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21. So, that’s what you meant by BFFs

21

SO, THAT’S WHAT YOU MEANT BY BFFS

A s I slide another bead onto my elastic, I watch Will from the friendship bracelet making table in the corner of the living room. He’s coddled and loved by his mother and her friends through cheek-pinching and teasing. And it’s nice, seeing him like this. Most of the time, by the way he talks, I feel like Will doesn’t think too highly of himself. Which is ridiculous, since I know bad people, having been surrounded my entire life by them, disappointment, and betrayal. And Will could never.

“Did you use up all the pink beads?” Sandra’s best friend’s daughter asks with narrowed eyes. “Because I need some to finish mine.”

I shake my head and push the container with the different pink beads to her. “Are you kidding? No way.” Look at me, playing at the kids table, letting the grown-ups mingle.

Surrounded by pink and red sparkly hearts, confetti, and streamers, I feel like the Valentine birthday decorations reflect the strongest feelings in my heart. As Will stands beneath a strand of cutouts, that all too familiar ache spreads all over my body. I wish they made an NSAID for being lovesick—I’m sure it’d make a killing.

Sigh .

Of course I’m bummed we aren’t together together. But at least he’s still in my life, and that’s the silver lining I need to hold onto.

Smiling to myself, I tie off my second bracelet and roll it onto my wrist, this one a little looser than the first. After all, it isn’t for me.

When I lift my eyes, Will is looking back at me, a smile on his face. I give him a small little wave, a shy smile, and he takes this as an invitation to leave his group of adoring fans and come over.

“Hey,” he says with a grin, staring down at me. “You been hiding or something?”

“Not at all. Just keeping myself busy while I make you one of these.” I slip the larger bracelet off my wrist and pass it to him. Will takes it in his hands and holds it almost reverently, fingers running over the three square letter beads with the letters BFF with two heart beads on the side.

“What is this?”

“You told me—BFF’s remember? You said we could even get matching friendship bracelets.” I lift my hand up to show him, wiggle my wrist in the air. “So I made some. Matching friendship bracelets.”

Something akin to frustration flashes through his eyes, but it’s gone so quickly I begin to wonder whether it was real or I imagined it. After examining the beads a little closer, he slips it on, the light pink and white beads contrasting beautifully against his tan skin.

“You don’t have to actually wear it.” I roll my eyes, but deep down I’m thrilled. “It was meant as a joke.”

“Are you wearing yours?”

“I—” I look down at my wrist. “I guess so?”

“Then I’m wearing mine.”

My heart does that somersault thing it’s been doing way too much of. The Olympic-level kind that leaves me a little dizzy and a lot achy—the one I also feel low in my core.

“You know, I take back what I said before. You actually make a terrible buffer, Bridge.”

I grin back. “I know you wanted me to play interference, but c’mon. Look at how cute they are with you! Your mom and your found family aunts adore you.”

He laughs softly and shakes his head. “Yeah. But the inquisition has been getting intense. You could’ve at least stood by my side. Distracted them a bit.”

“So they can ask us whether we’re hooking up? Wouldn’t that have made it worse?” I whisper in the hopes the eleven-year old girl in front of us doesn’t hear us. “No, thanks.” I mean it as a joke, but he winces.

“Sorry about that.”

“Don’t be silly. Family members are supposed to embarrass you like this.” Or so I’ve been told.

“Well, I think that?—”

“Will.” Sandra comes up behind him, her voice filled with humor. She knows what she’s doing. Will closes his eyes and takes a deep breath before turning to face his mother.

“Yes, Mom?”

“Lisa and the girls are getting the cake and everything ready to sing happy birthday, but of all the things they got for the party, no one thought to get candles.” She laughs softly.

“Do you need me to run out and get some?”

