The Real Thing (4 page)

Her cheek settles on my shoulder she says, “I still can’t believe this.”

“Huh?”

She squeezes my arm again. “
This
. Eric, look at all these muscles.” Her fingers trace over my skin, and I involuntarily flex.

“Uh … thanks?” I’ve never been good at taking compliments. Probably because most come from my mom.

“So, are protein bars your secret?” She nods at the cart.

“Part of it.” I push the cart to the next aisle. Em keeps her arm locked through mine. “But I’m not really … I mean, I’m still working on it.”

“Working on what?” Her eyes move to the canned-fruit shelf, and she tilts her head a little before reaching out for pineapple slices.

I clear my throat and rub the back of my head. “You know, losing weight.”

Her nose crinkles, and she pauses with the can of pineapple still in her hand. “Do you even have any left to lose?”

I laugh because she has to be kidding. My fingers grazing hers, I take the canned fruit from her hand and plop in it the cart.

“Oh my gosh,” she says, stopping me from turning into the next aisle. “You’re serious.”

“Huh?”

She leans against the cart, placing one hand on her hip. My eyes travel to the flash of skin between her shirt and her shorts before I move them to the much less woody-inducing fruit cocktail.

“Do you know how many women have checked you out in the last five minutes?”

“Em …”

“Eric …,”
she responds, mocking me, and a smile twitches on my face. She leans closer to me, the end of her ponytail getting caught in her cleavage. “I’m willing to bet you get at least ten more double takes before we leave.”

Em and her bets. “What do I win when you lose?” I ask, playing along.

“A massage?” she offers, wiggling her fingers at me. “That’s a thirty-five-dollar value.”

“Is that what you want if you win? Thirty-five bucks?”

“No. I want a live performance of ‘Crazy.’”

“The Hunter Hayes song?”

She nods, a grin spreading on her lips. “And you have to do it in your underwear.”

“Hell no.”

“You’ll get massaged in your underwear, but you won’t sing to me that way?”

I didn’t even think about the nakedness of a massage. The room starts spinning.

“Ugh, Em …” I lean on the cart and cover my eyes with one hand. I hear her laugh.

“I’m just teasing. Sort of. Okay, maybe I’m not.”

Peeking at her between my fingers, I catch her nervously sliding her phone in and out of her pocket and clacking her tongue. I get a flashback of when she was at one of my games, waiting by the fence that separated the team from the crowd. She kept checking her phone that night, and to take her mind off whatever crap she was dealing with, I took her to Wendy’s and we bet on how many fries we could fit in our mouths. She won.

I drop my hand. “All right. Ten or more, you get your half-naked cowboy song.”
Fat chance of that happening
. “But any less I’m getting that massage from a professional masseuse.”

She stops playing with her cell and links her arm through mine, squeezing her body close so a woman with a cart can pass by. The lady says, “Excuse me,” in a polite way so I say, “No problem.” Then as she turns the corner her eyes go back to me briefly, scanning up and down.

Em laughs as my face warms. “Oh, I am so getting that song.”

“Agh!”

I shoot from my bed, heart thundering in my ears while my eyes try to adjust to my surroundings. That was definitely a scream, and I smack into my closet door as I slide it open to get my baseball bat. My damn body won’t do what I want it to, though, and I end up feeling around till my fingers curl over something that’s cold and tubelike enough that it has to be my bat.

Ah, shit, what the hell are these walls made of? I’m pretty sure they’re lined with rubber bricks as I bang and bounce my way down the hallway to Em’s room. I whip the door open and thrust my bat out, expecting some kind of struggle, or even a damn spider … something … but Em’s squeezing a pillow to her chest, a big grin on her face in the dim light of her e-reader.

Her eyebrow goes up as I catch my breath in the doorway.

“Um, everything okay?” she asks through her smile.

“I … uh, heard you scream.”

She bites her lip and her shoulders rise a tiny bit. “Whoops. Sorry. I was just reading.”

I relax my stance and let my bat drop to my side. “Do you always scream when you read?”

“Sometimes.” She nods to my hand. “Do you always defend yourself with a lightsaber?” My fingers twitch on the handle, and I find the button I missed before. The dark room lights up red when I click it on and let out a laugh.

