Chapter 15
15
J oan stared at Lucas, feeling like she might be having some kind of bizarre fever dream involving the man who’d been her best friend for twenty years.
“Or I don’t know, that sounded sleazy,” Lucas said. “Not that you need help. But if you need a man to experiment with, I can do it.” He covered his eyes with a thick hand. “Ugh, that still sounds bad.”
“Gee, thanks,” Joan said. “I’m glad to know you could bring yourself to get through that.” Lucas pinned his eyes on Joan. Her face flushed.
“So were you really thinking about helping me?” At his nod, she laughed, then covered her mouth as more giggles escaped. “I can’t believe I’m actually talking about this with you. Have you ever even thought of me like that? In a sexy way, I mean?”
“I mean, yeah?” Lucas said, his own face flaming. “Are you kidding?” He clenched a fist. “Fuck. When I was in high school, I had an entire arsenal of fantasies based on your legs alone.” At her incredulous look, he shrugged helplessly. “Sorry, I’m a leg guy. And yours are unbelievable. Teenage me was obsessed . Plus there’s the whole getting along with you thing,” he added. “Though I’ll admit that mattered to me less when we were young. I shut that door when it seemed like we were just headed toward friendship instead. And I’m happy with how things are. I’m not trying to play the long game or anything, I swear. I’ll be friends with you until we have lots of wrinkles, if you’ll have me.”
“But when we were in college, I overheard you say you didn’t think of me that way.”
“I guess I didn’t, not at that point. We had progressed to this amazing friendship, which honestly seemed even better than romance in a way. You were my constant. It felt safer to have you as a friend. All my relationships ended, and I didn’t want that to happen with you.” He turned his head toward the ceiling. “I’m guessing you’ve never thought of me that way, then? As something other than a friend?”
She drummed her fingers against the table.
“Actually.” She sucked in a breath. “There was also a point where I might have had a little,” she pinched her fingers together, “crush on you. I thought you were funny. And I liked how you looked in your baseball pants.” At his low chuckle, she covered her face with her hands. “I even liked your messy hair. That’s embarrassing, but it’s true. I shut down the thought, too. By the time I was ready to experiment with guys, I knew I had this problem with traditional sex stuff, so I started going for a certain type of guy. I could get a sense of which men might be willing to change their expectations for me.”
“That was never me?”
“I guess it could have been, but we were close enough friends that I didn’t want to test it.” She smoothed her hands over her thighs. “I think I kind of underemphasized to you how damaging this problem has been for me. It’s been life changing and devastating, even though it shouldn’t be. And you were the only guy I was really close to. I didn’t want to ruin it with my shame and baggage, so you fit better in the friend category. I knew you would stick around then.”
He stared at her with such compassion she wanted to cry.
“You’ve been one of the best parts of my life,” she whispered. “I agree that it’s almost better than romance, in a way. It’s steady. It’s based on mutual respect, and not some fickle thing like attraction.”
“Wow. That was beautiful, Dorothy.”
“Ha.” Her eyes crinkled. “I keep wondering when you’ll give up the nicknames.”
“Never. Sometimes I look up more of them, just so I have an endless supply.”
“I had the same thought. About you helping me,” she admitted. She didn’t trust anyone as much as she trusted Lucas, and she wanted him to know that.
He transformed into a statue next to her.
“But then,” she went on, “it seems like a monumentally terrible idea, right?”
“Yeah,” he said carefully. “Would it be so bad, though? If it were just physical? Maybe there are reasons we haven’t dated, but we could keep it to only what you need to improve. And I’m single for the foreseeable future, anyway.”
“Then what would we do if it ruined us? Our friendship?”
“I would be devastated.” His shoulders dropped. “You’re right. Of course you’re right. I’m glad we talked this out, though.”
She exhaled, and it punctured the surrounding tension. He straightened up on the couch.
“Speaking of being a great friend, do you want to go to my dad’s birthday party on the twentieth? He’s turning sixty, so it’s a whole thing. We were going to go out, but now it’s at Mom and Dad’s house. I’d love to have you there.”
She would serve as a buffer, but she didn’t mind. “I’ll be there.”
A few days after their charged conversation, which had resurfaced in her mind frequently since then, they hung out at Lucas’s place. Something about his admission had rearranged all her memories from adolescence, but she tried to shove the thoughts away.
“We could watch the rest of the Cubs game, instead of a movie.” Lucas glanced at Joan, who poured herself a glass of ice water from Lucas’s fridge. He had a small house in a quiet neighborhood away from downtown, like a real adult. The cramped kitchen opened into the living room, where a black leather couch dominated the space and lamps fashioned from baseball bats framed said couch, making the space feel like a man cave. Or a twelve-year-old boy’s room, maybe.
“I’m not really feeling baseball tonight,” Joan said.
Lucas laid a hand over his heart. “You wound me, Donna. Baseball’s our favorite.”
“You know I prefer college basketball.” She kicked her feet up on the coffee table. “Like a real Kentuckian.”
Lucas sighed. “Movie it is, then. You want something new? Or oldie but goodie?”
“Oldie.” She shuffled over to the couch. She kept a change of clothes in her car, so she’d switched out her scrubs for leggings and a T-shirt. Though exhaustion dragged at every cell in her body, Lucas didn’t require too much of her social battery.
He toggled through some streaming options. “Scream? Halloween?”
“Maybe something a little lighter? Bubbly. Like champagne.”
“Okay, okay. Let’s see. What says champagne? You’ve Got Mail?”
“That could work.” As she answered him, her cell phone rang. She frowned at the display. Joan spoke to her mother frequently, but they’d talked the night before, so it was unusual to hear from her again so soon.
“Mom?”
Her mother’s greeting sounded a little tearful, and Joan’s stomach plummeted. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
Lucas hovered next to her, eyeing her with concern. He shot her a fretful glance when she hung up.
“Dad and Ben were in a car accident,” she said, dazed. “Ben’s in the ER with a broken leg, and Dad’s injuries are worse. A fractured pelvis, a punctured lung, maybe a concussion.” She clapped a hand over her mouth as her voice broke.
“Let’s go,” Lucas said, picking up his keys again. “I’ll drive you.”