“No, not at all. Alexandria already left a couple of minutes ago. But what I mean is that it’ll probably be a while before we sing happy birthday. So why don’t you go ahead and show Bridget your room stuff while we wait til everything’s ready? On top of that, they keep fighting over how to set up the table for maximum photographic aesthetic appeal, as they claim. I get the feeling it’s going to be a while. You’ll have a bunch of time to show her all your awards and artistic abilities and stuff.”

“Artistic abilities?” I look back and forth between the two Jacobs.

“Will didn’t tell you? He’s an incredible artist.” Sandra’s voice is filled with pride.

I look to Will who can barely make eye contact with me. “What? No, he never said anything.”

Sandra frowns. “Will?”

“I… It never came up. That’s only high school stuff. It’s really not that good.”

“And college. You did some college stuff,” his mom adds.

“But those are in my apartment back home, not in my childhood bedroom.” His cheeks are red, his eyes stuck to the floor. “And whatever’s here isn’t good.”

“Okay, you need to stop being so self-effacing,” I tell him. “And I can’t believe you hid this from me.” The hurt in my voice is real. I thought we knew everything about each other? He definitely told me about the nerdy awards when we covered high school, but never about the art.

Sandra tsks . “Well, now you have to show her. Let her see how incredible your work is.”

Will’s cheeks redden, eyes panicked. “Whoa. No, Mom. I don’t think Bridget would like?—”

“Bridget would, actually,” I cut him off, a huge smile spreading across my face. “Bridget definitely would love to very much.”

He stares down at me, a bit hopeless.

“C’mon,” I whisper low enough for his mom not to hear. “I want to know you.”

Something about what I say shifts the way he carries himself and the expression on his face—determined, a man on a mission, ready to get things done.

And it’s kinda hot.

“Okay,” he tells his mom, but his eyes are on me as he pulls me to my feet by the hand and leads me down a hallway without another word to me or anyone else for that matter.

“God, what is up with you?”

We reach a door at the end of the hallway with a hanging Mickey Mouse sign, his name painted on. Clearly, a memento from when he was younger. I reach out and run my fingers over the old sign, its color a little worn and faded, one of Mickey’s ears chipped.

When he wraps his large hand around the doorknob, Will pauses for a moment before opening the door. Once he does, though, he lets me inside, a hesitant smile on his face.

“Oh my god, Will.” I gasp, bringing my hands to my mouth. “Are these…”

“Trekkie models and figurines?” His smile is radiant as he surveys his collection. Dozens of figurines stand proudly on a shelf above Will’s childhood desk, surrounded by medals and what look like academic trophies. “Each of these was hand painted by yours truly.”

A laugh bursts through my lips. “Oh my god, this is amazing.”

“I thought you said it wasn’t an embarrassing hobby.” He frowns, shifting uncomfortably on his feet.

“It’s not,” I say, turning to look at him. “Really. I’m just a little shocked to find out that this was your hobby as a kid after you made fun of it. It’s such a wild collection.”

“It’s kinda dumb, I know.”

“No, it’s not. It’s so cool! Can I touch them?”

He nods once. “Go for it.”

With some hesitation, I reach out, taking a model of the Starship Enterprise in my hands to inspect more closely. The crisp lines, the perfectly blended paint, and the neat placement of the lettering leaves me wondering how the hell this was hand painted by a teenager.

“This is incredible. You did such an amazing job.” I set it down and pick up more pieces. A Spock figurine first, a Captain Kirk second. “Will,” I breathe, setting down the last piece.

He picks up a Sulu figurine, studies it for a moment, and sets it back down on his shelf. “I went through a big Trekkie phase, as you can see.”

I laugh as I set down the final piece. “I’ll say. Between the Mathlete trophies, the figurines, and the Star Trek prints on the wall, it looks like you were an all-around, cliché nerd—except a hot one, probably.” I throw him a smirk and a wink.

This makes him laugh. “I was not hot by any means. Very tall and lanky. Bad cystic acne, too. Not popular with the girls—cheerleaders or nerdy ones—by any means.”

I giggle and reach out to touch one of his first place competition diplomas, running my fingers over his name. The thought of Will not being appealing is just absolutely ridiculous.

