Page 8 of The Boy Next Door
Chapter Four
Evan
By the time we managed to get the bar straightened up, it was past three in the morning. My apartment is only a mile away from The Brew House, so I convinced Em to stay at my place. Maybe I should feel guilty about suckering her into shit like this, but I don’t.
The second we get in my bedroom, I grab a T-shirt from one of my drawers and toss it at her. She circles her finger in the air, motioning for me to turn around.
Sighing, I face the wall. I strip down to my boxers, letting the waist ride low enough I know she can see the top of my ass. “I’ve seen you naked before, Emma.”
“Yes,Peeping Tom, I know...” I hear the springs to the bed creak. “Okay, I’m dressed.”
I turn around and take the two steps toward my bed then sink below the covers next to her. I’ve slept with Em countless times—a benefit of our friendship as well as a cruel form of torture. “I still think you got undressed in front of your window on purpose,” I say.
“Think whatever you need to feel less pervy about it.” She yawns, and I stretch my arm out across the pillow. Emma snuggles to my chest before I wrap my arm around her. “Youwouldthink I did it just to give you your own personal peep show...”
“I mean, any good friend would.”
She laughs, walking her fingers across my chest likes she’s done so many times. “So that’s why you always left your blinds open, huh?”
A smirk works over my face. “Of course...” I had hoped, eventually, if she saw me naked enough, it would break through some friendship barrier. So I strutted around in front of my open blinds ass-naked on a regular basis.
“I never watched, just so you know.”
“Liar.”
“I didn’t, although half my friends did. I’m pretty sure that’s why they always wanted sleepovers to be at my place. Shameless whores...”
“Uh-huh.” I sweep her hair away from her face and shift on the pillow. It would be so easy to turn my face and kiss her, to slide my hands over the flare of her hip and loop my fingertip underneath the waistband of her underwear. I wonder if she’d stop me... Then I think about Winston doing those things instead.
“What?” she says.
“Nothing.”
“I felt you go all tense, don’t lie to me. What’s wrong?”
I stare at the ceiling, fully aware that I shouldn’t bring the auction back up. If I truly were the whore she believes I am, she would be right. I’d be in no place to tell her what the hell to do. But—I’m not that guy.
She huffs. “I know you’re not still all pissy about the auction.”
“It’s messed up,” I say.
“It’s not a big deal.”
“It fucking is!”
She tries to roll over, but I hold on to her, pinning her against my side. “Nuh-uh. You aren’t rolling over and pouting. I’m trying to talk to you.”
“Why do you care so much?”
“Because I love you.” I swallow.
I’ve told her that a million times, but she’s never heard it the way I mean it. The first time I told her I loved her, we were seventeen and sitting on her back porch swing. I’d read some dumb article inCosmoabout when to say I love you. It said you’d just know, that the moment would feel right. Well, that night on her back porch, it felt right, so I told her. She smiled and kissed my cheek. “I love you too, Ev,” she said. And then she asked me for pointers on how to get Matt Thomas to date her.
Of course it would be my luck that they one girl I wanted something more with wouldn’t be able to see me as anything but a friend.
“I love you, too, Ev,” she whispers. “But really, you don’t need to worry about it.”
“A stranger. You are going to give your V-card to a stranger?”
