Page 26 of Framing the Pitch (Red Dirt Romance #1)

The all-day Fourth of July block party is better than any rager you’d find at a frat at an average university.

Kids zip up and down the street on bikes or scooters or roller blades, everyone keeping an eye on them, even if they aren’t theirs.

Every house brings out tables and chairs, offering places for people to sit in between snagging food off the potluck-style table that’s been set up in front of the Davenports’ driveway.

The last two days have allowed the rest I needed, and while I’ve spent them helping Marilyn with things here and there for today’s party, I’ve hardly thought about our losses in Oklahoma City earlier this week.

Even when I received texts from Erica and Coach Golding and a few other teammates this morning, wishing me a good and restful holiday, my mind hasn’t been consumed with the upcoming games in Florida.

As the sun begins to fade, my energy with it, I retreat to a plastic chair set up underneath the large tree in the Davenports’ yard, far enough away from the street to be left alone but close enough to still enjoy the atmosphere.

I watch Trace mingle with people he’s known his whole life and more recent transplants to the area—only a few of whom are starstruck with him being here—and his parents blend in seamlessly with the rest of their neighbors.

I take a long drink from my water bottle—the obvious choice with how hot today has been and how much we’ve been outside.

That, plus with it being late enough that most of the younger crowd has gone to bed, I can’t be sure that the lemonade hasn’t been spiked.

I watch Trace pull away from the conversation he was having with his mom and one of her friends—Jen, if I remember correctly from when I met her earlier—and head in my direction.

He looks so relaxed. More than he has in months. I know it’s only been a month since things started ramping up with Millie, but it’s obvious—looking back—that something had been bothering him for a long time before that fateful incident.

He walks with purpose in my direction, plopping down in the chair next to mine, scooting it close enough that our knees touch and leaning in close.

“How much do you want to sell this thing?” he asks, looking back at where Marilyn and Jen are standing, hiding smiles behind their hands.

“What?”

“Us dating.” He turns his head to look at me, putting our faces less than a foot apart. His sparkling brown eyes are all I can see. “How believable do you want to be?”

I laugh, my nose scrunching and causing the tight skin to sting, thanks to the hours I’ve spent outside today. “As believable as possible?” I don’t know where he’s going with this.

“Then I need you to kiss me.”

Am I hearing what I think I’m hearing? Kissing was a subject we never brought up when discussing our dating arrangement. We’ve held hands, given hugs, and there have been kisses on cheeks and foreheads and hands, but kissing…on the lips? It’s the unspoken line we haven’t crossed.

Because neither of us wants to throw away eight years of friendship on a kiss gone wrong. At least, that’s what I assumed. But the voice in my head that’s become increasingly louder over the last month tells me to throw caution to the wind. One kiss won’t change that much between us.

“But wouldn’t that be weird?” I ask, leaning my hands on his knees, bringing my body closer to his.

There’s still a sliver of my brain that says this is a bad idea, that this is something Trace and I won’t be able to come back from.

If we cross this line, our friendship will be changed forever.

But the louder voice drowns out that doubter.

While Duke might have thought of the idea in the first place, it was my decision to go for it, even though I knew what it would entail—the physical intimacy we’d have to maintain.

“Naomi”—Trace’s fingers touch my cheek—“it’s just a kiss.” The pads of his fingers trace a burning line across my cheek until he’s cupping it in his palm, the broad warmth soothing away the fire his touch sparked.

“I don’t know, Trace.” I brush the tip of my nose against his. My words might be drawing out the moment, but my actions say otherwise.

His eyes flash down to my lips, which are barely an inch away from his. “What if I dare you to kiss me? Would you do it then?”

“Depends,” I whisper cheekily, my breath puffing against his lips, “on what happens if I don’t.”

Trace’s hand slides from my cheek to around the back of my neck, anchoring me there, lending me his strength. “Then you’re resigning your best friend to the fate of his mother’s friends thinking he doesn’t know how to treat a girl. ”

“Oh, well, we can’t have that, can we?” I drift closer, my heart doing its best to beat the snot out of my ribcage.

“Certainly not,” Trace mumbles as our lips make contact, and then there’s nothing.

And everything.

I knew in my bones that Trace couldn’t be a bad kisser, but what’s going on right below our noses confirms it.

Trace presses his lips to mine, firm and soft and warm.

And after a lingering second, I think he’s going to pull away, his point proven to his mother and her friend, but then he shifts, the smooth skin of his lips slipping sideways on mine as he angles his head and parts his mouth.

The first touch of his tongue is tentative, but just enough to open the floodgates of what I’ve been holding back since the morning after we arrived in Alabama.

Slipping into the muscle memory of kissing is like the softest sigh—an unspoken finally as I press forward, Trace encouraging my explorations with a hum that I feel through my fingers on his chest more than hear.

And even though I can’t forget who I’m kissing, any worry of ruining our friendship leaves my body because how could this ruin anything when it feels so right ?

Heat builds between us, and the slow, languid pace Trace set at the beginning begins to unravel as we both push for more. More touches, more proximity, more everything . But just as my brain asks the question, More real? Trace pulls back, leaving the smallest gap between us.