“Things got better in college, though. I went to a nerdy school so I fit in perfectly. How about you?”

I shrug. “High school was meh . I didn’t have much of a life, always doing odd jobs here and there while my mom was still alive, you know? In a messed up way, things got better when she passed. My grandmother took over and I had less on my plate. Still, I never went to college. It wasn’t an option for me. By senior year of high school, I could tell my grandmother wasn’t holding up too well, so I became the main breadwinner. She lost her mind when I told her I wasn’t going—the plan was to get a degree from a junior college first and then wrap it up at a four-year—but it got to the point where she needed too much help, and there was no way she could deny it coming from me.”

“I’m sorry you didn’t get to do the things you wanted to,” he whispers.

“Don’t be. My grandmother saved my life, basically. Or actually. I wanted to give back to her and if that meant not going to school, then that was fine.” It’s Will, the person I feel most comfortable with, and still it’s hard to talk about my grandmother. “It took me ten years or so, but I finally got to a career that I like and am good at, right? At least I’m here. And that’s the bright side.”

He heaves a frustrated sigh, running his fingers through his hair. “You and your fucking bright side. I wish just for one fucking day you wouldn’t have to look on the bright side or the silver lining. I wish that for one goddamn day every single side of your life were bright. That it would be covered wall-to-wall in silver and you wouldn’t have to look for any kind of lining.” Will’s voice is almost a growl, the frustration clear. His hands fist at his side as his jaw ticks. Meanwhile, my heart sprints toward a finish line that doesn’t even exist.

And even though my heart rate is also raised, I try to calm him . “Hey, it’s fine.” I put a hand on his shoulder and he relaxes his bicep.

A silence passes between us, both revisiting our pasts—and each other’s.

“Those aren’t prints on the wall, by the way,” he murmurs, breaking the silence.

“What?”

“The things on the wall? You said they were prints. And they’re not. I sketched them.”

I drop my hand—and my jaw—and turn to look at him. “What?” I look between him and the prints, each one more impressive than the next. I stand closer to examine the one closest to me—a satellite—drawn in a fine-tip black marker. I take in the dedication he put in every single one of those lines, in the shading of the curve of the satellite, and the detail of the lights and buttons.

“These are incredible.”

“They’re okay.” He shrugs, biting the inside of his cheek.

“No, no. Seriously. They’re amazing. Truly.”

Will smiles softly at me and takes a step closer, standing beside me to stare at the same print together. His scent fills my lungs, the notes of it intoxicating. I can feel the air buzzing between us, though maybe that’s just me, close to bursting out of my skin for all that I feel for him. In seconds, I’m full of need, aching to wrap my arms around him and beg him to just hug me back.

Instead, I break the moment with a joke.

“So… you can draw? Can you draw me like one of your French girls?” I ask, batting my eyelashes at him in an exaggerated motion.

He laughs and shoves his hands in his pockets, dark eyes warm as he traces my body from top to bottom. “I… don’t usually draw people.”

“Usually or never?”

“Not never. Just… not usually.”

I purse my lips at him, cross my arms in front of my chest. “So, theoretically, you could?”

“I could, yes. To the best of my abilities.”

I laugh once at his almost nervous hesitation, the quiet and careful way in which he strings his words together. I decide to run over to his bed and throw myself atop the—yeah, you guessed it—Star Trek sheets. “So. Draw me like one of your French girls, Jack,” I repeat.

I get in position, lying on my back, with my hands thrown behind my head à la Rose—a position which inadvertently causes me to push my chest out. Again. Something Will definitely notices. Again.

His eyes darken, they trail up and down over my body slowly. And suddenly, I feel my smile slip because I can feel it like wildfire, scorching my skin.

I clear my throat once. “Or… I mean, you don’t have to, if you don’t want to.”

