Her Best Friend Blind Spot (Melting Her Ice Queen #3)

CHAPTER 1

CHARLOTTE

The restaurant smelled like home.

Charlotte had stopped noticing it years ago, the way you stop noticing the air you breathe.

But sometimes, on evenings like this one, she'd catch a whiff of garlic and fresh bread and cinnamon from the kitchen, and she'd remember.

The first time Jo had brought her here, she'd been nineteen and terrified and freshly disowned, two months into a friendship that had started when a loud sophomore barged into her study group and never left.

That was ten years ago. Charlotte had been in love with Jo for most of that time.

But that first night, sitting at this table while Grandma Ruth ladled soup she hadn't asked for and didn't pay for, Charlotte had thought: This is what belonging feels like.

She hadn't known, before. Hadn't grown up with it.

Now she sat at the long table by the window, watching Jo's grandmother ladle soup into bowls, and she knew this smell by heart.

Knew every crack in the vinyl seats, every water stain on the ceiling tiles, every regulars' order by memory.

Knew which floorboard creaked by the kitchen door and which server always forgot to refill water glasses and how the light turned golden at exactly seven-fifteen in summer.

Knew Jo.

That was the problem.

"Aunt Charlotte, watch this!"

Lucy, Jo's six-year-old niece, was attempting a handstand against the wall. Her legs wobbled dangerously. Charlotte reached out to steady her, one hand on a small ankle.

"Very impressive," Charlotte said. "Try engaging your core."

"What's a core?"

"It's your stomach muscles. Like you're bracing for something."

Lucy scrunched her face in concentration. Her handstand improved marginally.

"She's going to knock over the salt shaker," Jo said from beside Charlotte, and there it was. The warmth in Jo's voice. Jo leaning in, her shoulder brushing Charlotte's, like proximity was as natural as breathing. "Luce, bring it in closer to your body."

Jo reached past Charlotte to demonstrate, her arm crossing in front of Charlotte's chest. Charlotte held very still. The cotton of Jo's sleeve brushed her collarbone. Jo smelled like the fancy soap Charlotte had bought her last Christmas, the cedar one, and underneath it, just her.

Years.

Years of holding still when Jo touched her. Years of careful breathing and neutral expressions. Years of repeating the same rule until it felt like discipline instead of fear: she's my best friend.

Lucy's handstand wobbled and collapsed. Jo caught her before she hit the table, laughing, and Charlotte exhaled.

"All right, you menace," Jo said, ruffling Lucy's hair. "Go help Grandma with the bread."

"I'm not a menace. I'm a gymnast."

"You can be both."

Lucy huffed but scrambled off toward the kitchen.

Charlotte watched Jo watch her go, the soft smile on Jo's face, that gentleness she saved for her family, her whole body loosening like she could finally stop performing.

Jo's sister Valentina was at the other end of the table with her husband and the baby, the newest addition, only eight months old.

They were arguing about sleep schedules in that exhausted, loving way parents did.

"She's getting good," Charlotte said. Meaning Lucy. "The handstands."

"She's going to break something." Jo turned back to Charlotte, still smiling. "But at least she'll look cool doing it."

Jo's hand settled on Charlotte's back. Just there, between her shoulder blades, an easy touch. Possessive in a way that couldn't mean what Charlotte wanted it to mean. Charlotte felt each finger like a brand.

"You okay?" Jo asked. "You're quiet."

I'm always quiet. You're just so loud you fill up all the space anyway.

"Long week," Charlotte said instead. "The Whitfield project is behind schedule."

"The brownstone?"

"The one on Seventy-Third."

Jo made a vague gesture. "Right, with the cornices?"

"Corbels."

"Those are different things?"

"Extremely."

Jo grinned. "I'll take your word for it."

This was the problem with Jo. The other problem, the smaller one that fed into the bigger one.

She made Charlotte feel seen. Asked about her work, remembered the project names, tried to learn the terminology even when she got it wrong.

