A Very Merry Mess (Cider Cove Sweet Southern RomComs #3)

Elliott

ELLIOTT

Watching my best friend sputter is actually kind of funny. I hide my smile for now, because she won’t appreciate it. I’m feeling lucky I just got sprayed with hot chocolate, because with something like this, Ryanne could skewer me with that sharp tongue of hers.

And there I go, thinking about her tongue again. Her mouth. Her eyes. The shape of her body. The way she laughs with me and the other employees at Paper Trail. The way she brings in a birthday treat for everyone at the office supply store we co-manage. The way her roommates love her. The way she loves M&Ms. The way her momma pushes all the wrong buttons inside her.

“I can’t—this is unbelive—how could you do this?” She finally rights her phone and looks at it. Oh, the text is there. In fact, Ry’s momma has already replied how “delighted” she is to meet me, though, technically, we’ve met before.

“I told you weeks ago I’d be your boyfriend,” I say smoothly. I have to put on this act or Ry will know why I’ve not started dating anyone else—it’s because I want to date her.

I know, I was as shocked by that as anyone. Not because Ry isn’t amazing. She is. It’s not because she’s ugly. She’s one-hundred-percent not.

It’s not because she’s my best friend, and I’m terrified I’ll lose her. She is, and I’m sure I will, so fine, maybe that’s part of why I was shocked. I don’t have many friends, and Ry is my very best one in the whole world.

But it’s really because she’s too good for me. It’s because she wants long-term, and I just can’t give her that. It’s because she’s a bad liar and won’t be able to do the fake-dating thing.

“We can call this a date,” I say. “Our first one.”

“Are you out of your mind?” She shoves her phone under the strap of that stunning red dress, and oh, it’s no fun to be jealous of an inanimate object. Ry looks left and right like we’re doing something illegal. It sort of feels forbidden and dangerous, and I’ll admit, that’s part of the allure of the text I sent.

She folds her arms as her gaze comes back to me. “This is not our first date. First dates are supposed to be magical. Amazing. You spent the first twenty minutes flirting with other women.”

“I did not.” I glare at her. “I spoke to them like human beings, but you know what? I don’t want this to be our first date either.”

“Why not?” she demands.

“Because you spit hot chocolate all over me.” I raise my eyebrows and look down at myself, as if we both don’t already know where the sticky drink landed.

“You flashed me your abdomen .” She whispers the last word like it’s dirty.

I grin at her. “Can we start over?”

“Start…over?”

I reach out and take her hot chocolate from her. Then I take her hand in mine. “Yeah. I’ll run home real quick and change. We’ll go to dinner somewhere far away from here. Just me and you.” I swallow, because I know how smart Ry is. “On a date. Our first date, so we can get things right for your family party in a couple of weeks.”

She looks down at our hands, but she doesn’t pull away. “Get things right.”

“Right,” I say. “Your family will want to know why and when we started dating, how it’s working out with work, blah blah blah.”

She pulls in a noisy breath through her nose, almost like those cute little snorts she makes. “Work,” she blurts out. “Paper Trail. We can’t date.” She pulls her hand back, and I wish I had better ninja reflexes so I can keep it in mine. Unfortunately, I don’t, and she even backs up a step as she does that left-right, left-right sweep for federal agents.

I chuckle, because Ry is always a little too serious. “Ry, honey, no one at Paper Trail cares if we date.”

“Corporate does.”

“I seriously doubt it.”

“We’re co-managers.”

“So at least it’s not someone in a position of power over the other.”

She narrows her eyes at me. “You have an answer for everything, don’t you?”

“No,” I say.

She opens her mouth to argue again, then realizes what I’ve said, and closes it again. But given a few moments to think, she comes at me with, “Why do you want to do this?”

“Because.” I sigh and look across the street to the market. “I hate hearing how sad and upset you are whenever you hear from your momma. This is an easy fix, Ry.”

Liar! screams through my mind, but I ignore it. Yes, Ry is sad and upset when her mom and dad text her about who’s she’s dating—no one this year that I know of—and they’ve been pressuring her about coming home for Christmas for months.

But the real reason I want to do this is because I have real feelings for my best friend. Real feelings that I have no idea what to do with, and this feels like a safe way to stick my toe out of the friend zone, something I’ve never done before.

She stares at me, and I’m having a hard time holding her gaze. Her eyebrows are thick and perfectly sculpted, and they frame her eyes in a sexy way I can’t describe. She’s a beautiful woman, and I’ve always thought so.

“I see you,” I say next, and I hate myself the moment I do.

Because Ry crumbles right in front of me. Just simply falls apart, her perfectly made-up face plummeting as she starts to cry.

“Oh, no.” I gather her into my arms, wondering why I have to say such stupid things. “I’m sorry, Ry. Don’t cry.” I keep her close to my chest, not caring at all about my t-shirt getting mascara stains on it. Now, this jacket… That’s another story, but I know a good dry cleaner, and I’m not sacrificing this moment of holding Ry in my arms for a sport coat, even if this one has sentimental value.

“Let’s go,” I say quietly, and she doesn’t argue with me about leaving the square. I help her into my SUV as she sniffles, and I head for my house. “I’m just going to change,” I tell her when we get there. “Do you want to come in or wait here?”

“What are we going to do next?”

“What do you want to do next, Ry?” I ask.

She looks at me, and I manage to look back at her. “I’ll take you home so you can change, and we can just…be together.”

