Page 33 of Just Friends

“That’s adorable,” he says, his voice tinged with amusement, and something else that sounds a lot like tenderness.

“I was thirteen.”

He presses his lips together, trying valiantly to hold back a laugh. He fails the exact second that I do. It’s the kind of laughter that takes everything out of you, robbing you of breath and sending sharp pains through your sides. We fall against my closet door. It’s the only thing keeping us upright as we try to keep each other from laughing loud enough to wake Cam and Ellie on the other side of the wall.

“Shh,” Alex whispers, tears leaking from his eyes as he presses a finger to my lips.

“You shh,” I hiss back, and we dissolve again.

He’s holding me up now by the elbows, keeping me from sliding down the closest door to the ground. “Get it together, Lane. What if we wake Cam and Ellie up and they’re feeling amorous?”

I press my face into his shoulder to stifle the giggle that rockets through me. “Stop.”

My breath comes out in loud gasps, and Alex’s shoulder is bouncing. When I finally control myself enough to pull back, Alex’s cheeks are a happy pink and stained with tears. He reaches out, freeing the photo from where it was trapped between the mirror and its frame.

“I’m keeping this,” he tells me. “I need a photo for my wallet in case you’re ever kidnapped.”

I snatch it back. “Absolutely not.” After fitting it back into place, I turn to find Alex looking at the assortment of pictures again.

He points to one of me at prom. “Hardware store owner?”

My head bobs in a nod, and a displeased grunt sounds from deep in his throat. “I’ll keep an eye out for him tomorrow,” he says.

I have to bite my lip to keep from smiling.

His finger lands on another one of me with a group of kids standing in front of a movie theater, his brow arching in silent question.

“That’s me on my first group date,” I tell him, my hand moving against his as I point to the freckle-faced boy standing next to twelve-year-old me, his arm slung around my shoulder. “First boyfriend. My mom didn’t know, or she never would have let me go.”

“He looks like a punk,” Alex says, and I can’t help but laugh.

“Hewasa punk. He tried to feel me up on that date.”

Alex leans back against the dresser, his hands curling over the edge. “Does he also own a hardware store that we can visit?”

A smile hitches on my lips. “Insurance sales office.”

“That’s crazy. I’ve been thinking of pricing out some new policies.”

“You know, I’m glad I didn’t know you then,” I tell Alex, sliding a look his way. “I would have had the biggest crush on you.”

He snorts. “I doubt it.”

“No, I would have,” I assure him. “You would’ve been the super-hot high school boy, and I would have been that.” I jab my finger at the picture, shaking the mirror with the force.

“Well, I’m glad I didn’t know youthen,” Alex says, pointing to another photo of Stevie, Wren, and me, this one taken the summer after we graduated from high school. We’re once again in swimsuits, although this time we’re not at a pee-filled public pool in Fontana Ridge. In this picture, we’ve got our toes sunk into golden sand in the Outer Banks. It was the first solo trip our parents allowed us to take.

“Why?” I ask, my eyes still fixed on Alex, on the full curve of his lower lip as it lifts in a smirk.

“I would have had the biggest crush on you.”

“Once I was hot?” I tease.

His eyes glint, cocoa and moss and bronze. “Once you were legal.” His tone softens into something like regret. “I wasn’t…” He trails off, looking away before meeting my eyes again. “I didn’t treat women the way I should have when I was twenty-three.”

“I can’t imagine you ever being anything but nice,” I say, leaning my hip against the dresser.

That smirk skates across his face again. “Oh, I was always nice,” he says, mischief tingeing his voice before turning into something else entirely. “I just wasn’t always good.”

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