In all that time, Jo had never once made Charlotte feel like her interests were boring or excessive or too much.

Jo made Charlotte feel like she was exactly the right amount of everything.

Charlotte had not been raised to feel that way. Her parents had made sure of that.

"Food's ready!" Grandma Ruth called from the kitchen. "Everybody sit, sit. Lucy, stop running. Michael, put the phone away, this is family time."

The table arranged itself around the food.

The soup was tomato basil tonight, rich and sharp on Charlotte's tongue.

She ended up where she always ended up: next to Jo, across from Valentina, with Lucy squirming in the seat beside her demanding to sit next to Aunt Charlotte.

The baby was passed around for cooing. Grandpa Isaac made his usual joke about the soup needing more salt.

Jo's elbow bumped Charlotte's as she reached for the bread.

Normal. All of it so normal. Years of Sundays at this table, and Charlotte still sometimes felt like she was dreaming.

"So," Valentina said, in the tone that meant she was about to be nosy. "Charlotte. When are you and Jo going to stop pretending you're not basically married?"

Charlotte's lungs seized. Beside her, Jo went still. Not the way Charlotte went still when Jo touched her. A different kind of still.

"Valentina," Jo said. "We're not—what are you even talking about?"

"I'm talking about the fact that you two spend every waking moment together and it's been like this for years." Valentina gestured between them with her fork. "You finish each other's sentences. You have a standing Friday night date. Charlotte has her own mug in Grandma's kitchen."

"That's called friendship," Charlotte said, keeping her voice level. "Some people have close friends."

"You have very close friends," Jo agreed quickly.

"Extremely close," Charlotte said.

"I'm just saying." Valentina was undeterred. "You're beautiful, you're successful, you have your own apartment in this city which is basically a miracle. And yet somehow you're always on Jo's couch, and the two of you keep beating around the bush about it."

"Charming visual."

"Mom," Lucy said, "what does beating off mean?"

The table erupted. Valentina went red. Grandpa Isaac choked on his soup. Jo was laughing so hard she had tears in her eyes, slumped against Charlotte's shoulder, her whole body shaking.

"It's 'beating around the bush,' baby," Valentina said quickly. "Different thing. Forget I said it. Eat your soup."

"But you said Aunt Charlotte should be—"

"SOUP. Lucy. Now."

Charlotte allowed herself a small smile. Beside her, Jo was still giggling, wiping her eyes.

"Your family is unhinged," Charlotte murmured.

"Our family," Jo corrected, easy as breathing. "You're stuck with us."

The word caught under Charlotte's ribs. Our.

She'd been part of this family for years.

Had her own seat at this table, her own mug in the restaurant's back kitchen, her own key to Grandma Ruth's apartment.

The kids called her Aunt Charlotte. Grandpa Isaac called her "the architect" with obvious pride.

Grandma Ruth had stopped asking when she and Jo were going to stop pretending years ago.

She didn't have a family. She had this one. Jo's.

She'd proven that five years ago, when a drunk driver took Jo's parents on the Verrazzano. Charlotte had been the one to cancel Jo's meetings, field the calls, sit with her through the nights when grief came in waves. It was the only time she'd let herself hold Jo without measuring the distance.

And that was exactly why she could never say anything.

Later, at Charlotte's apartment, they watched their show.

It was a period drama they'd started two years ago, full of corsets and forbidden glances and women who loved each other but couldn't say it.

They were on season four now. Jo was sprawled on Charlotte's couch with her feet in Charlotte's lap, eating popcorn and providing increasingly unhinged commentary.

"She should just TELL her," Jo said, waving at the screen. "Just say it! What's the worst that could happen?"

She could lose everything, Charlotte thought. Her family. Her home. Every good thing in her life.

"It's 1842," Charlotte said instead. "The worst that could happen is quite bad."

"Okay, but she's CLEARLY into her. Look at that look. That is not a friendship look."

On screen, the protagonist was gazing at her lady's maid with devastating longing. Charlotte understood the feeling intimately.

