Page 66 of Love is an Open Book
His chest shakes in a quiet laugh. “We’re friends for a reason, Mia.” I stiffen at the implication that’s all we are to each other, but he squeezes my arm. “Because we think alike. I think that’s not the same with all couples. They care about each other, they’re passionate about the same things, have similar goals or visions for the future, but their personalities are opposites. But we have similar tastes, and we worry about the same things.”
“Like whether we’ve totally ruined things?”
“We couldn’t,” he says with certainty. “What’s between us is stronger than that.” His tone leaves no room for dissent, and I don’t want to argue, because I believe him.
What I don’t know is where to go from here. Work to return to what we had? Or push past it into a different kind of relationship, one that might not last? My questions tumble out. “What if it’s too late? If we were destined for anything more than friendship, wouldn’t this have happened years ago?”
“When? The day we met you’d just suffered a breakup,” he says. “My dad was constantly calling me, giving me the worst advice about love.”Never marry your best friend, his dad used to say, fresh off of losing his mom. “We weren’t in the right place.”
I stroke between the kitten’s soft ears. “Are we now?” He might be moving. My next book is in shambles.
“Do you want to stay just friends? Because we can do that. Forget this ever happened. If you can do that, if you want to, I will.” Juniper meows, and he sets him gently in the cat bed.
“I’m not sure I can,” I admit. “I never wanted to kiss you, because I worried once we crossed this line, we could never go back. But now I can’t imagine not wanting this.”
“Wanting what?” he asks, and I know he wants to define this shift in the relationship. “If all you’re looking for is friends with benefits, I don’t think I could. Not with anyone, but especially not with you.”
I don’t want that, either, but putting a name on it, breaking that last barrier between who we’ve been to each other and something more, will signal the end of our friendship.
“What if it’s just... us?” I gather my courage and twist around to meet his gaze, and Ash scrambles from my lap. We’re on the precipice of more, or less, or nothing at all. And that last possibility is the one that has me holding back. “What if we don’t put a label on it yet? We could just do this, be this, for each other.”
“Friends?”
“More,” I promise. “I don’t want to deny this is different. But we can take it slow, right?”
“Slow, and exclusive?”
“Of course. Geez, Gavin, this is me you’re talking about. I’ve had, like, three long-term boyfriends.” And I’m worried if I call him one, then when he decides he’s ready for someone more fun, more flirty, more romantic, we can’t go back to friends. I need that escape hatch.
I need ambiguity, the ability to chalk this up to a sensitive time for both of us. A mistake, but not a friendship-ending one. “I just don’t want to move too fast,” I say. “Or make it into, like, a big deal.”
“You’ve always been a big deal to me.” He pulls me close again, which gives me the most absurd butterflies. “I get that this is new and totally not how our relationship has been like, but you’re right. We’re still us. We trust each other. If it takes some time to trust this, I get that.”
“And by ‘this’ you mean...” I trail off, tentative again, wanting him to fill in the blanks. To say aloud what I’m scared to. I know it’s cowardly, to not say it first. To be afraid to name the big feelings, the huge, overwhelming desire to claim him. I’m a hypocrite, but the idea of saying it aloud, of being rejected, again, is too much to overcome.
“More than friends,” he says, and leans in to kiss me.
For now, that’s more than enough.
Twenty-Two
Gavin
This breakfast with Mia is going to be nothing like other meals we’ve shared together. Even the mornings we’ve spent at the cabin, we were joined by friends, or my sister-in-law and nephews, my brother and I trying to one-up each other with dad jokes and Mia proclaiming such a feat was impossible.
There was never just us, not at the coffee shop where we have our orders memorized and eat at tables surrounded by people on their computers, or at our usual brunch spot, Mia bleary-eyed at the early wake-up, the bustle of the weekend rush filling the air.
We’ve never woken up together, her lips looking impossibly plush, face pressed to my pillow. I’ve never seen her from this angle—the dip of her neck where it meets her shoulder, tender and exposed, the curve of her cheek as she turns to look at me.
I couldn’t resist kissing her again, lingering in bed until the sun rose high enough to reach the photo of us at Scott’s wedding on my dresser, a beam of light slanting across our smiling faces. My last girlfriend told me it was weird to have a picture of Mia in here, facing my bed. She made it sound illicit, but the truth is, Mia is with me wherever I go. She’s been in my heartsince that night we met in a dingy hallway, her heartbroken and me already halfway in love.
The photo stayed; that girlfriend is long gone. And maybe that should’ve been a sign that what I’ve felt for Mia is stronger than what I’ve felt for anyone else. Except, last night I tried to tell her, and she rebuffed me, like one of the kittens batting at a string, claws sheathed, no malice, but her insistence we not define the shift in our relationship stung. Her kisses soothed it away, as she led me back to the bedroom, but now, even though she’s here, even though she wants this, part of me can’t help but wonder if she wants all of me, like I’ve wanted her, since forever.
Finally, my noisy grumbling stomach has her climbing out of bed, laughing at the sheet tangled around her legs. She ignores my promises that food can wait and tugs me down the hallway, leaning into the laundry room to check on the kittens, balls of fur nestled in next to their mom, who understandably looks like she could sleep for a week.
Today is my day off and technically I can sleep in, too. Yet another perk of being an employee for a small establishment like Hill and Dale is the ability to set my own hours, something I’d never be able to do as owner of the tree nursery. Up until recently, Dad hadn’t taken a full day off in my life, and that could never be me. I decided early on I wanted to work to live, not the inverse.
Mia is like my dad. Dedicated. Passionate about what she does. But also, like my dad, I worry she’s headed toward burnout, or maybe she’s already there. It’s half of why I agreed to the trope scheme. Because it sounded like a way for Mia to let loose a little. Never thought it would end with her bare-legged in my kitchen, humming as she takes out a carton of orange juice.