She nods, and I’m not sure what that means. I have no idea where I’ll take her after she shimmies out of that dress. Maybe she doesn’t even want to change, or maybe after she does, she’ll just want to crawl into bed and forget tonight ever happened. I honestly have no idea.

I also can’t believe I brought her to my house. See, I don’t exactly live alone, and while Ry knows my mom lives nearby, she doesn’t know it’s in the bedroom just down the hall.

Momma looks up as I slip in through the front door. “?” She’s on her feet in less than a second, before I can wave her off, even.

“I’m fine,” I say in a tired voice. I’m so sick of telling people I’m fine, or it’s fine, or everything will be fine.

Sometimes things aren’t fine, you know?

“I spilled some hot chocolate down me. I’m just gonna change and head back out.”

My mother looks from me to the door. “Where’s Ry?”

“Momma, leave her be!” I yell as I hurry out of the main part of the house and down the hall to my bedroom. “I’ll be two minutes!”

Sometimes I trust my mother explicitly, but in this case, I change as fast as possible and head back down the hall while I’m still pulling my new tee over my head. Because my mom might have gone outside and invited Ry in. Or at least shown herself.

Thankfully, she’s sitting on the arm of the couch, her eyes on the TV. She does turn toward me when she hears me coming, and I give her a smile. “I’ll be back later.”

“Okay,” she says. “You’re okay?”

“Fine, Mom.” I don’t want to be rude to her—she’s given up a lot to be here with me—but I don’t want to talk about my co-manager and my feelings for her.

“Wear your night-driving glasses!” she yells after me, and irritation spikes through me. Of course I know to wear my driving glasses, especially at night. I let the door say what I want to as it closes loudly behind me, and I jog down the steps to the SUV.

Ry looks over to me as I get back in. “I do want to go home and get out of this dress.”

My fantasies go wild, but I press my teeth together and keep everything inside. I’ve been doing that for a long, long time, and it gets easier every time. Except with Ry, I feel like I’m starting over at square one with everything.

So I almost let something slip like, I’d like to help with that.

But my one-liners that might work with other women will never, ever work with Ry. If I want to blow everything with her, then sure, I should let my mouth run wild. But for some reason, I don’t want to do that.

At the same time, there’s no way we can be together long-term. Thus, this fake-boyfriend-for-the-holidays fits the bill nicely. I suppress my inward sigh, because I’m too young to even be thinking “fits the bill nicely.”

I take her back to her house—which she and her friends call “the Big House,” where she looks at me fully for the first time since I got back in the car. “Do you want to stay here? Should we go somewhere else?”

“I’m following your lead, Ry.”

She tilts her head to the side. “That’s obviously not true. My mother has asked me about fifty-five questions since you texted her, and she’s already got the tickets booked.” She makes a face that displays disgust and irritation at the same time. “An four-ten flight, Ell. Do you know what that means?”

“Yes, I do,” I say. It means traffic, and Ry hates driving in traffic.

“This is your fault.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. “You always just sound so frustrated by her, and I wanted to help.”

“I think you wanted a free trip to New York City.” She gives me that sexy smile that has kept me up at night for the past couple of months.

“Yeah, in the dead of winter,” I say, returning her smile. “You caught me.”

“You’re such a soft Southern boy.”

“I’m thirty-three years old,” I say. “I’m not a boy .”

Ry grins at me, and there’s the best friend I know and love.

“Go change,” I say. “And I’ll take you to that gourmet street taco truck that is a total contradiction.”

“They have pork belly, which is total gourmet, in a taco. It’s the best thing you’ll put in your mouth.”

I laugh, because she says the same thing about the veggie taco—and I’m not even sure something can be labeled a taco if there’s no meat. “All right, all right,” I say. “Do you want to go in that gorgeous dress, or…?”

“No, I already said I wanted to change.”

“But you’re just sitting here.” I lean my head back and gaze at her. She really is beautiful, and the whole office at Paper Trail smells like warm cinnamon toast and fruit champagne, which is the body spray Ryanne loves so much.

It’s called Fairy Woods. I know, because I ventured out of my usual buying routine and went to the mall to get her some for her birthday last year. To me, she’s a fairy tale, a princess in a tower I’ll never have.

I want to be with someone long-term, but I won’t doom them to my fate. So I’ve put on the player hat, and I’m never serious about anyone. I date a lot, because who wants to stay home with their momma when they’re thirty-three years old?

Sometimes, I feel completely trapped in my life, and Ry has always been an escape for me. Maybe I acted a little rash tonight by texting her mother. Maybe this will be the worst Christmas in the world. A very merry mess , I think.

But then my eyes drop to her mouth, where her lips shine with something pink and tasty-looking, and my thoughts flip. Maybe, just maybe, this will be the best Christmas ever, and I’ll finally get to kiss my gorgeous, kind, and hard-working best friend.

Maybe I’ll even get to do it tonight. For practice purposes, of course.

“I’ll be right back,” she says, and Ry slips from the SUV. I watch her go, my plans for a good-night kiss swirling and taking form as she walks away from me in that sexy dress.

“You’re in trouble, Ell,” I whisper to myself. “Remember who you are. Remember what your life is.” There’s more for me to tell myself, but I don’t say it out loud.

Remember, you don’t want to hurt Ry.

So maybe there won’t be any kissing tonight after all.