“Joseph isn’t boring.” Much.
“Oh, please. Last week I heard him going on and on and on about one of his client’s accounting errors that took him forever to fix.” She flashes me a pitying glance that has me grimacing on the inside. “Don’t tell me you don’t remember that. He came here during his lunch break to spend time with you. And complained when you told him you were extremely busy with customers.”
I can’t deny it. He did complain, and when I took him into the staff room to eat, because there were no available seats in the café, he couldn’t stop talking about the accounting errors. “So he gets a little overexcited about his job. That’s not a bad thing.”
Keshia huffs a muffled laugh. “What you need is a boyfriend like Garrett.”
True.
Wait. What?
I thought we were talking about her boyfriend and not my hopeless crush on my best friend. The crush she doesn’t know about.
“You and Garrett are so good together; you’d make a great couple.” Pride at the suggestion beams on her face. “I’m surprised you haven’t already gotten together in that way.” She tilts her head, knowing eyes assessing me. “Or have you?”
I choke out a strangled laugh and cough to cover it. She doesn’t need to know the truth. That I’ve been in love with Garrett since college. I’d spent a year flip-flopping between deciding to tell him how I felt about him…and deciding that would be a terrible,What-were-you-thinking?catastrophic idea.
Then one day during my junior year, I got up the courage to tell him. I’d just received my midterm grade in the class I’d been struggling with. I’d gotten an A…and had thought it was a sign from the universe to let the chicken out of the bag, so to speak.
I mentally scoff at that naïve thinking.
I found Garrett where I’d predicted he would be—under a tree in the grassy common area. He was wearing a gray T-shirt that deliciously fit histanned hockey-honed body. His trademark messy brown hair was even messier—as if someone had run her fingers through it during a heated make-out session.
The way I’d imagined it looking after I kissed him.
He wasn’t alone. He was staring into the eyes of a girl—and it was clear from his expression he was lost for her.
But it wasn’t just any girl. I recognized the bright floral head wrap tied around her coily hair. The floral head wrap I had given her for Christmas. It was Kenda.
My best friend.
The girl who’d strode into my freshman psychology class on the first day, surveyed the other students, and taken the empty seat next to mine. We’d instantly become friends.
She was my best friend, but I didn’t tell her when my feelings for Garrett had gone from him being my childhood best friend to something more. And she didn’t tell me…she didn’t tell me she had fallen for him.
“Have you?” Keshia asks, yanking me back to the present. She’s looking at me expectantly, her eyes flaring with meaning.
“Have I, what?”
“Ever been with him that way?”
“Definitely not.” The words rush out a little too quickly. “It’s not like that between us.”And never will be.
Garrett had been so in love with Kenda. And I was the best friend he’d come to for advice about their relationship.
I was the friend who’d smiled at every seemingly innocuous question. Questions that left my heart feeling like it had been tossed into a meat grinder. But I couldn’t complain. They were perfect together.
The happily-ever-after kind of perfect.
Heck, I’m waiting for her to realize she still loves Garrett. I know he would get back together with her in a heartbeat. I don’t think, deep down, the man has ever really gotten over her, and he probably never will.
Keshia purses her lips, unconvinced at my answer.
“I want to be with a man who looks at me like I am his world.” The way Garrett was looking at Kenda the day I stumbled across them together. “Garrett definitely doesn’t look at me that way.”
“Does Joseph look at you like you’re his world?” Keshia flashes a warning glance that says:Don’t even try BS-ing your way out of answering the question, Z.
She already knows the answer.
