Page 10 of Honeyed
This woman has been my closest confidant for my entire adult life, and here we are in this awkward hangout. Probably made more awkward that I’m watching intently as her simple beige flat dangles from her foot. A foot shouldn’t be so sexy, but considering it’s one of the only bare parts of her I ever get to see, I’m transfixed.
“Should we put a show on?” Clearing my throat and scolding the horny part of my lizard brain, I pick up the remote.
“Actually, the quiet is kind of nice. Whoops, there I go again.” She chuckles at her overuse of the word. “But tonight was a real shit show, and I’d just like to drink this in peace.”
“What happened tonight besides the usual chaos of the dining room?”
My eyes roam her face, taking in the way her long lashes kiss her cheeks as she sighs and lets them drift shut. How many times have we shared our problems? Shared drinks? Shared a movie?
So many. And now I’m about to ask her to share the biggest thing of all, except none of it will be real. My confidence in moving forward with Arthur’s term falters.
But then my best friend opens her mouth, and it confirms everything I know I must do.
“Dad and I had another fight about the storefront. He has no intention of helping me with what I want. Per usual, he’s only focused on the restaurant, when in reality, we could expand profits and visibility in the area by opening another store. A different kind of store. God, it’s a hard cross to bear being the only Ashton with creativity and vision.” She rolls her eyes as if her family doomed her to a life of complete boredom.
She’s talked about the storefront a ton over the last year—well, when we’d been speaking to each other. I didn’t realize she was still having arguments with her father.
In order for Alana to get her storefront, in order to put August through college and get her away from that nightmare of a home, in order for me to be a part owner of Hope Pizza …
All I have to do is marry my best friend.
“We should get married, then.”
It pops out of my mouth with no context, just my brain computing everything I pieced together and spitting it out as if I were already halfway into this conversation with Alana.
“What?” she squeaks, half laughing as the sound comes out of her mouth.
A twinge of guilt for springing this on her, a hidden desire to be with her, a desperate need to claim Arthur’s inheritance and help August, all of them swirl together in my gut in a combo that makes me dizzy.
Even as I turn to her, where she sits on the other side of my couch, I have to brace a hand on the back of it. “I didn’t explain this … um, or … shit. I meant to tread lightly as I told you what’s going on, but we haven’t talked in a while, and it feels weird.”
“For you to joke around about marrying me? Yeah, I’d say that’s fucking weird.” She looks confused but also hurt.
Because we’ve never spoken about what happened the night before we both left for college, never even talked about kissing again. And here I am proposing to her after the worst fight of our lives with absolutely zero context.
“Arthur left everything to me. The money, the houses, his businesses. Everything. I can do whatever I want with it, including getting August out of her mother’s house, sending her to college, the works. I can buy you your storefront. There is just one obstacle.”
I can practically feel the breath she’s holding and see the walls she’s erecting around her heart for protection. “Don’t say it.”
“Arthur specified that if I wanted any and all of it, you and I would have to get married.”
I drop the bomb, and we’re both stunned into silence, me waiting for her to say anything, and her because I just crossed the line I promised her father I wouldn’t.
Alana opens her mouth. Closes it. I hear a car door somewhere on Newton Street slam shut through my open apartment window. My beer bottle sweats in my hand I’m so nervous about how she’ll proceed with this conversation.
I’m about to take her pause and turn it into more rambling on my part, but then her raspy voice hits my ears.
“This isn’t how …” The beautiful woman before me has unshed tears in her eyes.
And because she is my best friend, and I know her almost as well as she knows herself, I know what she was about to say.
This isn’t how we were supposed to end up together. This isn’t how we were supposed to get married. A love between us was supposed to be genuine and romantic and sweet, involving her family being so happy for us they couldn’t contain themselves.
A marriage between us was never supposed to be struck as a deal, put in a timeframe, wrapped up with a handshake and a signature. A love between us wasn’t supposed to be brokered for ulterior motives.
As much as it pains me to hurt her in this way, as much as this wasn’t how we were supposed to end up together, I’m not reneging on my ask. My proposal, for all intents and purposes.
Because if marrying me means she gets her wish granted, if it means the two of us faking it as husband and wife gets August the out she so desperately needs, then I’m moving forward full steam ahead.
