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“Stop what?” He turned to Colton, who set his tumbler on the wood coffee table and stared at him.
“Everything. You’ve worked your ass off to get this far. I can feel the discouragement rolling off you.”
“Work doesn’t make up for talent.”Of which he had none.
“And talent doesn’t make up for work. Which leaves us to find a spot somewhere in the middle. And since you do have work, and talent, and now connections, stop fucking moping. Tell me how things are with June.” Colton grabbed the empty glass from Dragan and his own from the table and went to refill.
“There are nothings,” Dragan scoffed. “We’re friends.”
“Friends who are madly in love with each other and have been since kindergarten.”
“Correction: only I’m in love with her.”
“What, you’ve talked to her and she told you she wasn’t?”
Dragan snatched the glass from Colton, risking a slosh of the prized distraction.
“Exactly,” Colton said. “Just talk to her.”
“No.”
Colton sighed. “You’re impossible. You’ll never know if you don’t try.”
“And risk losing her? Yeah, not a chance.”
“You can’t hide your feelings for much longer, and neither can she. What will you do if she acts on them?”
Dragan sipped his refill, remembering how very close they both had been to crossing that bridge. He couldn’t see past what it would feel like to hold her lush body to his, to kiss his way across her smooth skin. Capture her lips in his, taste the way she opened to him.
The laugh from his left pulled him out of his reverie.
“You’re fucked, Dragan. Might as well have it be by the one girl you can’t live without.”
“Shut up,” Dragan grumbled, cleaning his glass. “How’s Ruby?”
Colton sobered, a smile on his lips. “She’s… She’s everything, man. I can’t believe I lived without her for ten years.”
“Are you moving into her school bus once renovations are finished?” Ruby had bought a school bus to convert into a tiny home when she moved back to Oak Valley, the catalyst that had ultimately brought her and Colton back together. But Dragan couldn’t imagine his over six-foot-tall friend cramming himself into the small space, especially once it was filled out with furniture and appliances.
“Hell no, I barely fit in it without all the shit,” Colton said. “We’re enjoying separate residences and will probably buy or build a house on that land I bought her, or live somewhere else and just use the school bus as a rental property. Options, Dragan. Gotta have options. We will be getting married on that plot, though, since it’s next door to her mom’s.”
Dragan nodded, taking in the details of the first of their friend group to get married. Despite his upbringing, Dragan did believe in happily ever afters, and they were something he desperately wanted for himself. He’d just never found the right person and didn’t want to let the wrong ones in.
Except June.
Colton was right. He couldn’t keep his true feelings from her for much longer, and while the fake relationship was a good way to test the romance without the risk to their friendship, he couldn’t stop the nagging feeling in his stomach that if they crossed that bridge, they couldn’t survive where it led.
10
The knock on June’s bedroom door made her hand slip, the eyeliner pen almost stabbing her in the eye.
As if her hands weren’t already shaking enough, getting ready to play mini-golf with Dragan’s family. But not as his best friend — as his fake girlfriend.
The knock sounded again, and Krantz looked up lazily from her nap on June’s bed.
“Come in,” June sighed, capping the pen. The wings were as even as she could get them, given the circumstances. Her grandmother entered, leaving the door open and sitting on June’s bed.
“Oh, don’t you look pretty. I was going to ask if you wanted to grab lunch with me and Pop but I guess you have other plans?”
