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She smiles. “No, I’m saying find someone who you can
talk
to. Someone who makes you laugh. I think you’ll realize that that’s what you find attractive.”

I sigh. “So you’re saying I can’t just bone an empty shell of a man?”

Mom smiles. “It’s never that simple. But if you ever find one particularly well-endowed—”

“My ears! My ears are burning!”

We glance toward the doorway to see an appalled-looking Ben with his hands over his ears.

He shakes his head. “Since I can never unhear that, there’s only one thing to be done.”

Somberly, he makes a pistol shape with his right hand and holds it to his temple before glancing at both of us. “I want it on my tombstone that I’m one of the well-endowed ones. You two owe it to me, since this conversation was my cause of death.”

I laugh and hold my wineglass up. “Please. Last night you spent fourteen minutes explaining how you can gauge a woman’s bra size based on how her breasts fit into your palms. You can handle this.”

He jabs a finger at me. “Don’t say
bra
with me and your mother in the same room.”

“Don’t fret, Benjamin,” Mom says, holding up her own glass. “And Parker has the right idea. Fetch us more wine, sweetie.”

He gives a butler-esque bow and accepts the wineglasses. “Are you guys going to start talking about balls the second my back’s turned?”

“Of course not, darling,” Mom says mildly. “Much easier to discuss balls when you’re facing us.”

“Mrs. Blanton, congratulations,” he says as he turns on his heel. “You’ve done the impossible and officially scandalized me. As such, you can’t get mad at me for the fact that I’ve already eaten the outside edge of the brownies sitting on the stove.”

“That’s fair,” Mom says with a laugh.

But I barely hear this last part of the exchange.

The world has gone completely silent around me, as though I’m deep in a bubble of dangerous thoughts.
Very
dangerous thoughts.

Ben leaves the room, but I continue to stare after him for several long seconds before I slowly lift a finger to my lip and tap thoughtfully.

What if my mom is on to something?

What if the right guy to scratch my sexual itch is the one who makes me laugh? The one I can talk to.

What if the right guy…

…Has been right in front of me?

Parker’s mostly quiet on the drive home, which doesn’t really alarm me. We’re comfortable with each other’s silences. But she was quiet at dinner, too, and that’s unusual.

“Talk or mute?” I ask.

“Hmm?” she asks, not playing our usual game.

I glance at her more closely. “You’re being weird.”

She cuts me a look across the darkened car. Her expression is unreadable, and that worries me even more. I’m not good at very many things, but reading Parker has always been one of them.

That’s what happens when someone is best friend, carpool buddy, and roommate. You start to know them as well as you know yourself. Better, actually.

“You going out tonight?” she asks.

I shrug. “Haven’t decided. Why, you want to come?”

I’m silently hoping she’ll say no. Not because I don’t want to hang out with her, but because we’ve been “going out” more often than not lately, and while I’ve had a good time—mostly—I wouldn’t mind a quiet evening. Chilling with Parks on the couch with bad TV or a stupid movie sounds way better than getting dressed up and talking to strangers.

Still, one of the things about having a female best friend is that when she asks you to be a wingman, you’ve got to do it the way you would for a guy friend.

But there’s also an extra obligation of protection. She’d kill me if she knew it, but my reasons for tagging along aren’t so much about helping her get laid as they are making sure she doesn’t end up with some asshole.

So, no, I don’t want to go out tonight. But if she’s going, I’m going.

“Nah, I think I’m staying in,” she says. “I’m too full to even think about putting on anything other than pants with an elastic waist.”

“Second helping of lasagna catching up with you?” I ask, relaxing a little now that she’s not being all quiet and weird.

“Says the guy who had three.”

I pat my stomach. “I would never offend your mother by eating anything less than an obscene amount.”

Parker’s mom is a decent cook, but it’s not really about the quality of food so much as the homemade factor. I don’t miss much about home, but I
do
miss home-cooked meals. Of course, family dinners at my house weren’t quite as pleasant as they are at the Blantons’.

I could never decide which was worse, the lectures that ensued whenever I sat down to eat at my mother’s house, or the awkward silences as my dad tried to figure out how to talk to us when we were kids.

Parker’s fallen quiet again, and this time I let her stew.

Back at home, we both head into the kitchen, her to put leftovers in the fridge, me to get a glass of water.

I assume based on her quiet mood that she’s going to retreat to her bedroom, but instead she sits at our small kitchen table, tapping her fingernails and staring at a random spot on the wall.

I roll my eyes, pour her a glass of water and sit across from her. “Spill.”

Her eyes flick to mine and her lips purse, and I can tell she’s debating whether or not to follow my instructions.

“Fine.” I hold up my hands. “I’ve done my best-friend duty. I’m not going to beg you to talk. Call Lori or Casey if you want to be coaxed into it.”

