Page 36 of Friends to Lovers

chapter twenty-two

The first thing I do is hurry down the nearest hallway and call Stevie. But after two rings, I end the call, holding the cool phone to my chest. Do I even want to tell Stevie? Do I want to drag her into this when I don’t even know what this is yet?

I lean against the wall, stare up at the ornate ceiling.

Being here, in a ballroom full of people I don’t know, and feeling this way might be one of the most out-of-body experiences I’ve ever had.

It’s like someone has opened me up, ripped out my most important parts, filled them up with new ones before shoving them back inside.

I can’t be in love with Ren, and yet, it’s overwhelmingly clear that I am, that I’ve always been.

I think about the Joni Mitchell song again, the pad of his thumb smoothing lazily along the strap of my dress when we were dancing, summers on the screen porch, every single playlist he’s ever carefully made for me, and have to squeeze my eyes shut.

“Joni.” I jump at the sound of his voice, turn my head against the wall to look at him as he strides toward me. Suddenly, Ren isn’t Ren , and instead some romantic lead, all dark eyes and tousled hair, like someone should put a light and a fan on him, set him up for a cover shot.

Think , I tell myself. Think of times you didn’t want him.

But I come up alarmingly short. Can a brain really rewire itself in so little time?

There has to be something. But all I can think of is a particularly bad hangover, his head in my lap as he opened his brilliant brown eyes to look up at me and my breath caught in my chest.

“Ren,” I say. Maybe I’m dreaming. Maybe it doesn’t matter if I reach out and fist a hand around the lapel of his jacket, press my knuckles over his heart. There are no consequences in dreams. In a dream, I can do anything I want.

“Are you okay?” he asks as he stops in front of me.

“I’m great,” I say, settling for a brief tug on his jacket. “Are you okay?”

“I’m—” Ren says, his eyes drifting down my body and back up to my face, like he’s checking for damage. He lays a tentative, gentle hand on my waist, but the contact just sends a new tremor through me. “Are you sure?”

I swallow, straightening at the hint of worry on his perfect face. “Yes,” I say. “Sorry.”

Maybe it’s just the wedding, I tell myself. Maybe it’s this weekend and this bizarre playing at a kind of adult we’ll never be in the ballroom of a ridiculous estate. Maybe it’s his suit and my dress and just missing him.

Maybe.

He looks at me, and the air between us draws taut. I think for one crazy moment that I might die if he steps away from me.

But that thought disappears as his hand subtly slips from my waist to the small of my back and he beckons me closer. He lowers his head, his eyes hooded with something unspoken, and our lips brush, once, before we both pull away.

“Are we drunk?” he asks, his hand inching up my side, curving over my ribs.

I manage to shake my head, whisper, “I’m not drunk. Are you?”

“No,” he says, dark gaze settling over my skin. “I’m not drunk.”

The next thing I know, our mouths are meeting again, more forcefully this time, bodies arching toward each other.

I’m too focused on how we fit together, on learning the feel and taste of him, to pay much attention to how we get from the wedding venue to our hotel room door.

It’s not a long walk, but we stop along the way, to kiss by a hedge, then again at the fountain that marks the halfway point, until we’re both breathless and one of us has to draw away, urge the other down the path again.

I wouldn’t be surprised if I opened my eyes and we were back in Boston, getting ready to say goodbye, having made our way back without ever breaking away from each other.

Outside our hotel room, I tug Ren closer by his tie and he pushes me up against the door. I try to force the key card into the slot behind me, moving blindly as Ren’s teeth catch on my lower lip.

Someone clears their throat behind us.

We separate just enough so we can turn our heads. Another wedding guest—Willow’s uncle, or Martin’s cousin?—is standing in the hallway, arms crossed.

“I don’t think you’ll have much luck,” he says, nodding at the key card in my hand, which is now jammed into the blinking red reader on the door. “Seeing as this is my room.”

Ren and I look at the number on the door—211—then over to the door next to us: 213.

“We’re so sorry,” I say as Ren steps away from me, holds his fist over his mouth.

As we shuffle clumsily, guiltily away, the man nods once, then enters his room.

Once his door is safely shut, Ren slips the key from my hand and pulls me toward our room. We stumble inside, palms to each other’s mouths to control our laughter.

