Page 88 of Crash & Burn

“Don’t play dumb, Ed. You look like a lost puppy anytime she isn’t with you.”

“You’re mixing me up with Luke, and the way he follows you around.

“Good one. Have you been planning that one for a while?

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,Ann”

She fakes a gasp. “You don’t?” She then smirks at me as she cleans a glass and puts it back behind the bar. “You may be fooling him,” Annie nods her head towards Mateo who is standing over by the band’s equipment with Theo and Silas. “But, you’re not fooling anyone else.”

“Mia and I are friends, everyone knows that.”

“Do they?” Annie asks before leaving me to tend to a customer.

They should know.

Mia and I are friends.

Friends who have kissed.

Twice.

Friends who have enough sexual tension that makes the room feel like it is about to explode.

Both times, Mia and I have let adrenaline or the heat of the moment get the best of us, and we have made stupid decisions that led us to do stupid things that make things between us even more complicated.

These past ten months, since the night in the green room, Mia and I have been on our absolute best behavior.

We agreed after she followed me out of the green room that night that what happened in there would stay in there, and we wouldn’t let it happen again.

We blamed the euphoria from the show and the new song, and everything other than our own feelings for each other, and we left it at that.

Now, ten months later, a day doesn’t go by that I don’t wish I told her I didn’t want to be her friend. That I wanted to be more.

But I couldn’t do that to her.

I know she would let me be more than a friend. I know she wants it too, but we both know it can’t happen. Not only is she Mateo’s sister, who has been off-limits since I met her, but I’m also in no shape to be the man she deserves.

I’m the friend she can flirt with and play with because it means I get a few stolen moments where her attention is focused on me and me alone.

How it should be.

No.

But how I want it to be.

It doesn’t matter anyway.

I’m busy with the band, and she is busy with her photography business.

We see each other when we can, always with our other friends.

We haven’t had a moment alone since that night.

And it is for the best.

Right?

Now that Cross My Heart signed, a photographer from the record label started doing most of our shoots, but Mia is making it big time as an indie band photographer, so it isn’t like she has much time for us anyway. She is basically helping other bands do what she helped us do—revamp social media, get them on the map, and then letting them do the rest.

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