I’m a good friend. But I have limits.

She grabs my wrist as I pass. “I want to talk to you about something.”

“Oh my God,” I mutter, fully annoyed with this girly fit. “Like I haven’t been trying to get you to talk for the past twenty minutes.”

She licks her lips and looks away as her fingers release my wrist.

I cross my arms and stare her down. She has about six seconds to spit out whatever has her all knotted up—

“Do you ever talk to the girls you sleep with?” Parker blurts out.

I lift an eyebrow. “You mean, do I remove their gag and allow them to speak? Only when they please me.”

Her foot sneaks out and nearly connects with my shin, but I dodge. “You know what I mean,” she says. “After you’re done saying whatever you need to to get in their pants, but
before
you begin your usual
Get them out of here
routine, do you talk to them?”

“Sure,” I say, completely unclear on where the heck she’s going with this.

“No, I mean do you
really
? Do you enjoy them?”

“I enjoy their—”

Parker holds up a hand. “No, I mean them as people. Do you
like
them?”

I scratch my cheek. “Why do I get the feeling I’m walking into a conversation in which I’ll inevitably look like an asshole?”

“So you don’t like them,” she concludes.

“Jeez, I don’t know, Parks. I don’t
dislike
them; otherwise, I wouldn’t bring them home or go back to their place or whatever. But it’s not like I—”

I scratch my cheek again, not really sure what she wants me to say. I’m a bit of a womanizer. I get that. But I never give anyone the wrong impression. I never imply that I’m interested in anything other than the one night.

I’ve never really felt bad about my relationship habits (although
relationship
feels like a strong word), but the way Parker is positioning these questions makes me feel like she’s setting me up for something.

“Are you having second thoughts about this whole casual sex thing?” I ask.

“Yes.”

Thank God.

Still, I’m surprised. Not so much that she’s changed her mind—she’s really not a one-night-stand kind of girl—but that she’s changing her mind before she’s even tried it.

Because as far as I know, despite our nearly nightly outings to various bars, she hasn’t hooked up with anyone since she and Lance split a couple weeks ago.

“I’ve been going about it all wrong,” she says.

“Well, yeah,” I say, folding my arms and leaning back against the counter. “But only because you seem to have a knack for finding the biggest douchebag in every bar we go into.”

“Exactly!” Her eyes light up, her voice excited. “I can’t even carry on a conversation with these bozos for more than a minute without wanting to blow my brains out.”

“Ah, and you want to know how I manage to carry on conversations with girls that I’m not really interested in,” I say, finally catching on. Or so I think.

“Um, no,” she says. “I don’t really give a crap.”

God help me, I might strangle her. “Do I even need to be here for this conversation?” I ask. “Seems to me like you can talk yourself into a circle all by yourself.”

She stands. “When I said I’m giving up on the casual sex thing, I meant I’m going to give up on doing the casual sex thing
your
way. Haven’t you ever wanted to enjoy the person you sleep with? To finish up doing,
you know,
and then not want to shove them out of bed?”

“Um, sure, but…”

“Don’t you wonder if it would be better with someone who didn’t drive you nuts? Someone you cared about?”

Warning bells sound in my head. I’d take a step back if I weren’t already backed against the counter. “Please tell me you aren’t going to set me up with one of your friends. I thought you were against that kind of cross pollination.”

“Oh, I am,” she says with an easy smile. “And don’t worry, what I’m proposing won’t end in you having to give anyone Valentine’s Day flowers or remember one-month anniversaries”

“That’s great, but I still don’t understand what this proposal is?”

And since when have she and I had such a hard time understanding each other?

Parker holds her hands out to the sides, then lets them drop. “I think we should hook up.”

I would just like to state—for the record—that I should win a goddamn medal for not laughing, fainting, or straight up walking out of the room.

“How much wine did you have?” I ask, even though I know she didn’t have more than two glasses, and stopped early in the evening since she was driving us home.

“I know,” she says, clasping her hands in front of her and biting her lip. “I know it sounds crazy, and I know I’m springing this on you—”

“You think?” I say, feeling the rare urge to lose my temper. “What the
hell
am I supposed to say to that, Parker? You’ll forgive me if I’m feeling a little blindsided here.”

She looks at the floor and, despite my anger, I feel a little twinge of guilt, because it can’t have been easy for her to say what she just said. It was a bold move. I’ll give her that.

But we’ve spent
years
trying to explain to everyone in the world about how we’re not friends with benefits, that we’re not friends with latent, unexplored romantic feelings, and here she is, willing to throw it all way for—

“Why?” I ask, realizing that that was the question I should have asked from the beginning. My voice is a little softer now. Knowing that there’s got to be a reason behind her sudden burst of insanity.

