Page 49 of Friends with Benefits

She smiles, a slow, steady curve of her lips. And I know she isn’t with me; she’s with her parents, wherever they are. She leans back on her hands, like I am, and I feel the push of sand against my own fingers where her hand comes to rest next to mine.

‘I can’t believe you remembered,’ she says. ‘I don’t even recall telling you about the pancakes.’ She shakes her head. ‘If I wasn’t too afraid to accept it, Jake, I’d say you’d be the best man I could ever ask to spend my life with.’

I replay her words in my mind. Trying to work them out, her out. Trying to control the tightness that just took over my chest and made it difficult to find my next breath.

Spend my life with Jess? I can’t imagine my life any other way. Of course, I want her forever. She’s Jess. My Jess. Her and me, against the world. But I can’t work out that first part. If I wasn’t too afraid to accept it. Does she wish we could be more than friends? Is she saying she’d accept someone else for the rest of her life but not me?

I can say, with certainty, I have never been as freaking confused in my life as I am this week. And usually, it would be Jess who’d talk me through a mess, make me understand the tangle of thoughts in my head. I’m afraid to push her. Yet, I need her. I need her to make sense of everything going on, the things in my head, the reason my chest feels crushed at the thought of her spending her life with anyone other than me. Knowing that, like with Emily, that could be a real possibility one day.

‘What are you afraid of, Jess?’

She glances at me and looks away just as quickly, as if she’s contemplating her next words. ‘I’m afraid that…’

‘Afraid that what?’

She pulls her knees up to her chest and wraps her arms around them, still not meeting my eye. ‘I’m afraid that… that you could be… that you could be what my dad was to my mum.’ She closes her eyes. ‘That you could be my fatal attraction. That you could be the person I can’t live without. The person who ends me. I think I’m afraid of you, Jake. The way… The things I feel here, with you, your family, Emily. I’m terrified of it all.’

I can’t tell you why my eyes start to sting. Why I feel like, for the first time since I was a kid, I could cry. I know how hard those words must have been for her. And it hasn’t occurred to me that… fuck, she could love me the way her mum loved her dad?

The lump that builds in my throat makes it hard to breathe. And though I try to swallow it away, it won’t go.

‘You let go of the fear once,’ I tell her.

Her pfft of laughter, short and somber, doesn’t shift the heavy air around us. ‘Yeah, look how well that turned out.’

‘Jess, you were nineteen when you and Danny planned to marry. You can’t cling to that failure forever. Don’t hold on to it for so long you let it ruin your future relationships.’

My voice falters as it occurs to me that I’m not sure whether I’m talking about our relationship or relationships with other people.

‘That’s a little ironic coming from you, wouldn’t you say? You were a kid when you fell in love with Emily and you’re still blinded by it.’ Her voice shifts; there’s an undertone of something that’s possibly anger.

Love Emily? Yeah, I do. I did. But I’ve never felt anything like I just felt when Jess called me the person she can’t live without.

‘No. I always loved Emily but not… not like that. I wasn’t in love.’

I’m only realizing now how true that statement is.

Jess finally looks at me. ‘So when? How did you know that she wasn’t only your best friend and you wanted more?’

I search the horizon, as if I’ll find the answer there. ‘I don’t know. I guess, the end of college. I was about to leave and she still had two years to go. It was going to be the first time since we were babies that we wouldn’t be together. It’s not like it happened overnight. I don’t ever remember suddenly wanting to rip her clothes off or anything.’

Not like with Jess.

I stare at her, at the wisps that have come free from her hair tie and blow around her perfect skin, around those big, brown eyes.

‘Have you ever thought that… maybe you were just scared to lose her? Maybe she and Brandon are the right couple?’

She swings my thoughts right back to that jackass and how much I’d like to punch him in the gut.

‘Jake! You ready?’ We turn to see Drew standing by the pool, shouting down to us.

I lift my cap from my head as if to say, I heard you. I’m coming.

I stand and offer a hand to Jess.

‘Jake, as your friend, I think maybe it’s time you made up with Emily. Let sleeping dogs lie and all that. Don’t ruin what you guys shared because she fell for a jerk instead of you.’

‘I’ll think about that, Yoda.’ I place my cap on her head and lift her chin. ‘Maybe you should think about whether your parents would have rather loved and lost than never experienced the time they had here together.’

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