What if it doesn’t fade? I’ll probably have to revise the timeline if I find that I need more?—
A knock sounds on my bedroom door, and I jump. A moment later, Harper marches into my room. Her green eyes are wide and frantic as she holds her phone in the air.
“What the fuck was that, Tristan?” she says.
When I glance at the screen, there’s a frozen frame of Amy and I sitting on a picnic blanket.
Of course. I knew my “love confession” would upset Harper.
“They were just words,” I say. “I wanted to make the date dramatic.”
She shakes her head. “You’ve always had a weird thing with her.” She grimaces. “I never understood it. Why her of all people?”
I roll my eyes, trying my best to look nonchalant even though my pulse is starting to hammer. I can’t let Harper get too jealous. She could really fuck things up for me. She’s volatile when it comes to Amy. From now on, I’ll have to keep my intimate moments with Amy completely private.
Ironic that I lied and said I wanted to make Harper jealous.
What a disaster. Every part of my plan was thoroughly contemplated, except that misguided step, but at the time I had a single-minded desire.
I needed to get my hands on Amy.
I’d wanted to touch her so bad for so long, my body didn’t know what to do that night she stormed into our frat and brushed her big tits against me and looked up at me with those beautiful hazel eyes. My dick was so hard it almost hurt. I was practically in a fugue state when I went into that bathroom and beat my cock.
It felt like being hungry.
No, starving.
So I made up an excuse to get access to her sooner. I thought she’d believe I wanted to make Harper jealous. Thankfully, I also had the scholarship on my side, and she fell for it.
“Harper…” I run a hand through the hair at the top of my head. “We’re not getting back together again, so what does it even matter?”
Her lips tremble. It was hard for her when I finally laid down the law, but it wasn’t fair to keep drifting back into a relationship with her because I couldn’t have the woman I really wanted. Harper’s an amazing friend. She shouldn’t be anyone’s consolation prize.
Plus, I don’t think she really loves me that way either. She likes that I’m a god on this campus. She likes the two of us being a power couple.
It’ll be good for her to let her vanity go and find a real connection with someone.
“It can’t be her.” Her voice quivers. “I’ll be okay if you… If you move on. But not with her. Not the person who abandoned me when my dad died.”
I sigh heavily. She’s back on this. Over the years, the story behind the dissolution of Harper and Amy’s friendship has inched closer and closer to Harper being the victim. I remember exactly how it went down. Harper abandoned Amy, not the other way around, but I’ve given up trying to remind her of what really happened. She doesn’t listen.
Over the years, I’ve learned that Harper is completely irrational when it comes to her dead father. It’s as if her emotions toward her father froze in their teenage state when he died, while the rest of her became a rational adult. Her feelings for Amy are frozen with him. In some ways, it’s as if Amy died too.
I get it. My feelings for Amy are also frozen in time. And I plan to incinerate them in her warm, luscious body.
“Look,” I say, struggling to find the right words. “I know you and Amy have a complicated history, but I think I might… You know I’ve always wanted to…”
Fuck her.
Damn it.I can’t say it.
“Yes,” she clips out. “You’ve wanted her since high school.” Her eyes bore into mine. “Was everything you said to her true?”
My heart pounds in my chest as I struggle to form an answer. The truth is, yes, everything I said to Amy was true. In a way. My body still seems to think it’s true even when my brain knows that what I feel for her is only a trifling obsession.
But I can’t admit that to Harper. Then she’ll know all her concerns about Amy were justified. I did want her more than Harper all those years ago. I was ready to break up with Harper after my first conversation with Amy.
I can’t tell her that. She’s terrified of abandonment, and I’ve worked hard to show her that I’m a steady, loyal friend. It’s the least I can do for her. She’s been there for me over the years. Both she and Nick have helped me as I came to see that my parents are emotionally unavailable assholes who never should have had a kid.
