but now? No way can I move on and pretend all this didn’t happen. Now that I’ve had her in my arms, in my bed, I can’t go back to just being her friend.

Not even if that’s what she wants?

Someone knocks on the door and it opens inwardly. Mom pokes her head in and looks relieved. “Thank baby Jesus. No blanket forts. Come eat dinner, you two.”

Felicity pulls away and follows my mom out of the room, leaving me alone once again. I collapse onto the bed, wondering how I can make her see that this is a bad idea. We can’t go back. We can only move forward. How can I get her to move forward with me?

“Come on, we ain’t waiting all day,” Mom says from down the hall.

I get my ass up and leave the room, heading for the dinner table. The five of us sit around the table just as we have in the years past. My mom and stepdad sit together; Mrs. B sits across from us, and me and Felicity are across from one another. I used to reach under the table and tickle her legs or pinch her, kick her if need be. But today, there’s none of that. I feel like she’s just ripped my heart out of my chest and stomped on it. Mom says grace and we all bow our heads, then she picks up a dish, takes a serving, and passes it along. Before long, we’re all eating. Everyone’s talking about the Christmas’ from the past and the memories we share. All but me that is. I have nothing to offer this conversation. I sit and eat quietly and nobody but Felicity seems to notice. When I look up from my plate, her eyes are on me, but the moment I try to meet her gaze, her eyes dash away.

After the table is cleared, we all move to the living room for gifts. We all have a glass of wine as we sit around the room. I drink mine a little too quickly and get up for another while my stepfather passes out gifts. When I come back into the room, I look at Felicity and see her big smile as she holds up a sweater my mom gave her for Christmas.

“Thank you,” she says. “I love it.”

“Psh,” accidentally slips out and everyone looks at me. I shake my head so they disregard the comment but take my seat and think, oh, you can love a sweater but you can’t love me? Okay, maybe I should stay away from the wine.

Felicity cuts her eyes toward me and give me a look that asks, are you okay?

Then she picks up a small box and hands it over. “Open mine,” she requests. I wonder why she’s always the one asking me for things. I’ve never once asked her for anything, and yet, I still can’t tell her I love her? I tear into the paper a little too aggressively and open the box. In my hands is a picture frame. In the frame, there are four pictures. Two of them are of us as kids, and two of them are from the past week.

I frown as I look down at her sitting on the floor at my feet.

“This is what my mom gave me, and I thought it was too good not to give you. You see, in the first picture, we’re angry with one another. But in the second, we’ve made up and are happy. The third picture taken fifteen years later, it’s the same. And the fourth. We’ve had a lifetime together, Carson. We’ve had our ups and downs. But we always overcome it and stay friends. I’ll never forget you. That, I can promise,” she says. It’s a sweet gesture, but the only word I can focus on is friends.

I set the picture frame aside and get up. Everyone is looking at me now as I grab my coat and leave the house, slamming the door closed behind me. I get in the car and start the engine. I see her running out the moment I hit the gas and leave the house behind.

I end up driving around aimlessly for a while. Then I find myself at the liquor store buying a bottle of tequila. Then I’m at the old farm road that I took Felicity to. I park on the side of the road and get out to sit on the hood. It hasn’t been that long since I was last here, but a lot has changed. I open the bottle and chuck the lid into the snow, knowing that I won’t need it. I’m not moving until this whole bottle is gone. The more I drink, the more comes into focus for me. I know I shouldn’t have left the way I did, but I didn’t have much of a choice. What I wanted to do was pull her against me and kiss her until I made her see clearly. I don’t know why she’s being such a pain in the ass about this. She loves me. I know she does. And I’ve known it somewhere deep in my soul before my brain even knew it. She’s loved me since we were kids. And it’s more than just in a friendly kind of way. If it wasn’t, we wouldn’t have fought against it our whole lives. I just have to make her see. How do I do that?

Being winter, it gets dark early and it’s not long before I’m sitting out in the dark alone and cold. My cell phone has been ringing constantly in my pocket, but I keep ignoring it, not ready to talk to anyone yet. It’s crossed my mind a few times that I’m too drunk to drive home, but I push that thought away quickly. If nothing else, I’ll sleep in my car tonight. It’s not like there’s an Uber in this small town. God, I miss the city. Get shit-faced drunk anywhere there, and you’re safe as long as you can still work your phone. I’ve done that a few times too, usually because of her as well. The first time was when she told me some guy she had been dating proposed.

“Hello?” I answer my phone as I sit at my desk at work. I look at the clock and see that it’s well past quitting time. It’s going on eight o’clock.

“Carson?” It’s Felicity and she sounds excited.

“Hey, sweetheart. What’s going on?” I ask, immediately smiling when I hear her voice.

“Oh my God. You’re never going to guess.”

“Guess what?”

“I haven’t told anyone yet, but Ben proposed! Can you believe that? He asked me to marry him.”

My blood runs cold. I can’t think. I can’t talk. All I can do is sit here with this information and let it take everything from me, my past, my present, my future.

“Are you still there?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m here,” I stutter out.

“Can you believe it?”

“I’m sorry, I’m just…who’s Ben again?”

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