“Shit, Tana.” He laughed. “I don’t need instructions.”
His laughter pissed me off and I looked up to glare at him. “I know you’re not Mr. Innocent, but I also know that some guys think they’re better at sex than they really are. I also know you have a reputation but those girls weren’t friends like you and I are. I thought maybe you’d find it difficult, that’s all.”
We stared at each for what felt like forever, then he finally said, “I guess you’ll have to wait and see.”
Why was there always such a tangle of emotions within me when it came to Ryan?
Mama Leena’s minivan pulled up behind the Charger. Destiny bounded out of the passenger side. “Tana, hey.” She gave me a hug. “Are you here to hassle Ryan?”
“I’m trying.”
“Good. Come in. I want to show you something.”
After one final look at Ryan, I went with Destiny into her room and sat on her bed. Until last year, her room looked like it could be an advertisement for a Barbie doll convention because everything from the walls to the ruffled curtains was pink and girly. Even the carpet was once pink.
Destiny was Mama Leena’s only girl and the only child that lived after Mama Leena had a couple of miscarriages and one stillborn baby. Some people said losing the other babies were the reason she took in foster kids but I think it was because Mama Leena had a big heart.
Now the room was done in white and bronze colors with posters of Destiny’s favorite singers on the walls. She pulled a sketchbook from beneath the mattress.
I flipped through sketch after sketch until I saw the new ones. “Have you talked to your mama yet?” I paused at the sketch of Ryan, Juvante, Roman and Clarke standing together, their arms draped over one another’s shoulders. She’d captured Ryan’s expression dead on. Without realizing I was doing it, I traced my finger along the outline of his face, imagining what it would be to freely run my hands along his skin.
“You and Ryan, huh?” She smirked.
I jerked my finger back, feeling the blush stain my cheeks. “We’re just friends.”
“Uh huh and Juvante is a choir boy.” She took the sketchbook back. “I know that look, Tana.”
“Did you talk with your mom?” I guided the conversation back.
“Not yet. I’m going to when school starts back in the fall. I can take art as an elective. Mama thinks I need to take another math or science. So she’s not going to be too happy with me.” Her face puckered at the thought.
Destiny was the most creative person I knew. Besides her artwork, she had a knack for making clothes. When she’d worn one of her creations to school last year, other girls had begged her to make one of the dresses for them. She wanted to go into fashion design. Mama Leena thought she needed a business degree.
“I sewed this for Mark.” Destiny knelt and dug around until she pulled out a wad of material. “For Halloween.”
I unfolded the Spiderman costume. Creature was all about the superheroes. “He’s going to love it.” I looked at my watch. “I need to go.”
Mama Leena called for Destiny and she sighed. “We’re supposed to go over a list of accelerated classes I can take this summer. Just once I wish she’d let me have a summer off and stop pushing me. She’s determined I’m going to take over her business someday.”
“She worries about you and your future. You should talk to her. Tell her what you really want to do.”
“Uh huh. You know once she has her mind made up, it’s hard to get her to see any other way.” Destiny looked sad, then shook it off and pushed me toward the door. “Get out there and hassle Ryan some more.”
Smiling, I walked back outside onto the porch and looked out across the yard. Juvante stood beside Ryan and the two were in deep conversation. I made my way down the steps toward them and as I approached, I thought I heard Juvante mention Chanos’ name but both of them fell silent when they saw me so I wasn’t sure.
“Is everything okay?” I asked, looking first at Juvante, then Ryan.
“Yeah,” they both said in unison.
“Do you want to come by the house tomorrow?” I asked Ryan. “I have the day off.”
“No. I’ll be busy tomorrow.”
The way he said it, so short and clipped wasn’t the way that he usually spoke to me. He was blowing me off? With a shrug, I walked to my car.
I heard Juvante say, “Man, you hurt her feelings. Go kiss your girl and make up.”
I gritted my teeth and walked faster. I didn’t want to be Ryan’s pity case. Why he said he’d be with me if he didn’t want to was something I couldn’t figure out, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to put up with it.
Ryan muttered something I didn’t catch. Then loudly, “Tana.” He jogged up beside me and shot a dirty look back at Juvante.
