Page 31 of Accidentally Falling For My Best Friend
“We can keep up the pretend dating thing for them if that would help,” Parker offers.
“Really? Even after all of this, you wouldn’t mind?”
Parker glances to me, maybe looking for approval. I’m not sure why he wants my opinion, but I nod. Her family sounds awful, and she should definitely try to secure some of their money if they’re going to do bad things with it.
“Sure. I do really care about you, Aspen. You’re one of my best friends, and I don’t want to speak for Oak if he’ll want to keep hanging out, but you and I can at least get together to take pictures for you to post or send to them or whatever you’ve been doing.”
“That would be amazing,” she sighs in relief, every single inch of her visibly relaxing. “Thank you so much.”
Parker gives her a small smile before turning back to me. “Do you want to leave?”
I take a second to really think about it. I’ve experienced so many emotions tonight, but ultimately, what Parker told Aspen is true for me as well, they’ve become some of our best friends. I might need a minute to adjust to the romantic aspect of my relationship with Sage being over. I do like her as a person though, and I think we could continue to be friends. I don’t actually want to cut her out of my life.
“Nah, we can stay and finish dinner,” I say, looking pointedly at the uneaten tacos on Parker’s plate. We don’t need his sugar crashing on top of everything else that’s happened tonight.
“So, how was the meeting with Tokyo?” Aspen asks, obviously trying to move onto something more casual for us all to talk about.
“It was fine, there was a lot of using translators, which isn’t always easy, but they needed our approval on a new budget,” Parker says. He also sounds calm, like we’re back to our usual nightly plans with them and nothing's changed.But I guess for the two of them, nothing really has.“They’ve had an upgrade planned for over a year now, but ran into some trouble with theircontractors. They’d resolved it and just needed our approval, which we gave quickly,” he adds. “We would have been there much later if there had been an actual problem.”
And then we might not have walked in on the girls.Would Sage and I still have ended things tonight if we hadn’t caught them?I guess it doesn’t really matter. Now that I’m single again, I’ll just have even more room for questions to obsess over about myself and my sexuality.
Great.
The rest of the evening is pretty normal. It’s clear to me that I’m the only one still thinking about who in this group should be kissing who.Plus, I have the fun addition of my stupid blowjob comment earlier to obsess over too.
Seriously, why did I say that? I’ve never thought about being on the other end of a blowjob, even as I’ve been questioning things, looking at other men, my thoughts haven’t really solidified beyond wondering what it might be like to kiss them. Yet without hesitation, I volunteered my mouth for the pretend scenario with my straight best friend.
If I’m being really honest, though, I think the reason I can’t stop thinking about it is that it sounds kind of hot.
And I don’t hate the idea.
16
PARKER
September
Gregory Caldwell is the type of businessman who will move any meeting he possibly can to a golf course.
The Chicago weather hasn’t gotten the memo that it can start to cool down, so we’re out here sweating in the heat of the cloudless day on a fancy golf course at one of the country clubs Oakley’s dad belongs to.
He asked us to join him so that he could “have some quality bonding time with his sons,” and get some updates on Bora Bora. I appreciate that he includes me in the family bonding time, and that he’s remained such a positive part of my life after all of these years.
I know he isn’t trying to replace my own father. I started golfing with Oakley’s dad and brothers in elementary school, and Greg is probably one of my favorite people. I really admire how he manages to balance prioritizing his family and his work. He makes supporting his sons’ careers and happiness look effortless, all while maintaining his own. It can’t be easy.
“Alright, boys, let’s hear some resort updates,” he encouragesas we wait for the group ahead of us to struggle out of the sand trap. “I know you’re excited, Oakley, so hopefully you won’t mind talking about it here, instead of waiting for the next board meeting,” he teases, knowing full well that Oakley would talk about this resort all day every day if given the audience.
“I thought you would never ask,” Oak deadpans back before excitedly launching into the plan. “Turns out we had to tear everything down and start fresh.””
“The good news is most of it was made of local organic materials,” I cut in before Oakley gets too into his speech. “Which meant that most of it could be recycled in other ways, and the new projects won’t have a negative environmental impact. We’re also planning to use solar panels on all of the new roofing structures to remain as self-sufficient and environmentally friendly as possible,” I add.
“Good to hear,” Greg responds. The group ahead of us has finally moved on, so we take our initial shots. Greg is almost as competitive as Oakley, and the three of us take our game very seriously finishing the hole quickly.
“We get to create everything from scratch.” Oakley jumps back into his spiel. “It’s perfect because we’ll have so many options for the events we want to host there.”
“That sounds nice. Good to have options,” Greg says, nodding.
“We’re going to have a few beachside villas to cater to different types of visitors, too,” Oakley continues with the same level of excitement.
