Page 83 of For You & No One Else (Say Everything 3)

She was going to have to end this thing with Beckham.

Self-defeating behavior was not her jam, and this was feeling like a classic case of it. If her goal was a loving, long-term romantic relationship, catching the feels for a guy who didn’t believe in that was asking for pain. She needed a healthy dating diet, and Beckham was all chocolate fudge sundaes and whipped cream—delicious but destined to lead to trouble in the long run. She needed to make space for men who wanted something more instead of indulging with a guy who’d told her from the start he couldn’tbethe guy.

She was her young client falling for the married college professor. She was that middle school version of herself getting a crush on a guy who had no interest in being her boyfriend.

She couldn’t let herself fall in love with Beckham. It would hurt too much.

After a fortifying breath and an internal pep talk, she picked up her phone, and texted him.

Eliza:U busy?

He responded within a minute.

Beckham:Wrapped up a few minutes ago. What’s up?

Eliza:Need to chat

Three dots appeared, then disappeared. Her phone rang.

She startled at the noise and put the phone to her ear. “Hey.”

“Hey,” he said, a murmur of conversation and clicking keyboards in the background. “One sec. I’m walking out of the office and am about to be in my car.”

The sounds changed—wind, then his car door opening and closing, the engine coming to life. The radio blasted.

“Sonofabitch,” he said, turning the blaring music down. “All right, sorry about that. Everything okay?”

Eliza turned in her chair, looking out her office window, wondering if she should’ve waited to call when she had her thoughts more put together. That was another problem with Beckham—she was impulsive around him. Messy. “Um, I’m okay.”

“She said in the least convincing tone ever,” he said in a movie narrator’s voice. “Come on, Eli, what’s up?”

“I like you too much.”What? No.That wasn’t what she’d meant to say. “I mean…”Fuuuuck.

Beckham chuckled a little, but it was a confused chuckle. “Uh, I think you’re neat, too?”

She cringed and pressed her fingers to the spot between her eyes, trying to regain her composure. “No, I mean, I’ve been thinking, since you left and, uh, I’ve had some space to think about it, and I think our…arrangement is, um, turning out to be counterproductive.”

Brilliant speech, Eli. Your college education was really worth that price tag.

There was a pause on his end. “Counterproductive.”

She swallowed hard. “Yes.”

He cleared his throat. “Is this your way of telling me you want to sleep with Will so now we have to stop? Because I’m a big boy. You can just tell me that straight up if you guys are getting to that point.”

“What? No. I don’t want to sleep with Will at all,” she said, too quickly—way, waytoo quickly.

“Wait.” Another pause. “You don’t?”

God.She tipped her head back against the chair, realizing the confession was true. “No. Will’s great, but…I’m not interested in him that way. It’s just a…friend vibe.”

“Oh.” Beckham seemed to be processing that. “Okay, then…what do you mean ‘counterproductive’ then? It’s been a long day and I might not be tracking fully here.”

She wet her lips, nerves surfacing again, and straightened her spine, trying to find her courage. She often told her clients to act the feeling first even if they weren’t feeling it yet. Then the emotion would often follow the action. Act calm. Calmness would come. Act confident. Confidence would show up.Act confident.

“This friends-with-benefits thing was an experiment for me, and I’m finding that I’m not cut out for casual. Turns out I can’t really separate the physical stuff from the feelings stuff, and well, I’m starting to like you too much. I’ve missed you this week. And that’s a problem. It’s making me not want to go find other people to date—which is pretty much the opposite of what this experiment was supposed to accomplish.”

“You don’t want to date other people,” he stated, his tone unreadable.