He shakes his head and takes a seat at his desk, rifling through the top drawer for a pen. When he finds it, he searches in the next one until he pulls out an old sketch pad. Once he reaches a blank sheet, he uncaps the pen and turns back to stare at me once more. Except this time, he holds his gaze with mine.

“You ready?”

No . “Yes.” A chill runs up and down my spine, and suddenly this whole thing doesn’t seem as funny as I thought it would be.

Will looks up between me and the sketch pad several times, face serious, but tender. Like he’s staring at his favorite thing in the whole world. Like I am his whole world. With each passing second, I find myself hoping it were true. A stinging grows behind my eyes, and I’m mortified to realize that I just may cry—and I don’t even know why.

Each scratch of the pen, each flicker of his eyes as they roam my body, stokes the fire inside. Every single movement of his wrist increases my heart rate and the temperature of my skin. It’s so intimate, what we’re doing. More than I ever expected it could be. I’ve given him permission to take me in, to focus on every peak and valley, every flaw I may have. I’ve given him the green light to look at me and take what he sees and put it on paper.

But what if I don’t like what he sees? What he thinks of me? Or worse: what if he sees me exactly for who I am and realizes he doesn’t like it?

It isn’t long before he sets the pen down on the desk and sits up, holding the sketch close to his chest before dumping it facedown onto his desk. Wordlessly, with eyes so dark and an intense gaze I’ve never seen before, Will walks over to me, slowly, like a lion about to attack his prey. Lungs frozen, unable to breathe, I watch as he places a knee on the mattress and crawls over me on the bed, covering my entire body with his. Noses touching, I feel something hard press into my thigh. Involuntarily, I arch my hips up to feel it better, to double check that it really is what I think it is.

Yup. That’s his cock. Hard. Pressed against me.

“What’s happening here?” My voice is barely a whisper, shaky.

Will licks his lips as he looks down at mine before speaking. “Before I even saw you on FaceTime, I used to imagine you in my head often. And I sketched out versions of what I thought you looked like. I have so many versions of you sketched into the pad in my apartment back home, Bridge. You wouldn’t believe. But I never would’ve dreamed you’d be this beautiful. Never.”

“I… I thought you didn’t sketch people.”

“You’re not people. You’re you .”

My breath hitches, trying hard not to cry. Something about this moment, something about how he grazes one of my arms while he keeps his eyes on me, has me enraptured and overwhelmed.

“Since seeing you for the first time,” he goes on, one hand coming up to cup my jaw, thumb tracing my lower lip, “you’re all I can draw. All I can sketch. And it’s never enough. It never does you justice. You’re my biggest frustration, Bridget. For so many reasons, but… You’re so fucking beautiful, and I will never be able to draw how absolutely fucking perfect you are. There’s just no way.”

No oxygen. There’s no oxygen left in the room.

I open my mouth to beg for air, for words—for something —but nothing comes out or comes in. I need something to bring me back to life because the words I just heard come out of Will’s mouth killed me.

As if reading my mind, Will presses his lips to mine, his tongue dipping into my mouth and waking my body from its shocked stupor.

It’s me, Will , it seems to say. I’m here and you’re safe and I’ve come to bring you the happiness you finally deserve.

With a moan, leaving all rational thought behind, I let myself enjoy the kiss, finally moving my arms from above my head to wrap around his neck. Feeling the way I shift beneath his body, Will’s hand travels down my arm, over my ribs, and onto my hip. He pauses there for a moment, gripping me hard, pulling me closer to feel the hard line of his cock. I gasp when I feel it press just shy of my clit, my underwear already soaked after just a few moments of kissing. When he moves his lips to my neck, I hear myself beg for more. And because Will is such a good man, he proceeds to give me exactly what I want.

His hand trails down my thigh and stops at my calf; he hooks it behind my knee and hitches my leg on his hip. I stop breathing for a moment, my dress riding up all the way to my waist. Suddenly, I'm back to that night we shared in my bed which started almost in the same position as this one—except vertically.