“Only when I can’t use a force choke.”

Her laugh makes my chest tighten and loosen all at once, and she shifts on her bed and pats the spot next to her. I don’t bother turning the overhead light on and neither does she. I guess we’ve both lived by the light of a screen enough to be used to it.

“I just read the ‘I love you’ scene,” she says, scooting over to me when I settle on the bed. She holds the e-reader between us so I can see the spot she highlighted. “It took nearly the whole book for them to get there, so I sort of squealed a little when I read it.”

“That was an excited scream?” I hold back my laughter, but it doesn’t really work. “I thought you were being kidnapped or some shit.”

“I have a taser. I’d beat any kidnapper’s ass.”

“I don’t doubt you.”

She pulls the e-reader back and flicks to her Kindle home screen. I smirk at all the books with shirtless guys on the covers. Even in the dark she catches it.

“Yes, I’m a romance junkie.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

Her eyes roll to mine. “You didn’t have to.”

Adjusting so I can put my arm behind her on the mattress, I reach over and flick to a book with a half-naked dude and some bikini-clad girl on his shoulders. “This one looks
really
good,” I tease and she grabs my knee and tickles it. Damn, she still knows that’s my spot.

I jerk back and then try to relax against the wall. She taps the Kindle off, and we’d be plunged into pure darkness if it weren’t for the red lightsaber and her computer screensaver. I try to ignore the instant change of atmosphere she caused just by shutting off the e-reader.

“I think only bookworms understand the kind of power stories can have on a person,” she says, teasing still in her voice. I watch her silhouette get closer to my shoulder before her head plops down. My brow insta-sweats, and I feel like I’m back in high school, dealing with the friend-zone shit and the turned-on shit and not wanting it to stop shit. I pull in a deep breath to calm things down in my pants.

I tilt my face to her.
“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more you learn, the more places you’ll go.”

She lifts her head, then rests her chin on my shoulder. Our eyes connect, but it’s hard to see every detail of her face. “Whoa, Shakespeare. You’re a book junkie, too?”

“Dr. Seuss. And yes. I’ve read every one of his books, because he’s a genius.”

“What was that quote from?”

“I Can Read With My Eyes Shut!”

“Never heard of it.”

My brows rise as I pull the Kindle from her hands. “For someone who loves books as much as you, it’s about time you read it.”

I search the e-libraries, even though I have the hardback sitting on the bookshelf in the other room. I’m too aware of every breath Em takes over my shoulder as she watches. I’m aware of every time her eyes flick to my face, and I can’t help but meet them with mine and smile when I see her watching me. I’m aware of her hair coming out of her ponytail, the strap on her tank top sliding down her shoulder, the twitch of her toes as she tries to warm them. It takes me much longer than it should to download the lendable bright-yellow Dr. Seuss book.

“Are you going to read it to me?” she asks, her voice taking on a lower whisper than I ever would’ve expected from her. I have to take another deep breath.

“I could probably recite it to you,” I say through a really garbled laugh. Damn these nerves. I don’t know how the hell I’m going to handle that massage I won earlier.

“Please?” She does that Em pout I hadn’t realized how much I missed. And the one that damn near ruins me every time she pulls it out. I’m pretty sure she knows it too, because she smiles wide and taps open the first page, then she slides a blanket over us and waits. I gulp and pray my voice doesn’t crack as I start with the opening line, not even bothering to look at the screen.

Then again, how can I when she’s so damn distracting?

Emilia Johnson

3 hours ago

Time for another book boyfriend named Max!

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Eric reaches the end of the book, and I’m still wide awake. But no way in hell do I want to move. It’s comfy here on his shoulder, so I drop my eyelids, and when he shifts, I don’t flinch an inch.

“Emmy?” he says over my head, and I resist the urge to smile. I’m not so good at the fake-sleep thing. I just want an excuse to use his muscle as a pillow without having to explain exactly why I want that.

He laughs when I don’t answer, and I feel him set the Kindle down and reach for a pillow for his head. His fingers are a little cold on my arm as he adjusts us both so that we’re in a more comfortable sleeping position.

