AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I sucked in a breath. Val had been a different person after the terrorist attacks. The news had turned her into a complete mess. “Was that the real reason you left New York?”
“It was awful, Lake. You know; you were there. Forget the fact that it felt like a personal attack on a city we loved, when I realized Corbin could’ve been there, could’ve died on some random Tuesday, it terrified me.” The tip of her nose reddened. She stood and went to a drawer, most likely to hide that she was getting emotional. “My feelings for him terrified me,” she said with her back to me. “I had to face the fact we’d never be together, and I needed to move on. So I left.”
I twisted in my seat, following her with my eyes. “And then he moved to Los Angeles, too.”
“Yes, but by the time Corbin bought his place in Malibu, I’d given up hope on us, not that I ever really had any.” She picked out a spoon and turned to lean against the counter. “He had girlfriends. I was busy with work. I stopped pining for him.”
Out back, someone raised the volume on what sounded like Justin Timberlake. The bass rattled me while I waited. “Until . . .?” I prompted.
“I went over to his house to surf one weekend. Surfing together wasn’t unusual, except that we usually met at my place or the beach. And you know I hung out at his house a lot, but for some reason we’d never surfed there.” I passed over her coffee mug when she reached for it. “Anyway, we were on his front deck in the early morning, checking the waves and putting on sunscreen. He sort of stopped and asked why I was still single.”
“Ha. As if he hadn’t been by your side through all of it. What’d you say?”
“I made some joke, like, ‘I don’t know—you tell me. You know me as well as I know myself.’”
“Aww.” It was so true, though. I was annoyed I hadn’t figured them out years ago.
She straightened her back, imitating Corbin’s sometimes unfair amount of confidence. “He was like, ‘Yeah I do, so what about you and me?’ He wanted to know if I’d ever thought about him ‘that way.’”
“Ugh.” I rolled my eyes. “Guys have it so easy.”
“That’s exactly what I was thinking,” she exclaimed. “As if I hadn’t wondered about us a thousand times over the years.” She stirred her coffee and tapped the spoon against the rim. “Later, he told me seeing me in his house, how comfortable I was there with him, swapping my surfboard for one of his without asking permission—it’d fallen into some vision of the life he’d been trying to find with other girls.” Her eyes softened as she looked past me. “Like I belonged there.”
I covered my heart. “Someone to go out on the water with.”
“I guess? Oh, and get this.” She lowered her voice, smiling with a hint of mischief. “I was half-dressed in my wetsuit so I had my bikini top on. I adjusted the string to see if he’d look, and he did. Finally, something in his eyes changed, like he was seeing me for the first time.”
Val shuddered as I got goose bumps. “I mean, you’re super sexy,” I said, “so of course he’d noticed that, like, eons ago.”
“He says so, but until that day, it’d always been in a brotherly way. Weird-o.” She laughed. “I mean, he’d never ogled my tits that way before, so there’s that.”
“Fifty bucks says he did, you just never noticed.” I warmed my hand on my mug. “So what’d you say to all that?”
“I was honest with him.” She set the stirring spoon in the sink and took a quick sip. “My heart started beating so hard, I could barely hear what I was saying, but I didn’t want to lie. I admitted I’d had a crush on him up until recently.”
“How did he react?”
“He wanted to know why I’d never told him. Well, duh—he’d never asked.”
“He should’ve realized,” I said. “But then again, I didn’t. You’re good at hiding it. Too good.”
“It’s all that time I’ve spent on set,” she said, pointing at me. “I’m becoming one of you actor pod people.”
“Hey, I got out of that black hole somehow. I’m not an actress anymore.” I gestured to hurry her along. “But quit trying to change the subject. What happened next?”
“I tried to play off my crush like it was no big deal.” Her posture wilted. “You guys are so fucking important to me. My feelings weren’t worth risking your friendship or his.” She scratched her calf with her shoe. “So I picked up the surfboard thinking we could forget the whole thing, but he took it from me and set it aside. He could tell I was lying and that it wasn’t nothing.”
