Page 16 of Hands off his Dudette

Right. Well, his good humor had certainly been short-lived. Shit, he was going to get emotional whiplash from this conversation.

"You do know that I already have two big brothers, right?" Anna reminded him. "They got the whole disapproval of my date thing covered."

"Maybe so," Finn retorted. "But given that one of them is in Europe and the other on the west coast, I'm picking up the slack."

"Ah!" she exclaimed victoriously. "So you do admit that you're hating this."

When had he ever tried to deny it?

"I just don't want things to change between us. You're my..." —his what, exactly? After a moment of reflection, he settled on—"anchor."

Things could have gotten weird, but it was Anna, so she shrugged, and replied, "And you're mine. My oldest friend. Nothing has to change at all. You date all the time."

The thing was, he really didn't. "I fuck, Anna. That's different."

He'd had a girlfriend in college. After a few months, when things had gotten a little more serious however, she'd started making snide comments about Anna, wanting to exclude her from their time together. Finally, she demanded that they stop seeing each other unless she was present.

"You remember Patricia?" he prompted.

Anna grimaced. "The wicked witch of Cornell."

Finn nodded empathically. "Her. What if whoever you date ends up being like her? He might demand you cut me off."

"Then I'll do what you did with her, and tell him to get the fuck off my porch," she replied with a shrug.

She made it sound so simple. The truth was, Finn hadn't only dumped Patricia because of what she'd demanded of him; he'd gotten rid of her because of what she'd represented. A change, an era when Anna wouldn't be the first woman in his life.

Right now, when something—anything, good or bad—happened in his life, she was the first he wanted to tell. If there was an event, a game, a show, that interested him, he wanted to share it with her. So did she. It was inevitable that when she found a partner, he'd be her priority.

At the back of his mind, he whispered a dangerous suggestion to himself. There was a simple way to avoid that: he just had to be her person, in every way. Her best friend, and her lover—the man she curled up to at night, the man she kissed, and the man who'd give her as many orgasms as she could stand, and more. Her boyfriend. No, he didn't like the term, too light for what they already had. Her partner. Her everything.

He knew for a fact that if he suggested that right now, she'd slap him and start shouting, with good reason. She'd think he was only propositioning her because he was afraid of losing her. She'd be right.

In the background, the credits rolled. It was late. They should move, go to bed. But Anna's head was resting on his shoulder, and he wasn't going to disrupt her.

"You have to get over it, you know? I won't change my mind because you're pouting."

"I know," was all he said.

They remained on the sofa a good fifteen minutes after the music stopped and the movie went back to the menu screen. Whatever she said, she wasn't ready to let go any more than he was.

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