“I know you’re awake,” he says, and damn him, I can hear that smile in his words. I play stubborn and don’t answer.

“Okay, we can play that game when you pretend to be sleeping, and I talk out loud till you crack.”

I open my mouth, nearly saying that we’ve only played that game once, and I
was
asleep when we played, and he woke me up by talking. But I snap my lips together and let out a ridiculous snore.

He lets out a burst of laughter and shifts under me, but not enough to make me adjust my position on his arm. In fact, he nuzzles against my head, then rests his cheek there, pulling in long breaths. Something takes flight in my stomach, and I blink my eyes open to make sure I’m not daydreaming again.

“You know, I haven’t told you yet how much I’ve missed you,” he says, and whatever took flight in my stomach reaches my throat. Even if I wasn’t trying to keep quiet, I don’t think I’d have a voice to say anything. All those feelings I got when we were chatting online buzz in my chest—and other areas, to be completely honest—and I don’t know what to do with them. Feels like the protocol for seeing friends in person after a few years is to, well, get to know them all over again. Somehow it seems like we’re just picking right back up.

“It was weird adjusting back to island life,” he says, his jaw moving on the top of my head. “Oh, and even weirder answering to my given name again. I think you were the only person to still call me Eric after I moved.”

I nearly break again, about to tell him he’s still the only person who calls me Emmy, but I stay stone still and try to control what’s going on with my breathing.

“That could be because you don’t know how to spell my real name, though.” He lightly chuckles and tries to get me to look at him. I squeeze my eyes closed again and stifle a smile.

“Or maybe it’s because you can’t pronounce it right, either,” he teases, and damn him, he knows I’ll pipe up to defend myself. My eyes crack open and I wrinkle my nose at him.

“What’s wrong with Eric? I like that name,” I say, finally breaking and sitting up away from his comfortable shoulder. He gives me a triumphant smile, but pulls me back to where I was. I guess I didn’t need being asleep as an excuse to stay there.

“You can’t pronounce it, can you?”

“It’s been so long since I’ve heard it. But I
could
back in high school. Don’t chop my awesome-best-friend card in half, because I
so
know your Samoan name.”

“Which is …?”

Even in the dark I can see his gorgeous chocolate eyes, and my heart thunders in my chest. Seriously, it needs to knock that shit off. Must’ve been that romance novel I was reading. Curse that Max guy.

“Um …” I shake my head clear and adjust against his arm again so I’m not looking at him. But that just puts my eyes on Eric’s gym shorts.
Oh hell
. “It’s uh … Escardo or something.” I’m so off, and he laughs so hard he jolts me from his shoulder. Whatever is going on in my body relaxes enough for me to smack him in the chest. “It’s been forever since I heard it!”

“I bet even if I say it now, you’ll still have trouble with it.”

“No more bets until I pay you for the last one,” I grumble. I tried to count myself as the tenth woman who checked Eric out at the store—which should totally count, but he called it cheating—so I owe him that massage. It sucks because I really wanted that song. Especially if he was going to pull out his ukulele. It’s been way too long since the football team was forced into that talent assembly. I want to hear him sing again.

I settle back against him and speak to his bellybutton. “But still say it for me.”

“Esekielu.”

“Bless you,” I say with a laugh. He reaches for my side and gives it a tickle. Oh, he knows not to start a tickle war with me, because he will lose.

“’Kay, you dork, can you say it?”

“Ezekiel or something or other.”

“I guess that’s close enough.”

“I told you, I like Eric. I say Eric and I think
you
.”

His breathing sort of changes, switches to a faster tempo, or maybe that’s me. I have no clue. But his fingers trail up my arm and smooth my hair back, then he pulls the blanket around my shoulder.

“That’s why I like Emmy. It’s
you
.”

The screensaver on my computer goes completely black, and so does the room. It’s perfect for sleeping now, and I thank the techno gods for the timing, because my smile is rivaling an emoticon with a capital D, and I’m glad Eric can’t see it because he’d totally call me out.

His breathing evens before mine, and before he completely drifts off, I open my mouth.

“Hey, Eric?”

“Hmm?”

I squeeze his middle and get another jolt at how much smaller it is.