I decided to test him, to see if he wanted out. “You want to pick me up on Friday and take my car or yours? It would probably be better if we took yours because my Mom’s has been acting up. This way, she’ll have mine in case she needs it.”
“We can take mine.”
“Okay, then.” I said, trying to keep my voice flat, like nothing bothered me. Like the fact that I was going to have sex with my best friend wasn’t tying me up in hundreds of knots. Like my head wasn’t calling me all kinds of a fool.
“Tana.” He held my arm to stop me. “I’m not going to hang with you because I don’t want to do something stupid with you before it’s time, okay? That’s all it is.”
Something stupid?
“I told you, if you don’t want to, tell me.”
“It’s not that I don’t want to. I just don’t know what it might do to our friendship.”
“It’s not going to change us. Everything will be okay,” I said. “I forgot to tell you yesterday that Brooklyn mentioned a going away cookout at her house Thursday night for me and Shelby. Her family will be gone so she’ll have the house to herself. Knowing her, there will be plenty of alcohol. You want to go?”
He rubbed the back of his neck and puffed out his cheeks as he exhaled. “Okay.”
I tiptoed up, intending to kiss his cheek the way I had hundreds of times before, but the kiss landed on his lips instead because he moved his head. Ryan hesitated at first, then kissed me back, hard, fast, and thoroughly, only pulling back when Juvante yelled out suggestions.
“I’ll see you Thursday,” he said when we parted from the embrace.
His eyes were shuttered, closing me out so I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. Not that I had any great insight into Ryan but something that scared me to think about was what if the closer we became physically, the more he pulled away emotionally? I couldn’t let that happen. I had to do whatever it took to put our friendship back on track. I had to be breezy and act like I didn’t think about him a lot more often. I had to make sure that he knew I wasn’t trying to make more of what was going on than friendship.
*
RYAN
Thursday wasn’t supposed to be a big deal. Brooklyn was throwing the cookout to say goodbye to her friends since they were going to head off to college and she was staying behind. For me, it should have been like it always had with Tana. Two friends hanging and catching a ride together. Until she walked out of her house and suddenly I couldn’t concentrate on anything else. I don’t know where the fuck Tana got that scrap of material she was wearing, but there wasn’t enough of it to be called a dress.
The fact that I didn’t want other guys looking at how much of her it revealed burned within me. I wasn’t some jealous prick who thought a guy had a right to approve or disapprove how a girl dressed. I didn’t think a guy had the right to act like a jealous ass, especially if he wasn’t even in a relationship with the girl. I was angrier with myself about that more than anything. The boundaries of our friendship kept sliding closer together and the lines were starting to blur. It was supposed to be Tana. Ryan. Not Tana and Ryan as in a couple. So why the fuck was I thinking like we were part of a couple? Not wanting other guys to look. Or to be with her. Why was she all the fuck I could think about lately?
As soon as I parked outside Brooklyn’s house, Tana swung the car door open. She sent me a friendly smile that only made the churning inside of me get worse. “Thanks for the ride. We don’t have to enter together. That way, if you see someone you want to hook up with, she won’t get the wrong impression that you’re with me.”
Her comment first stunned, then pissed me off. “It doesn’t bother you?”
She picked up the small purse she’d brought along and checked the contents before snapping it shut. In the makeup she had on, her eyes looked darker, more mysterious. “It’s what you do, Ryan. We’re not in a relationship. Go in and have fun.” She slid from the car and the back of her dress eased up enough for me to get a glimpse of her tanned thigh and the swell of her tight ass.
I exited the car and trailed behind her, liking the way that her hips swung in the dress. What she’d said in the car had thrown me out of sorts and my stomach felt weird. I tried to think friends-only thoughts as I watched her, but it was hard to concentrate when I knew that soon there would be nothing between us but our heartbeats.
Inside the packed house, it was like goddamn mating season on the farm. In seconds Tana was surrounded by assholes masquerading as guys. I’d gone to school with two of them. The other one I didn’t recognize.
“Niiiice, Tana,” Asshole #1 said and reached out to stroke her shoulder.