Trace’s breath is hot on my mouth, and before either of us can pull farther away, I can’t resist going back for a second taste.

Trace meets me, stroke for stroke, in a kiss that blurs everything between us.

Our friendship, our arrangement, our feelings.

Everything when it comes to Trace becomes a blend of color and yeses and nos, the words what if smearing every thought I’ve had about Trace over the last month into an abstract art piece that makes me question everything I’ve ever felt for him.

I wouldn’t have been surprised to find the sun gone and stars winking at us when we finally break apart, but it hasn’t been more than a minute.

The fading sun still fills the warm air with golden light, and sounds of neighbors and friends become the soundtrack of the moment as I open my eyes to find Trace staring at me.

His nose brushes mine once more, like he’s thinking about going back for a third kiss, before he leans back. His hand is still on my neck, the pads of his fingers are individual pressure points that I’m hyper aware of, and his face…

I expect to find relief that his reputation is intact, or maybe worry that we crossed a line—a line that can’t be uncrossed—but all I find is contentment. The same contentment that wraps around my limbs and makes me smile softly and reach out to put my hand on Trace’s knee.

Maybe I should be worried that things are going to change now that we know what it’s like to kiss each other, but my friendship with Trace has weathered everything the last eight years have thrown at it. It will weather this, too.

Trace’s honey-colored eyes bounce all across my face, like he’s memorizing how I look right now.

When he’s drunk his fill of whatever he sees there, he turns to look in the direction Marilyn and Jen were standing a few minutes ago.

I turn, too, only to find them gone, mingling somewhere down the street.

“I guess we convinced them,” Trace mumbles, turning back to me. The hand that still hasn’t released my neck squeezes gently. “Unless you think we need to kiss a little more? ”

I run my teeth over my bottom lip, remembering the way his lips felt.

But even if I want another few minutes lost in his kiss, he’s still Trace .

He’s still my friend. We still have things to accomplish with our fake relationship over the next month and a half, and I can’t jeopardize it all now because I think making out with him would be a good way to pass the time.

And as much as it kills me to do it, I lean back.

Trace’s hand falls away like he never had a firm grip, and I pull my hand back from his knee.

In seconds, we go from making out to two friends conversing about the weather or the parade or some other inconsequential thing that doesn’t mean anything in comparison to the paradigm shift that just happened between me and Trace.

I have to say, I’m pretty good at pretending that that kiss didn’t just dig up everything I’ve buried for years when it comes to my feelings for Trace.

Memories come crawling out of the deep recesses of my brain, but I ignore them and their grasping hands that tell me they’re back .

It’s a fight to not stop and study them and embrace them like the old friends they are, but I keep my eyes firmly on Trace and not on the truth lingering at the edges.

And if anything changed for Trace, I wouldn’t know it by how cool and collected he’s being, content to sit next to me and watch the people meandering up and down the street, wedges of watermelon or plastic cups full of sweet tea or lemonade with condensation running down the sides in their hands.

I take my own sip of the water I almost forgot about in the cupholder of my chair, and the movement breaks apart the feeling of a held breath.

Trace’s hand finds its way to mine and our fingers intertwine, dangling between the arms of our two camp chairs.

Trace begins chattering animatedly about someone he spoke to earlier, and we slip back into the easy rhythm of our friendship, like the kiss was no more than something we do on a regular basis.

Trace stays close to my side for the rest of the night—a hand on me at all times, which I welcome as the sun fades beyond the horizon, and the chill of night creeps in as we wait for the fireworks to begin.

But every time our skin brushes, a different kind of firework sparks off in my body—a kind I can’t wrestle back under control.

Maybe because I’ve been waiting for years for them, and I’m afraid that if I squash them, I’m extinguishing my only chance—a chance I didn’t know I wanted until it was handed to me on a fake-relationship-shaped plate.

Marilyn and Emmett return from their hours of mingling and inform us that the firework show is about ready to begin, and then disappear inside to retrieve a blanket for us to sit on.

When they return, Trace’s parents pull two camp chairs from underneath the tree onto the driveway, and Trace spreads the blanket down on the front lawn.

He settles down in the middle of the blanket, spreading his legs to give me just enough space to sit between them.

After I lower myself to the ground, he wraps his arms around me and clasps his hands together in front of my stomach, cocooning me in his scent and warmth—a heady combination.

He nestles his head into the space above my shoulder, holding me tightly to him, and I relax, letting him prop me up.

While earlier, I might have filled the night with chatter, I instead close my eyes and focus on Trace’s steady heartbeat behind me, wondering if he can feel the way mine races when he turns his head and brushes his lips across my cheek and temple.

The first boom and flash of the fireworks has me opening my eyes, and I smile at the brightly colored sparks, my cheek pressing more firmly to Trace’s wandering lips. Questions begin flooding my mind as Trace times his soft kisses to the explosions in the sky.

Boom. Kiss. Has our line in the sand been erased?

Boom. Kiss. Are these kisses fake?

Boom. Kiss. Are my feelings real?

The questions consume me as we watch the fireworks, and by the third soft kiss on my shoulder, I decide the answers can wait for another day.