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He came over to retrieve it and saw the DVDs underneath. “Die Hard?” he asked, putting the ice cream away.
“It’s a box set. I have that…” she said, taking it out to put it by the food. “All the Lethal Weapons. The Terminator movies… I don’t know, it’s just something I do. When your heart is broken, you want to numb out.” She removed her jacket and was grateful he took it because that left her free to deal with the food. “I never want to watch sappy films because I’m already all cried out. No one wants to watch chick flicks with the happy ever after when they’ve just broken up… or I sure don’t.” Opening drawers and cabinets, she found cutlery and plates. “And funny comes later, when I start to feel again.” She took the plates over to the coffee table and came back to retrieve the food. “So I watch action movies. Shooting. Blood. Bad language. What’s not to love?” She paused. “Is that okay?”
“That’s okay.”
Smiling again, she nodded at the bag. “There are also three bottles of wine in there, if drunk is your thing. If you want, instead of watching movies, we can get drunk and curse the evils of men and how we fall for their temptations.”
“Food sounds good.”
Satisfied, she went over to sit on the floor between the couch and the coffee table. “I didn’t know what you liked, so I got a selection… This place, Chang’s, it’s my absolute favorite. They don’t deliver to my apartment, so they definitely won’t deliver here, but I picked it up. You deserve the best. In food and every other area of life.”
Did he get that? Sometimes a breakup knocked someone’s confidence. That was where she came in. Friendship was the support he’d need to get through the difficult time. She’d be high and happy or let him cry himself out, whatever he needed.
“Which of the wines do you want?”
“Anything will do,” she said, gesturing at the island. “Pick a movie too. We better get started if we’re going to get through more than one before we fall asleep.”
“You’re staying over?”
The surprise in his voice almost broke her heart. “Yes,” she said, pausing in her searching through the food boxes to look over at him. “I’m staying right here until we mend your heart. Why do you think I brought so many clothes?”
Being alone was one of the hardest things about a breakup. The silence could be deafening. It would be worse for him because he lived alone. Just hours ago, before the relationship ended, he had a boyfriend he could call any time he needed someone. That safety net was gone. The security that came with belonging to someone was powerful. A breakup whipped that rug out from under a person. No matter how prepared they may believe themselves to be, it was always an adjustment.
Alex would need her. Whether it was for a day or a week or even a month, she’d be there. That’s what friends were for.
10
“She’s in my bed,” Xander murmured into the phone as he reached his living room.
It was somewhere around three a.m.
Ethan was in Europe, where it would be morning already. “What?”
Rubbing his fingers back and forth across his brow, he kept his eyes closed. “Rainie. She’s in my bed… I think she moved in.”
“Wow, so maybe she’s not all that different to your other girlfriends,” Ethan said. “If you had sex, I guess you told her the truth. I’m not surprised she forgave you. Did your apology come before or after you authorized her personal expense account?”
“I didn’t buy her, okay?” he hissed, keeping his volume low. In the tiny apartment, there weren’t many places to hide. “And I didn’t tell her the truth. How the hell do you know—”
“Lance called me as soon as he left yours. Figured you’d call when you wanted to vent about it. How pissed are you?”
“At him? I won’t be answering his calls any time soon, put it that way.”
“It’s Lance. You know what he’s like. He’s always been like this. Pranking us is just the way he passes the time.” For him, it wasn’t so easy to brush aside his friend’s actions as no big deal. “In his defense, we’re used to you blowing through women. You’ve never really cared about one, not in any real, deep way. He couldn’t have known he was breaking something important to you. You couldn’t have known it that first day either.”
Before meeting Rainie, he might have argued that he had cared about a woman. Plenty of them. But Rainie changed everything. What he felt for her was unlike anything else he’d ever felt.
“Every second that I’m with her, I’m getting deeper into the lie.” He swallowed. “I’ve had to stop myself saying it more than once. Had to stop myself kissing her. Damnit, Eth, she came into my place tonight, taking off her shoes, making herself at home… I just wanted to go over and…”
He couldn’t tell Ethan about his urges, not in detail. He’d thought about walking up behind her at the kitchen counter, sweeping her luscious hair away from her neck and teasing her with his tongue.
On the couch, after they’d eaten and consumed a bottle of wine, she’d snuggled against him. Wrapping both arms around his, she’d drawn it across the legs she draped over his thighs until he had a clear shot to squeeze her ass. Resisting wasn’t easy, especially after she rested her head against him. Thank God they’d been watching in the dark and Topher had bought a bunch of pillows for the couch. Without them, she’d have noticed his boner for sure.
She smelled so good, and her hair was so soft. In the coffee shop during the day, she always wore it on the top of her head in a messy sort of bun with dozens of pieces of hair sticking out and falling loose. He’d thought that was endearing perfection until he’d seen it down. Untethered, it was pure tantalizing arousal.
He wanted to lose his fingers in it. To pull her to him any time she was close. The way they’d fed each other cake and touched each other… it felt real to him, powerful. That she didn’t feel the same was its own brand of torture.
“Boss?”