I forced myself to keep walking even though I’d like to rip his hand off and hold it up over my head like a trophy. Wall to wall people gyrated to the thumping rock music, bumping into one another, laughing and shrieking. I threaded my way through them to the kitchen where Brooklyn had a variety of liquor displayed. One of the demons from my past that I’d turned to one too many times waited for me in the group. I looked away. I didn’t let myself go that far any more. I still drank but not to the point that I couldn’t even remember my own fucking name.
Brooklyn swayed up to me, sipping from a Solo cup, her eyes amused over the rim. When she lowered it, she looked pointedly in Tana’s direction and said, “Can’t believe you walked away from that.”
I poured myself a Coke.
Her mouth dropped. “
You’re
not drinking?”
“I’m driving.”
She looked past me, then back. “I can get someone else to take you home, so feel free to have a few.”
“I came with Tana. I’m driving her home.”
She slapped her forehead, then smirked. “Oh, that’s right. And as a good
friend,
you want to make sure you’re there for her. As her
friend
, you want to watch out for her. You’re not fooling me, Ryan.”
“Fuck off.”
She leaned closer and smiled, reminding me of a cat watching a mouse. “It’s okay. I won’t tell her.” Brooklyn irritated me sometimes, but not half as bad as Tana’s friend Shelby.
I downed half the Coke. “Tell her what?”
“That you love her.”
I glanced toward the living room where Tana was dancing with Asshole #2. “We’re friends.”
“With future benefits, I hear.”
Shit. I should have known Tana would talk to her friends about us. “You seem awfully interested in Tana’s life. Might be helpful if you get one of your own.”
She laughed and took another swig of her drink. “With the way my brothers hover over me, sometimes it seems like all I get to do is live vicariously through my friends.” She looked around the room. “But since they’re not here tonight, I plan on eating great food, getting wasted and having drunken party sex. In that order.”
Weaving out of the kitchen, Brooklyn moved into the crowd and slid her arms around a guy. He immediately started grinding against her. Brooklyn was crazy. Me, in love with Tana? What a joke. No, what I felt for her wasn’t love. It was friendship. She was beautiful, kind, and sexy as hell. Too sexy for my peace of mind lately. All I wanted was for her to have a good life. For her dreams to come true. Nothing more to it than that.
I backed up and sat on a stool, resigning myself to a few hours of boredom.
Chapter Seven
TANA
Sam, the guy I was dancing with seemed to have four hands and they kept roaming my body. The third time I moved his hands off my ass, I told him to knock it off.
He laughed and lowered his hand again to squeeze my ass hard enough for it to hurt. He pushed up the back of my dress. “You like playing hard to get?” He dipped his head and tried to kiss me.
I turned my head away so that his slobbering kiss landed on the side of my face. When his hands tightened and he tried to rub himself against me, I pushed back and brought my knee up to nail him in the balls.
“Oh!” He doubled over. “Bitch!” he moaned and cupped himself.
“No means no, asshole.” I shoved him away from me and went to get a drink. The music was giving me a headache. I’d danced for an hour and the cookout wasn’t nearly as fun as I’d thought it would be. I walked into the kitchen and my feet became glued in place.
Ryan was sitting on a stool at the counter. A blonde had her arms wrapped around his waist, leaning into him, pressing her breasts against his chest. To my relief, Ryan wasn’t kissing her. He had his hands on her waist to hold her back.
“One kiss, Ryan. You used to like the way I kissed.”
“No, I liked the way you gave head. Go kiss your boyfriend.”
She giggled and waved a hand dismissively. “He’s out back in the pool.” She ran her hand up Ryan’s thigh and squeezed. “You and I could do a quickie.”
I felt sick at the sight of her hand on him and at the thought that he might take her up on the offer.
“Maybe you should join him in the pool and cool off.” Ryan let go of her.
The blonde took the rejection with a jutting pout of her lower lip and glared at me as she brushed past.
Ryan raised his eyes to mine and it was like in the movies when the background noise faded. All the people disappeared and only Ryan was there in the house with me. I moved forward in slow motion until I stood in front of him. Raising my arms, I put my hands on either side of his face and leaned forward until our lips touched.
Before I could do more than give him a whisper of a kiss, Ryan was on his feet and he wasn’t happy with me. “How much have you had to drink?”