He moves his hips in a slow roll against my own, rhythmic and perfect, making me cry out his name once again. One of his hands comes over my mouth as he shushes me, lips pressed to my ears. “You're going to get us caught.”

All of a sudden, the awareness that there are people just outside the door washes over me, and while I would've expected myself to let this piece of information put a damper on this moment, all it does is make it all the more appealing. The taboo of it all increasing my need for him, for us.

The hand that was holding my thigh to his hip travels inward, heading straight for where I'm wet and hot and aching for him.

“I don't have time to fuck you like I properly wanna fuck you right now. But there's no way I'm going to let you walk out that door without having come. Hard. I wanna see that special blush on your face. The one that only happens after you have an orgasm. I’ve only seen it a few times, but it’s seared into my fucking brain, Bridget. The most beautiful color red I’ve ever seen.”

I whimper beneath his palm, meeting his fierce dark eyes as his hand moves my underwear to the side.

Will’s head dips to my neck with a groan when he feels the wetness between my thighs, growling words that sound like “…can’t fucking believe you get this wet this fast for me.” But I can’t be sure, because he says them right as he begins to tease me, run his index and middle finger around my clit, and the only thing I can focus on in that moment is keeping myself from screaming for him to touch it. To rub it. To make me come like he did when we spent the night together in my place.

“You’re so fucking perfect.”

I wrap both legs around his waist, the stiletto heels of my brown boots accidentally stabbing Will. He doesn’t seem to notice, though. Too busy driving me wild with his fingers, teasing at my entrance as he sucks on my neck.

“Hickey,” I say in a gasp behind his hand. “No hickeys. Work.”

“But I want to mark you,” he growls, kissing down my neck. He pulls down the neckline of my dress to expose my tits, cradled in my favorite lace bra. “Can I mark you here?”

A hickey from Will on my tits? Yes, please!

I nod enthusiastically, something about the knowledge that I’ll get to walk around with his mark on my skin for days after this incredibly hot.

He proceeds to lick at my breasts, biting them as if they were the juiciest fruits, before kissing them and sucking on them. After doing that in one place, he moves on to another spot a few inches apart. Meanwhile, Will proves his supernatural abilities for multitasking by sliding in two fingers, heel pressed to my clit. Immediately, my back arches off the mattress at the fullness, at the absolute feeling of being surrounded by him and us and everything I still don’t understand about our relationship.

This is good. This is so good, and it isn’t even really sex. I could do this. I could have Will like this even if I don’t have him. And that’s okay, right?

My unreasonable reasoning comes to an end, however, when my tolerance for whatever magic he’s doing between my legs does, too, playing with my pussy with the same hand that currently wears our friendship bracelet.

BFF might as well stand for Best Finger Fuck instead of Best Friends Forever.

“I want to sketch a full series of you coming,” he whispers in my ear after I come the first time. “Of your face when I make you come. Sketch after sketch of this gorgeous face and this perfect body and keep it all to myself. Only mine, for no one else to see. And if it’s the only part I get to keep of this, of you, of us —then fine. I’ll take this moment.”

I try to tell him he can have it all—he can have me however he wants me—but the words turn to ash in my mouth when a current of electricity runs through my body.

Because I’m close.

So close.

So fucking close I have to bite my lip to keep from moaning, from calling out his name and alerting everyone outside that this incredibly sexy man is about to make me come on his hand.

“Now come for me, baby. Come before you get us caught. And stop moaning so much. Shh . That’s it. Bite my hand. Bite it and come.”

His words, the nickname, the way his fingers scissor inside of me while the heel of his hand adds the right amount of pressure, have me coming like a freight train. I free one of my hands from his hair and hold it over his hand and my mouth in an attempt to stifle a scream. The orgasm comes in waves, in strong pulses that turn me into a melted heap on his childhood bed.

When it’s over, when my breathing has deepened and my heart rate has lowered and his head is on my chest listening to it beat, I say “I never expected to have one of the best orgasms of my life on Star Trek sheets.”