Ophelia’s jaw dropped. “Did you justflirtwith me?” she asked incredulously.
Etienne chuckled, his dimples indenting. “Don’t act so surprised.” His rough hands cradled her injured hand, and he appeared to be centering himself. “I’m going to start, okay?”
“Okay,” she responded.
Etienne closed his eyes and leveled out his breathing, while Ophelia stared unabashedly at him. She followed the arch of his brows down to the slope of his strong nose. Her eyes lingered on his perfect lips framed by that beard that she wanted to feel between her legs. Ophelia’s nervous system was starting to panic at her lustful thoughts.
This is normal,she told herself. She’d learned some self-soothing techniques from her therapist, who assured her that her sexual appetite was completely normal and healthy.It is okay to feel attraction for someone. This feeling is real. You trust Etienne. Even if you don’t want to act on it or he doesn’t, it’s natural to feel attraction. These are your own feelings. They are real.
She closed her eyes to manage her panic. Etienne tapped her hand to let her know he had finished.
“All better,” he said. Ophelia slowly opened her eyes and examined her fingertips. They were perfectly healed, and the pulling pain from the sliced skin was gone.
“Thank you,” she said as she held up her hand and wiggled her fingers. “Like brand new.” They remained in their position, Ophelia sitting on the counter, Etienne leaning his hip against it, eye level with her. The room crackled with tension. Ophelia’s true nature bubbled to the surface. She was Ophelia Oubre—a strong woman, who spoke her mind, who made bold decisions, who helped others, who was learning how to trust herself again.
She leaned into the trait that felt most natural to her. Boldness.
“E, why have you always kept me at a distance until now?”
Etienne swallowed hard. “What do you mean?”
“Since I met you in that dive bar at LSU, I wanted to know you, and for the longest time, I thought that we would be friends, actual friends. Not just acquaintances through Luke and Jade. But you never seemed to be interested in that.” She pausedand observed Etienne taking in the information. “I guess you always seemed so guarded around me.” She had to actively tell herself not to backtrack on those statements and cover her insecurities with excuses like “Maybe I was imagining it.”No.This is how I’ve always felt around him…until now.
“I…” He crossed his arms and looked off in thought. Several seconds passed while Ophelia waited in anticipation of his words. Etienne ran his hands through his wavy hair. “I was guarded around you, yes.”
Ophelia’s heart was thumping loudly in her chest.
“Ben...” He trailed off.
“Ben?” said Ophelia with defensiveness.
Etienne nodded. “Ben was so in love with you from the moment he met you.”
Ophelia’s mind flashed back to meeting Ben at that dive bar, Ben buying her a cranberry vodka, Ben chatting with her while Jade and Luke made googly eyes at each other. She remembered the night well. It was also the first time she met Etienne.
“He was not. Ben was just flirty.”
“Ophelia, the man never stopped talking about you from the moment he met you. Even when you moved to New York, he’d bring you up and wax poetically about how one day you’d fall for him. At that point, I think he only saw you once or twice a year when you came into town to visit and went out with Jade and Luke. And then last spring, when you two hooked up, the guy really thought that was going to be it for you two.”
“What? How? I told him up front what my expectations were. I had no intentions of dating him.” Ophelia groaned. “That was a mistake. I should have known better than to hook up with a friend. We’re not in college anymore.”
“Did…” Etienne seemed to gather more courage to finish his question. “Did he ever tell you how he felt?”
Ophelia shook her head. “Never.”
“Well then, you can’t carry around that guilt. Besides, how he spoke to you at Red Dress Run was despicable.”
Ophelia studied Etienne. “But how does Ben correlate with you not wanting to be my friend?”
“I just felt it was best if I kept my distance.”
“But now you…don’t?”
“No.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It goes back to high school. Ben and I had a crush on the same girl, and I ended up dating her, taking her to prom, the whole thing. He always joked that I stole his girl, but he wasn’t joking. I could tell it really hurt him. I told myself I wouldn’t do that again to my best friend.”
