Pulling his glasses off, he tucks them into the neck of his shirt. “I really did want to come check on you and see how it’s going with the house.”
I shrug, tossing a handful of jelly beans into my mouth. “You probably know more than I do. Tyler was, evidently, deadly serious about keeping all the details off my plate unless I need to know, and apparently, I don’t need to know yet.”
My dad studies me for a beat. “And living with him? You know your room at the house is always available if living with Ty is a little too much like living in a frat house full of athletes.”
I snort at that. “He’s cleaner and more organized than I could ever hope to be. He mops and vacuums and has one of those long handle thingies with the feathers on the end to cleanthe tops of his kitchen cabinets. He cooks. Literally cooks and picks my dirty clothes up off the floor and then hours later they appear in my drawers, all folded and good-smelling. It’s like living in a hotel with housekeeping.”
I leave out the times I’ve caught Tyler looking at me for a beat longer than normal, like I’m a mystery to be solved. The couple more moments we’ve had where it feels likesomethingis about to happen. The brief moments where the tension seems to build, only for Tyler to flash me one of his habitual grins while everything seems to snap back to normal.
I have no idea what’s happening, and it’s driving me insane because it’s also possible nothing is happening at all, and this is just the way it is when we inhabit the same space day after day and I see what I want to see instead of what is, which is Tyler and me, destined to be friends forever but never more.
“I’m here! You better not have talked about anything important without me!”
My mom bursts into my office, clad in neon-pink leggings and a purple sweatshirt, dark brown hair she passed on to me curling down her back and a stack of bangles clinking on her wrist, and my dad beams like she’s the sun he’s been waiting for. Catching her hand, he tugs her down into his lap and kisses her like I’m not sitting right here. “Rory, as if we would ever gossip without you,” he says, using the nickname he gave her when they first met in college.
Apparently, he came up with it when they were on a trip to Iceland and they saw the northern lights for the first time. He called her Rory after the aurora borealis, because she’s magical and colorful and one of a kind, and have you ever even heard of anything so perfectly romantic? They broke up their senior year of college when my dad’s parents died and he had to go home to take care of his younger sisters, but ten years later he came back for her—and spent months proving to her that he was there for her and only her. They’ve been together ever since.
That’s the kind of love I grew up around. Great, big, all-encompassing love. The kind of love that turns your life upside down and makes you into a different person than you were before you found it. The kind of love takes hold and never lets go. The kind I watched my entire life, and the kind I want for myself.
I’ve spent the last three years hoping Tyler would be the one to turn my life upside down. Wondering if maybe he already has. Trying to push that thought out of my head, I think about how I feel when I text football guy. When I see a message from him on my phone. How he makes me smile and makes me think. How I look forward to hearing from him every morning. How I’m not the least bit interested in talking to anyone on that ridiculous app but him. And still, thinking about going home to Tyler tonight makes my heart race and butterflies swarm my stomach.
I wonder if it will always be that way.
Shaking off the thought, I turn back to my parents who are now tangled together on the chair.
“No work today?” I ask my mom.
She grins, leaning back against my dad and kicking her feet up on my office coffee table as he wraps his arms around her. “Taking the rest of the day off. The clients from hell finally came in this morning to execute the estate planning documents it took me six weeks and seven meetings with them to draft. I needed a brain break, and when your dad said he was coming to check on you, I figured I would tag along and see if we could convince you to take a couple hours off and have lunch with us.”
“Did someone say lunch?”
I look over just in time to see a smiling Tyler stroll into my office carrying a takeout tray with two massive fountain sodas in one hand and two paper bags in the other. He tosses me a wink, and my heart literally leaps. There is no other way to describe it. It knocks against my ribs so hard it’s like it’s trying to jump out of my chest and straight into the hands of this man with the scruff-covered jaw and messy hair and cozy blue hoodie that turns his ocean-blue eyes piercing.
Football guy who?
I try to school my expression into something that says anything other thanI LOVE THIS MAN,but it’s no use. Out of the corner of my eye, I see my mom giving me a considering look, and when my gaze meets Tyler’s, the look in his eyes has my stomach bottoming out, my breath backing up in my lungs. But before I can try and pick apart what, exactly, it is that I’m seeing, his expression morphs back into the one I’m used to. Back to best friend Tyler looking at his buddy Sophie.
“What are you doing here?” I manage, my voice coming out in a breathy rasp.
CHAPTER TWELVE
TYLER
“Brought lunch,” I say with a grin, my heart doing a quick little thud at the tone of Sophie’s voice. The few seconds where an entire constellation of emotions crossed her face before she managed to school her expression into something more guarded. It was so quick I would have missed it if I wasn’t looking, but I definitely was.
For the last couple of weeks, it feels like I’ve been doing a whole lot of looking.
My stomach has been doing a whole lot of flipping.
My brain has been doing a whole lot of racing, particularly in the middle of the night when I find myself staring up at the ceiling, considering the fact that I may have some unexpected, inconvenient romantic-type feelings for my best friend.
Wondering where the hell they came from.
The two weeks since Sophie moved in have been…well, they’ve been fucking amazing, actually. I love having her at my house all the time. Seeing her walk through the door, bubbling with excitement and full of stories about whatever happened at work during the day. Watching her disappear up the stairs before she reappears in comfortable clothes, ready to eat dinner on the couch with a movie. Waiting for her to stumble into the kitchen in the morning, bleary-eyed and grumpy with one leg of her pajamas tucked into her knee sock the way it always is, and watching the way she wakes up slowly with every sip of coffee she takes. Making her breakfast before she leaves for work.
Never feeling alone when my brain decides to go rogue because she’s right there, linking her finger with mine and distracting me from my racing thoughts and making everything so much better, without either of us having to say a single word.
Sitting in the sudden, startling realization that Sophie is gorgeous and perfect and wondering how it’s possible I went twenty-six years without noticing.
