“I don’t think you’re crazy, Florence.” And he said it so seriously, I pursed my lips together to keep them from wobbling, and rested my cheek into his shoulder.
“Well, then what do you want to be?” I asked.
He closed his eyes, and there was a moment of pause when he was searching for the right words. “I like you a lot, bordering on the bigger word, but . . .”
I tilted my head. “But?”
He admitted, “It’s a bit cliché this soon, and if we’re going to tell our children this story in ten years . . .”
I laughed, because of course he would flag that in this story. “Then I’ll say it first,” I said as I sat up and leaned close to him, my hair falling in a curtain around us as I pressed my forehead to his. “I love you, Benji Andor.”
He smiled so wide it reached his brown eyes, and turned them ocher, as if that were the happiest thing he’d ever heard. “I love you, too, Florence Day.”
“Then I think we should most definitely be platonic friends who swap video streaming service passwords and only see each other once a year at holiday parties.”
He gave a long sigh and sank farther into his pillow. “Okay, we can do that—”
“I was kidding!” I exclaimed, sitting back again. “I didn’t mean it!”
“Too late, I’ve already lost my will to live.”
I playfully shoved him in the shoulder. “Fine. Let’s be bunkmates, then.”
“Only?”
“Gym buddies?”
The light began to leave his eyes.
“Pocket pals!”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“And maybe partners. In the romantic sense,” I added, our hands still intertwined, and I squeezed his tightly. “A suitor. A paramour. My courter. My second-best friend.”
He quirked an eyebrow. “Second?”
“Rose will always be number one.”
“Fuck yeah I am!” came a voice from the doorway as I realized a split second before my sister and Rose burst into the room that I had forgotten to lock it. Alice screamed and covered her eyes while Rose took a long drink from a champagne bottle. Clearly, they’d started the party early.
“Wow,” Rose noted, giving a thumbs-up. “We sure have good timing. Great sesh, bestie.”
“We’re leaving!” Alice added, grabbing Rose by the arm, and pulling her back out the door. “Put a sock on the door next time!”
I thought Ben was going to die—again. When the door was closed, he pulled the covers over his head and disappeared beneath them. “Please kill me,” his muffled voice moaned. “End my misery.”
Grinning, I pulled the covers off him again, and he looked dejected and mortified in the deathbed of pillows. “Absolutely not, sir. If I have to live with them, so do you.”
“It’ll be a quick death. Just suffocate me in your perfect breasts.”
“They aren’t that big.”
“But they are perfect.”
“So you keep saying.” I combed my fingers through his hair a few more times because, poor guy, he really didn’t know how to handle mortification, and then I kissed him on the lips. “Let’s get dressed and go help Mom keep those heathens in line.”
I began to crawl out of bed, when he grabbed me by the arm and swallowed me up underneath the covers with him. “Just a few more minutes,” he said, his breath hot against my neck as he held me tightly.