Page 79 of Kiss the Girl
That would have made my insides all warm and melty if I couldn’t sense the “but” coming. “But…”
“I don’t know about this whole noncommittal friends-with-benefits thing. I’m not wired that way.”
I pushed past him to the sofa and plopped down, the very opposite of grace, but I didn’t care. “We went over this.”
“Youdid,” he said. “You set these terms.”
“You agreed.”
“I thought I did.” He sat on the coffee table in front of me, his elbows on his knees, hands clasped.
“That’s your ‘I’m serious’ pose. It means you’re thinking through a problem. Am I a problem, Noah?” I didn’t like feeling like I was one more thing he had to manage.
“The fact that you know me well enough to recognize my thinking face but don’t want us to date is the problem.”
I stared at him blankly.
“Grace, I can’t sort you into a neat box labeled ‘break in case you need a makeout.’ I don’t putsomeof me into anything. I putallof me into everything. I can’t draw the kind of lines you’re asking for.”
I wanted to throttle him. Not to death. Just until I felt better about the fact that he was sitting right there in front of my face, a guy I shared more chemistry with than I had ever shared with anyone, a guy who could make my last month in Creekville so fun and for whom I could do the same, and he had to go and be exceedingly…
Decent.
It spoke to my core. Because until this proposal to Noah, I had never been a friends-with-benefits kind of girl either. Noncommittal wasn’t me. Makeout buddies wasn’t me. But what else could we be? We were two roads diverging.
“I hate Robert Frost,” I muttered.
He gave me a confused look. “Like…the poet? Why?”
“Never mind.” I sighed. “I’m leaving, Noah. This can’t go any other way. It’s not like we can shift this into a relationship and somehow keep it up long-distance. You’re not leaving Paige and Evie. I’m not giving up my job. A relationship doesn’t make sense between us.”
“Define a ‘relationship,” he said. “I don’t meanourrelationship. I meananyrelationship. What does that mean to you?”
“You do stuff together. Share deep thoughts. Talk about feelings. Go on dates.”
He nodded and leaned forward even more, locking eyes with me. “Has it ever occurred to you that by that definition, we alreadyarein a relationship?”
What? No. I could see why he would look at it that way. But no. “We’re friends.”
“With strong chemistry. Like, flammable levels. Isn’t that more than friends?”
“Yes,” I said, not trying to keep the frustration out of my voice. “Friends with benefits.”
“But how is that different than being in a relationship? It’s not like it’s even another step forward. It’s a baby step. Half a baby step.”
Something about him putting a relationship label on us made it hard to breathe and not in the good, sexy way from a few minutes before. I felt like I was groping at the walls of a doorless room, trying to find an exit, and finally seeing a crack that I could pry at. “There’s one big difference: one has a future. The other doesn’t.”
“Why can’t we have a future?” he asked softly. “We’ve been hanging out for six months, Grace. I know almost everything about you. The kinds of movies you like, how you cheat at Monopoly, how you like your popcorn, what makes you laugh, what a bad day at work looks like for you, how your dad is doing on any given day. What’s that if not a relationship?”
“That’s a friendship. Brooke knows all that too. Except the cheating part. I don’t cheat at board games.” I totally did.
“Does Brooke know about the sound you make when I do this?” He rose and braced his hands on either side of my head against the back of the couch and leaned down to press a kiss beneath my ear, then trail more along my jaw line. “Does she?” he whispered.
“No,” I whispered back even as I couldn’t hide a small shiver. “Because that would be weird.”
He laughed and sat back on the coffee table. “Way to ruin a moment, Grace.”
Yeah, that had been dumb of me. “Do it again,” I said. “I won’t ruin it.”
