“Okay.”
“Lily …” His expression turned pleading. “Please give me a chance.”
Could I be friends with Sebastian when I was attracted to him?
Well, it wasn’t like I hadn’t done it before.
When I was fifteen, I’d had a massive crush on Euan, a guy in our friend group. My girlfriends knew about it, and I got along really well with him. I’d thought we were heading into girlfriend/boyfriend territory. Until one day, my friend Nikki approached me sheepishly to tell me Euan had asked her out and she’d said yes. I’d been hurt. However, I was a weirdly rational teenager and reasoned that there was no point in standing in the way of the happiness of two people I cared about, even if they’d shown little care for mine. Would I have appreciated an honest conversation with my friend before she agreed to date the boy I liked? Yes. And I wouldn’t have stood in her way then either.
Anyway, long story short, I created a new place in my mind for Euan once he became my friend’s boyfriend. Somehow, I’d emotionally managed to friend-zone him. In fact, eventually watching him be so clingy with Nikki, I began to find him annoying.
I could do that with Sebastian.
Couldn’t I?
Not the annoying part. Hopefully. But the friend-zone part.
There was no point in pretending I wasn’t drawn to him. He was obviously drawn to me, even if only platonically. Maybe I could get to that same place. I did like him. I liked being around him. Before I found out about the podcast.
My attention turned to the camera in the corner.
However, I couldn’t authentically make strides toward that in a room where our conversation was being recorded. If I’d been locked in the room with a stranger, we could have passed the three hours making idle chitchat or awkwardly ignoring each other.
Sebastian and I were definitely not in a place for idle chitchat. It would only confuse things more.
Which meant I’d spend the next three hours guarding my words and emotions because I didn’t want them being recorded for use in a research paper.
Och, this could hurt my reputation with the grad students, but the decision had to be made.
Hopefully, they’d recognize my integrity and desire to not compromise their research rather than think me a flake and a waste of their time.
I got up off the bed to cross the room.
“Where are you going?” Sebastian asked. “What’s happening?”
Pressing the button by the door, I glanced back at him. “I’ll explain in a minute.”
Thirty seconds later, the door opened. An irritated Arthur stood on the other side. “You two have a background and you can’t interact authentically, and you don’t want to compromise the integrity of our data,” he supposed.
Grimacing, I nodded. “Sorry.”
“My fault. As soon as he said you were his friend, I should have switched you with someone else. Rookie mistake. You may leave.” He gestured, waving us out of the room.
“Sorry, again.”
He shrugged off my apology as I walked out, motioning for Sebastian to follow me. Arthur handed over our smartphones and we left. He was irritated, but I got the impression he wouldn’t hold it against me.
I didn’t speak until we were out of the old student accommodation building. Sebastian followed me over to my bike. He watched me warily, curiously, as I unlocked it.
“We can try,” I finally said. “To be friends.”
His expression softened. “Really?”
“Sure.”
“Friends have each other’s phone numbers.” He held out his smartphone, wearing a hopeful, boyish look on his gorgeous face.
With a shake of my head, I attempted to suppress a smile as I rhymed off my phone number. He immediately hit the call button, and it rang in my pocket.
