Page 44 of Friends to Lovers

chapter twenty-seven

Any other time, I’d have asked for the grand tour of Ren’s apartment, spent time poring over how he organized his records (the same meticulous way he did at his old place, I’m sure—by genre, then artist and album in release order), observing all the things that make it his and not just another box in this building.

Is his guitar still propped in one corner of his living room?

Does he still keep a Chemex sitting on his stove?

Did he ever get rid of that hideous lamp we found in a thrift store in college?

But as soon as the door closes behind us, Ren is hoisting me up against it, kissing me greedily.

We move together easily, barely making it to his kitchen before I’m unbuttoning his pants and he’s pulling my sweater over my head, dropping to his knees in front of me to kiss a line across my abdomen and tug my jeans down.

We stumble into his bedroom, and he sheds the rest of his clothes.

On the bed, I sink down onto him, Ren swearing, a low groan stretching out of him, his hands coming up to my hips to guide me.

For a while I’m nothing more than a body, chasing after every sensation until I fall against his chest, his fingers scraping up my spine to hold me to him.

I’d worried we might not be able to replicate the magic of that night outside Boston, had to tell myself every time we confessed we were missing each other in that way, up on the phone late into the night, that it was us that had made it wonderful and not the hotel on the coast, the over-the-top wedding, the vacation mindset we were in.

But I didn’t need to. This is something almost better: a familiarity that lets me anticipate how we’ll touch each other, the push and pull of it all.

After, I lie on top of him, my cheek resting on his sternum. He dances the pads of his fingers over my arm, across my shoulders, down the other arm.

I think I could live with Ren like this forever, but that’s half the problem: we don’t have forever.

“What are you thinking?” he asks me.

I roll off him, onto my side, haul his oatmeal-colored sheet over me.

Over his shoulder, I can see three framed vintage concert tour posters, one that I recognize and two that I don’t.

His Red Sox cap sits on a shelf underneath them, a stack of books next to it.

He tucks the comforter up over us before he lies on his side too, one hand coming up to rest at my waist.

“Nothing,” I say. I don’t want to drag Ren down into my swirling anxiety, because it’s rarely right: I’m just overthinking, worrying needlessly. I don’t want him to think I don’t want this. “I’m just— I’m so happy.”

A soft smile plays at his mouth as he exhales what’s almost a laugh. “I don’t think people usually say I’m so happy in that tone.”

“I am,” I say, curling closer to him, but still keeping a notable distance between our bodies.

I want to close it, want to pull him into me again, because that seems to be the one time I can get my brain to quiet.

But I know this will still be waiting on the other side.

I’ve been trying to ignore it, but being here with him, in his apartment, in his bed has forced it all to the forefront of my mind, cast a spotlight on it.

I don’t know when we’ll see each other again after this week.

What if we can’t see each other until the summer?

It’s been hard enough being long-distance best friends for the last four years.

But every time we’ve tiptoed toward this discussion of us, a future, a plan , over the months, we’ve veered the other way, both of us hesitant to mention anything, I think, that could screw this up.

Both of us, I know deep down, without a real solution.

Like he can sense my anxiety hiking, Ren draws me against him.

He asks me to tell him about the movie, and I do, and I ask him for his predictions for Sasha’s wedding, and we agree Stevie might have just met her person.

I say things I know will make him laugh, storing the sound somewhere deep in me.

We talk about everything but us, and for now, I tell myself, that’s okay.

I try to believe it.

* * *

In the morning, Ren drives me to Stevie’s apartment. She’s already outside, car keys in hand and her face burrowed into her coat. There isn’t any snow on the ground, but it’s cold, the tip of her nose visibly red as she comes over to the window, resting her elbows on it once I roll it down.

“How was Ren’s couch?” she asks.

“Come on, Stevie,” Ren says in mock disappointment. “You know I’d never let Joni sleep on the couch.”

“Chivalry isn’t dead, then.” He smirks at her comment, and she sticks out her tongue at him, then taps the window’s edge. “Come on. We’re due at brunch in thirty minutes. Sasha will hate it if we’re late.”

I push the door open and dislodge Stevie from her post. My hair is still damp from the shower Ren and I took together, Ren behind me like it was something we’d practiced.

I turn back to him, hope Stevie won’t notice that his hair isn’t totally dry either, that I smell like his soap.

“See you at the rehearsal dinner?” I say, ignoring the slightly hollow feeling that developed in my stomach on the ride here at the way this weekend already was no longer ours.

He nods, eyes drifting over my face.

Stevie has walked back over to the front door of her building and is shifting between her feet, rubbing her arms. “Come on!” she calls, antsy.

“Okay,” I say, gaze finally dropping from Ren’s as I hop out of the car.