Ren kicks the door closed behind us, and I stretch up onto my toes to kiss him, forcing his jacket off, working at his tie. He sets one hand over my hip, the other at the nape of my neck. But then suddenly he’s straightening, arm loosening from my waist so my heels drop to the ground.

“What?” I say. His hand comes to rest at the base of my neck, his thumb grazing over my collarbone. It’s so similar to what he did in the ballroom earlier and I find myself making a humming sound, my eyes almost fluttering shut.

“What are we doing?” he asks.

“Like, in life?” I ask. It still feels like I’m in a dream, tantalizing and slow moving.

Ren lets out a soft huff of a laugh, catching my elbows and putting a measured distance between us. “Joni,” he says. “I need to know that you want this.”

For years, our entire lives, really, I’d assumed friendship was like this: some skip in your heart when they called, overwhelming affection when they picked you up before class or lay next to you under the stars.

You were supposed to want to talk to your best friend more than anyone else.

And maybe that’s all true. But something about the thrill that went through me that first night Ren called—I hadn’t let myself think about it for too long. And now I understand why.

I could kiss him to answer his question, but when I look at him, there’s something in his expression—concerned, wary, hopeful—that has me nodding seriously. Even just scratching the surface of our lives, I think I might have always wanted this. “Yes. I want this. Do you want this?”

Ren pauses for a moment, then dips his head to mine again, kissing me once before he draws us back together so his hips are pressed just above mine, and I feel exactly how much he wants this. “I want this,” he says.

And it’s settled.

He lifts me onto the table in the entryway, my legs around his waist. Standing between my thighs, he slowly slips off one of my dress straps, mouth grazing the spot where it sat, the small mark it’s left on my skin.

He does the same to the other side as I pull off his tie and undo the top buttons on his shirt.

Then he ducks his head to my neck, lips skating across the column of my throat, and our bodies rock together, my head falling back, his palm catching it like he knew it would.

We move impatiently together, chasing friction, trying to get at more, more, more.

“Why is it this good?” I ask breathlessly, locking my ankles tighter behind his back. “This never feels this good.” I rake my teeth against his collarbone, smile as the sound that releases from his chest vibrates against my mouth.

“Because it’s us,” he murmurs, easing down my zipper, sliding my dress off as he picks me up off the table.

He slowly lowers me onto his bed and crawls over me, trailing his teeth and tongue and lips over my ankle, my calf, my knee, taking so much delicious time that I grow restless and reach down, play at his hair until he looks up, the dark, almost hazy cast to his eyes overwhelming every part of me.

A breeze floats in through the window, waves crashing in far below, as he makes his way up my body, then hovers over me, propped on one arm.

I try to finish unbuttoning his shirt, but only get halfway down before I’m pulling at it greedily.

Ren stills my hands, lips curving into a smile against mine, and undoes the buttons I’ve missed, sits up to kneel between my legs so he can shuck off his shirt.

I follow the movement, lean up to run my fingers over his taut stomach, lower until they catch on the waistband of his pants.

Our eyes meet, and whatever sense I abandoned earlier comes rushing back to me. I’m overeager, too excited, an embarrassing, obvious level of enthusiasm coming off me. I flop back against the bed and hide my face in my hands.

Ren shifts from between my legs and lies down on his side next to me.

“Hey,” he says, cradling the back of my neck.

“Talk to me.” The way his fingers, which were kneading at my hips not moments ago, now entangle themselves in my hair raises goose bumps up and down my arms, and in the most appalling show of self-betrayal my body has ever committed, I shudder.

Ren’s touch skims to my shoulder in a barely there way, then falls away from me.

I roll onto my side, grab his waist to anchor him next to me. “Don’t. Please don’t leave.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” he says. “I just want to give you some space.”

I think I can pick out every singular thing I’ve ever loved about him on his face, but they all read differently to me now, like my powers of observation had only been operating at 50 percent before.

The way his eyes are constantly working, shuttering and opening and darkening is a whole new line of communication unlocked.

The faint freckles across his nose, only visible to me this close and only ever out in the summer, even the white sliver of his teeth behind his parted lips light up previously undiscovered pathways in my brain.

I thought I knew his face better than my own.

But with him looking at me like this, everything is new.