AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Oh no.” I shake my head. “We’re just friends. They wanted us to become friends again.”
He smirks. “You should talk to my sister, Juno. She had a guy best friend once too.”
“What happened?” Xavier asks.
Rome puts his hand on Xavier’s shoulder. “He’s her husband now. Good luck, you two. Now excuse me while I go talk to Colin.” He disappears into the kitchen.
Rylan walks in seconds later. “Can we go now?”
“Where’s Calista?” Xavier asks.
His face distorts. “I don’t know. Grandma paid us to pretend we were dating.”
Xavier looks at me. “Not so innocent, are they?”
“I guess you were right this time.”
He puts his arm around my shoulders. “I’ll take it.”
I can’t deny it feels good to be friends with him again. I just hope my heart remembers that’s all it will ever be.
9
“OH, MR. QUARTERBACK IS BACK IN TOWN.”
Xavier
I can’t believe she’s forgiven me. After two years, it finally feels as if some of the weight I was carrying around on my shoulders has lifted.
But it’s still a little awkward. Since I only have two more days here, I asked Clara to Truth or Dare for lunch, wanting to speed up this process of being comfortable with each other so we can move back into our best-friends status.
Stopping by the library to pick her up, I find Unessa behind the desk.
Her lips press together when she looks up from what she’s doing and sees me. “Oh, Mr. Quarterback is back in town.”
“Hi, Unessa.” She’s a few years younger than me and I swear she plots my death a new way every time I see her. I don’t know if she’s party to what went down between Clara and me, or if she just hates me. “Is Clara here?”
She tucks a piece of her purple hair behind her ear and continues to scan in some books.
“Unessa. Clara?”
She looks up at me again with a bored expression. “She’s in the romance section. Don’t go reading into that and run off now.” She points as if I don’t know the way. I helped Clara reorganize that section four years ago.
“Always a pleasure.” I nod and leave her to her scanning.
But a kid comes up right after me and she makes him recite the alphabet before she’ll help him locate the book he wants. The kid is, like, seven, but she tells him she can’t just hand him everything without him having to work for it like some people. I’m pretty sure she’s looking in my direction with that reference.
Forgetting Unessa, I walk through the library and so many memories surface, but it’s the one from four years ago that I can see as clear as glass.
Clara had to move romance to a bigger section because it was becoming so popular with the patrons, and they were carrying more and more titles. It was early summer, so I was still in off-season and had reserved the entire weekend to help her. The only problem was that the air conditioner in the library had broken down and no one could come to help until the following week, even when I bribed them. That’s life in a small town though. You get used to that kinda thing.
“I feel like all this should be in a curtained-off section with a warning like the video stores used to have for pornos.” I picked up Charmed by the Bartender by Piper Rayne and read the dedication that said it was written for all the ladies looking for their very own unicorn cock then turned to Clara. “Do I want to know what a unicorn cock is?”
She laughed. “Use your imagination, X, and will you please stop reading the books and come help me actually put them in order?”
She blew her brown hair out of her face, and I watched a drop of sweat disappear down the valley between her breasts. I stilled for a moment, confused about what that twitch of my cock meant. Sure, there’d been times I’d seen Clara in a bikini or that time when we got caught in the rain and she had to wear my clothes while hers dried, and I remember feeling attracted to her then. But I always pushed the feeling down. I couldn’t lust after Clara.
I picked up the book a couple down from the one I’d just had in my hand. “Here’s another one from the same series. Women really like this, huh?” I read the passage to her in my most breathy voice.