“Joni,” he calls through the window as I start across the sidewalk. Stevie grumbles in protest when I pivot, walk back to his car and lean into the passenger window.

Ren has one arm draped over the steering wheel as he angles toward me, mouth in a straight line.

“We’ll talk about it,” he says. “We’ll figure this out. Okay?”

Something on Ren’s face tells me he might have spent the night worrying about this too.

“Joni!” Stevie shouts, impatient as ever.

Ren’s mouth twitches into a smile, and my heart gives a hopeful beat.

“Okay,” I say, smiling back at him.

“I am freezing my ass off for you,” Stevie calls.

I roll my eyes at Ren, and he laughs as I hustle across the sidewalk toward my sister.

“Sorry, Stevie!” he shouts.

“Yeah, yeah,” Stevie says. She doesn’t sound all that irritated when she adds, “You two are so annoying,” opening her door and ushering me inside.

I turn and wave at Ren one more time before the door closes behind us.

* * *

After Sasha’s bridesmaid brunch, we head back to Stevie’s apartment and curl up under the extra-fluffy duvet on her bed, both of us sleepy after mimosas.

“Remember how freezing it was in our apartment that one winter in New York?” I ask as I tuck the blanket farther under my chin. “Your place feels like that.”

“Yeah, but that was because our landlord was an asshole and took a lifetime to fix our radiator,” she says, her hair fanning out on the pillow. “I’m just being economical.”

I tap my icy toes against her shin. “Did Leo think your place was freezing?” The corners of Stevie’s mouth pinch as she tries to hide a smile. “You like him, don’t you?”

“Clearly,” she says, nodding over my shoulder. “That’s his sweatshirt.”

I twist my head to look at the green crewneck hanging over the back of her desk chair. “Stevie Miller,” I say. “You did not let a boy leave his clothes in your apartment.”

She buries her face into her pillow, letting out a groan that doesn’t sound altogether bad. “I know .”

We nap, talk until it’s time to get ready for the rehearsal dinner.

We’ll meet our parents at the restaurant, and while I’m excited to see everyone, something inside me buzzes as the seconds tick down until I get to see Ren again.

I feel a little like I’m losing my mind, giddy anticipation coursing through me as I fix my hair, apply mascara in Stevie’s bathroom mirror, and it occurs to me that this secret might not be so easy to keep.

When we arrive, he’s standing with Thad and Gemi in the back room of the trendy cocktail bar in a pale blue button-down and navy blazer.

“About time you got here,” Thad says, throwing an arm around my shoulders. I’ve only flown into Portland since mov ing to New York, always headed to the coast or south to see my parents, and haven’t been here when Thad or Sasha have come up from LA.

I hug Gemi before I turn to Ren.

“Joni,” he says, like we’re in on some joke, like a hummingbird isn’t fluttering against my rib cage, like he wasn’t just biting his cheek to keep himself focused.

“Ren. Long time no see.”

“Ages,” he says, cheek hollowing.

I push down the impulse to throw all caution to the wind and kiss him right here.

True to Sasha’s form, the rehearsal dinner is immaculate down to the tiniest details, a carefully curated menu based on the places she and Alex have traveled together, everyone’s place card done in careful calligraphy with the flowers of each guest’s birth month twining around their names.

Seated next to each other as usual, Ren and I spend most of dinner with our legs tangled together under the table, his hand sneaking every so often to my thigh or my hip, pulling mine over to his leg so he can flip it palm side up and trace lines across it.

When Hannah asks how I am, I tell her I’ve never been better.

When my mom says I seem good, healthy, happy, where it once would have grated against me— what did I seem like before, Mom? —now it just lifts me higher off the ground, that she can see how well I can take care of myself.

At the end of the night, while everyone is saying goodbye, milling between tables and chairs and raving about the food, Alex’s best man corralling everyone who’s going out with them tonight, Ren and I duck down a side hall that I think might technically be staff-only, a velvet curtain falling closed behind us.

“Is it insane that I missed you today?” I ask as he kisses me, his leg coming between mine.

“No,” he rasps, thumbs pressing into my hip bones. “I missed you too.”

“You know,” I say, something reckless riding up in me, from a night of touching under the table, or Stevie’s confession about Leo, or just Ren , I don’t know. “You could just tell Alex you can’t come tonight. Take me home instead.”

Ren pulls his head away, body still flush against mine as he smirks. “You don’t think that would be too obvious? Stevie wouldn’t care you spent another night at my place?”

I pout, getting a laugh out of him. “Fair enough,” I say. I pat a hand to his chest. “You go out and have your fun.”

“Trust me,” he says, grip tightening as he leans down to kiss me again. “This is the most fun I’ve ever had.”