Her eyes meet mine again. “All the reasons I said. I want…I want to have fun with sex, you know? But I can’t do that as long as I’m preoccupied with how bored I am by the other person, or how annoying he is, or how do I know he wasn’t lying about being free of STDs, or how do I know he’s not a psycho…”

I smile a little at that, because it’s so
her.
“You’re overthinking it.”

“Exactly! My brain won’t let me do this with a stranger, because there are too many unknowns. I wouldn’t be able to relax and get lost in the moment. Maybe if I had years of practice like you, or even Lori…”

“Don’t bite my head off for suggesting this,” I say, holding up my hands. “But do you think maybe you’re just not meant for the casual sex thing? Why not wait until the right guy comes around and get your rocks off
that
way?”

To my surprise, she doesn’t lay into me for having a double standard, or even for using the phrase
get your rocks off,
which she’s always hated.

“I can’t risk it,” she says quietly.

I frown. “Can’t risk what?”

Her voice is small. “My heart.”

My stomach clenches at that. She looks so damn fragile.

“Getting dumped
hurt,
” she continues. “I don’t know that Lance was the love of my life. I’m guessing not, since I’m not exactly up in my room pining for him. But I did care about him—loved him—and he didn’t love me back, and I don’t want to
do
that again, Ben.”

I squeeze my eyes shut, feeling so wildly unprepared for this kind of conversation it’s not even funny.

I answer carefully. “I get that. I do. But the answer is not…you and me,” I finish awkwardly.

What would that even look like? Be like?

“But you have flings all the time,” she argues. “Why not with me?”

I give her a look. “You know why. It would mess everything up.”

“Not if we didn’t let it,” she says, taking a half step forward. “We trust each other. Make each other laugh. And we’re both attractive—”

“Yes, but not attracted to each other,” I’m quick to clarify.

She tilts her head and looks me over. “I bet we could get over that.”

I remember my strange reaction to a drunken Parker taking her shirt off a couple weeks ago and realize she’s right. I could get over the
It’s just Parker
thing real fast if I saw her in that sexy little red bra again. Or a black bra. Or no bra. Or…

“No,” I say tersely. “Not happening.”

“It wouldn’t have to be weird,” she says. “We’ve managed to avoid all the other clichés of guys and girls being friends, so what makes you think we can’t also avoid the cliché of sex ruining the friendship?”

“Not happening,” I say, finishing my water glass in two gulps and moving toward the fridge. Except not for more water. Beer. I’ve definitely earned one.

I feel her studying me as I dig around for the bottle opener. Feel her gaze as I take a long, much-needed pull on the IPA.

“You’re probably right,” she says finally.

Oh thank God.

“Glad to see you’ve seen the light,” I say dryly.

She moves to the fridge to get herself a beer. “Right.” Then she groans. “Ugh. That was…embarrassing. Sorry to put you through that. I just…I was discouraged and started thinking crazy.”

“You think?”

She picks up the bottle top I left on the counter and drops that and her own into the trash. “I just kept trying to envision us kissing, and—”

Parker breaks off midsentence and gives a dramatic shudder. “Gross.”

I pause with the bottle halfway to my mouth.
Gross?
Awkward, sure. Insane, yes. But
gross
?

“It wouldn’t be that bad,” I grumble before I can stop myself.

She looks at my mouth and then makes a face before turning away, giggling. “It would be! You know it would.”

Okay, I’m not proud of this, but…her laughter stings. Not in the
I’m going to need to go to therapy
kind of way, but my ego is definitely hurting, just a little.

I point my beer in her direction. “I’ll have you know that I’m a damn good kisser.”

“Sorry,” she says, shaking her head. “I bet you are, but I just can’t picture it.”

I stand up straighter as a thought jumps into my head. “Hold the fuck up. Is this some girly reverse psychology bullshit? You’re trying to get your way by goading me into proving that I’m a good kisser?”

“Awww,”
she says in a teasing voice. “You’re upset! Did I insult your manhood?”

Yes.

“No,” I mutter.

“I’m sure you’re very good at what you do,” she says, heading toward the living room and patting my arm as she passes. “I just…”

She breaks off giggling again, and something inside me snaps at her laughter.

I grab her arm and pull her back around. “It wouldn’t be
gross.
”

Her nose wrinkles. “Okay.”

I can tell she doesn’t believe me, and my competitive juices boil over. I set my beer behind me on the counter. “Care to make a bet?”

“Like what, a kissing bet?” She looks at me like I’m crazy. And
gross.

My eyes flick to her lips just for a second, and, strangely enough, it’s temporarily really easy to forget that she’s Parker because her mouth is…appealing.

“Scared?” I ask.

Parker rolls her eyes. “Oh, now who’s playing games?”

But she’s not scampering away, and I lean forward. “One kiss. If you still think it’s gross, I’ll do your laundry for a week.”