Page 2 of The No Touch Roommate Rule
He always has to whip out the French and make the rest of us seem like idiot cavemen with no game.
Blue leans closer. “He said she’s the truth of his life and?—”
“The keeper of his heart,” I whisper, cutting him off. “Yeah, I know.” I sniff hard before adding through clenched teeth, “He won’t be happy until we’re all crying like babies.”
It’s like they’retryingto twist tiny beauty knives deep into our hearts.
I have to look away, blinking fast.
That’s when it happens.
My gaze drifts Makena’s way to find her big blue eyes locked on me, her expression soft, rapt. In her flowy bridesmaid’s dress, with her curly blond hair framing her face like a halo, and her glossy pink lips parted, she looks like a sexy angel come to earth. Then her lips curve and her eyes begin to shine, and the air punches out of my lungs.
It’s been seven and a half months since we made out at The Brass Monkey, seven and a half months of her avoiding me like a highly contagious disease, and now she’s looking at me like she feels the ache in my chest.
The longing.
The need to reach out and touch someone—and God, I hope it’s me.
But before I can mouth “Can I have the first dance?” Grammercy starts up again, and she jerks her gaze back to the front.
Fuck, Grammercy!
I mean, yeah, it’s your wedding. But you’re technically already married and the happiest man I know. Would it kill you to throw the rest of us a bone once in a while?
Then, the man proceeds to kneel down and give his new stepdaughter, Mimi, a necklace he had made just for her, and a promise to always be her daddy…and that’s it.
Man overboard!
Tears ahoy.
Fuck, that motherfucker and his gorgeous fucking heart and that little girl with her scrappy-smart-cute kid energy and Elly bending to gather them both in her arms for a family hug, while the rest of us weep like Sam when he said goodbye to Frodo at the end of The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
We weep because it’s glorious.
We weep because we know there can be no truer way than this.
We weep because we wish the world could be a finer, gentler place where love was the rule, not the exception.
We weep because the most beautiful babysitter a man ever had won’t let him pleasure her into half a dozen orgasms and show her that we’re fucking perfect for each other.
And yeah, Makena used to be my babysitter.
So what?
That was a lifetime ago. I was twelve, and still being treated like a fetus by my parents. She was eighteen, and made the best grilled cheese sandwiches I’d ever had. We shared a mutual love of raunchy cartoons, jumping on my trampoline, and Wheel of Fortune, and spent many a Saturday night laughing until we snorted soda out of our noses over the latest episode of Saturday Night Live. I wasn’t supposed to stay up that late, but Makena didn’t care. She said she enjoyed my company and that a twelve-year-old should be able to decide when he went to bed on the weekend.
I enjoyed her company, too.
I enjoyed it so much that I developed a deep and lasting crush that has never left me. Not even when she graduated and moved away. Not even when I was recruited to play hockey at the University of North Carolina, drafted into the NHL my junior year, and instantly plunged into a world of easy pussy unlike anything I’d ever known.
Fact: I’ve always been a good-looking guy. Even as a twelve-year-old, with baby fat lingering on my cheeks, acne, and nothing resembling game, the girls in my class regularly fought over who got to dance with me at school parties. In high school, dating was easy. College was more of the same. When I wanted to get laid or dip my toes into the relationship waters, it wasn’t something I had to work too hard for.
But none of that prepared twenty-year-old me for drop-dead gorgeous puck bunnies throwing themselves at me outside the rink.
Did I become a huge slut, you ask?
And to that, I reply…definehuge.