"Maybe she doesn't see it," Charlotte said.

"How could she not see it? It's so obvious!"

Because people don't always see what's right in front of them, Charlotte thought. Because sometimes the person you love is sitting next to you on a couch, asking why a fictional character can't see the obvious, while being the most obvious thing in the world.

The episode ended. Jo made a noise of frustration.

"One more?"

"It's late."

"One more."

Charlotte looked at her. Jo was already pulling up the next episode, the blue light of the screen catching the angles of her face. Her short hair was messy from lying down. She was wearing an old flannel shirt Charlotte had seen a hundred times, soft and worn thin at the elbows.

The exact shade of her eyes. The scar on her left hand from a kitchen accident in college. Her laugh, full-bodied and unselfconscious. Her voice when she said Lottie, like it held a secret.

"One more," Charlotte agreed.

They watched one more. And then one more after that, because Jo was persuasive and Charlotte was weak and the couch was comfortable and Jo's feet were warm against her thighs.

At midnight, Jo finally stirred.

"Okay, I really have to go. Work tomorrow."

"Same."

Jo unwound herself from the couch, stretched. Charlotte watched her vertebrae shift beneath her shirt. Looked away before Jo caught her.

"This was nice," Jo said. "I needed this after this week."

"Bad week?"

"Server migration. Don't ask."

"I won't."

Jo grinned. Grabbed her jacket from the hook by the door. Charlotte followed her, as she always did, because the goodbye was its own ritual.

"Same time Thursday?" Jo asked.

"I have a site visit Thursday."

"Friday then."

"Friday works."

Jo reached out and squeezed Charlotte's hand. Held it a second too long, or maybe not long enough, or maybe the exact right amount and Charlotte was just losing her mind.

"Love you, Lottie," Jo said. Casual. Easy. The way she always said it, like the words cost nothing.

They cost Charlotte everything.

"Love you too," she said, because she always said it back. Because it was true. Because Jo had no idea how true it was.

The door closed behind Jo. Charlotte stood in her hallway, listening to her footsteps fade down the stairs.

The apartment still smelled like popcorn butter and cedar soap.

She locked the door. Did the dishes from the popcorn. Changed into pajamas. Brushed her teeth. All the rituals of a life lived carefully, exactingly, alone.

Her phone buzzed on the nightstand.

Jo: home safe. thanks for letting me hog your couch

Jo: also your neighbor is playing that weird opera music again

Jo: tell him to invest in headphones

Charlotte smiled before she could help it.

Charlotte: I'll leave a strongly worded note.

Jo: you should

Jo: you have great handwriting. really intimidating cursive.

Charlotte: Go to sleep.

Jo: going going. night lottie

The heart emoji. Jo sent it to everyone. To her sister, her grandmother, half her coworkers. It meant nothing.

Charlotte stared at it anyway.

Then she opened a different app. The one with the flame icon, the one she'd downloaded three months ago and never opened.

Her profile was bare-bones. A few photos, a brief bio. Architect. Brooklyn. Not looking for anything serious. The last part was a lie. The last part was always a lie.

She looked at the screen. Looked at the last message from Jo.

night lottie

But tonight she'd watched two women on a screen ache for each other across drawing rooms and decades, and Jo had shouted just tell her like it was simple, like wanting someone was ever simple, and Charlotte had sat there with Jo's warm feet in her lap and thought: I can't keep doing this.

Years of loving Jo, of memorizing her, of holding still every time she touched her. Years of watching Jo date men who didn't deserve her, who never lasted more than a few weeks, who made Jo laugh for a moment and then faded into nothing.

Jo would never look at Charlotte the way those women on the period drama looked at each other. Jo would never see her that way. Because Jo was straight, and Jo was oblivious, and Jo thought Charlotte was her best friend.

Which she was. She was Jo's best friend. And she would rather have that than nothing.

But she couldn't keep holding still, holding back, holding the torch until it burned her down to ash.

She opened the app and started swiping.