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

Ryanne

RYANNE

“I’m only here to change,” I say as I start my march through the living room. Doesn’t matter. Tahlia is on her feet in less time than it takes for me to inhale again.

“What happened?”

So many things, but none of them I want to expound on. “Nothing,” I say. “The movie theater thing was too…romancey for me and Ell.” I give her a look I’ve filled with spikes. But Tahlia’s seen it so many times, she doesn’t even flinch.

“Romancey?”

“Stupid,” I say as I reach the steps and turn to go up them. As I climb, I lift the hem of my dress, so I don’t trip. “I’m not dating Elliott, and it felt weird. I’m going to change, and we’re going to go get tacos.”

Because that’s what best friends do. When they don’t have a date on a very romantic evening, they get together, and they go eat greasy food from a truck. And while I wish I could hang all over Elliott, giggle with him, and sip my pink champagne with him, that’s not my reality.

I climb the steps in my heels to the second floor, and then I kick them off on the landing. Stooping to pick them up, I sigh out all my breath. Dealing with my parents during the holidays isn’t fun on a good day, and having Ell there with me will make me twice as tense.

“Especially because now you have to act like you like him.”

That’s the problem—I do like him, but I’ve spent so long pretending like I don’t, boxing up those feelings, hiding them from him, from everyone, that letting them show feels like it’ll choke me.

I manage to get out of the red sequin dress, but I’m sweating by the time I toss it onto my bed. My stomach roars for something to eat, and my legs wobble a little bit from the single drink I consumed at the theater. I lean my hand on the nightstand and hold there for a moment, my eyes pressed closed.

Maybe Elliott will just come inside, and I can order food to the Big House. I don’t even care if we eat it with Tahlia.

I open my eyes, acknowledging that I’ve just lied to myself. I need to start being more honest. Because I don’t want to share Elliott with Tahlia. We need to talk about our fake romance anyway, and I can’t do that in front of my roommate.

I pull on a pair of wide-leg jeans and a black sweater with tiered, puffy sleeves. With my fancy hair and makeup, I’m totally ready for a date with my fake boyfriend, and I slide my feet into a pair of pink crocs that Elliott has teased me about before.

I don’t care. I think crocs are the bestest footwear in the world, and I swipe a handful of almond M&Ms from the candy bowl on my dresser before I head back downstairs.

“Where’s Lizzie?” I ask when I once again find only Tahlia in the living room. She’s put something on the TV, but she seems more involved in her phone than the movie.

“She got a last-minute date,” she said, looking up at me. “Aaron Stansfield, believe it or not.”

My eyes widen. “What?” I asked, my voice mostly made of air. “ Emma’s Aaron?”

This is going to make for some juicy gossip inside the Big House, especially since Aaron now lives next door to us, in the house where Liam used to live, before he and Hillary moved to LA.

But he works next door to Emma, as the flower shop she just bought is directly adjacent to the hardware store Aaron is taking over from his father in less than a month.

And Emma’s had a crush on Aaron for ages , and I wonder how the whole thing with Lizzie and Aaron went down.

“I can’t wait to hear more about this,” I say. “But I’m starving, and Elliott’s outside.”

“I’m sure there will be a whole meeting,” Tahlia says. “Go have fun.”

I don’t know about that, but I give her a smile and as I step out of the Big House, I tell myself, “Don’t be so grumpy, . Try to have fun—and an intelligent, grown-up conversation.”

Elliott jumps out of the car when I’m halfway there, and he’s changed his glasses. Of course, this pair is as sexy as the last one, because everything Elliott does seems to be plated in gold and made just to make him look even better than he already does.

“You look great,” he says, his eyes falling to my crocs. He makes no comment on them, and that confuses me a little bit. “I love this sweater.”

He reaches out and touches one billowy sleeve, his eyes coming back to mine with loads of light in them. “Do you still want tacos?”

“What else did you find while I changed?”

He drops his hand, easily slipping his fingers between mine. I pull in a breath as sparkles and glitter fizz in my blood. I can’t move my feet, and Elliott makes no attempt to take me around to the passenger seat of his car. His gaze has dropped to where our hands touch, and I have no idea what he’s thinking or feeling.

“Edna’s is holding a table for us,” he murmurs. “You love their fried chicken.” He looks at me now, all of his emotions shuttered away behind a mask I can’t see through.

So not what we’ve done as best friends. And he didn’t comment on my shoes, and I hate that things are changing already.

I pull my hand away gently. “If you’re going to be my boyfriend, you have to promise me one thing.”

Maybe more than one, and I hold up my hand as it continues to tingle and shout at me to hold Elliott’s again. “For tonight. I might have more rules in the future.”

Ell smiles at me in that sly, teasing way he has. “All right,” he drawls out in his Southern boy style. “What’s the promise for tonight?”

“I don’t want this to ruin us,” I say as boldly as I can with all these pops and crackles in my bloodstream. “My best friend would’ve poked fun at my crocs, and he would’ve shown me what he was thinking when he held my hand, and he would’ve just gone along to eat the pork belly tacos.”

He blinks almost lazily and takes my hand again. He immediately turns away from me, though, once again hiding how he feels. “The shoes are hideous, Ry,” he says as he walks me around to the passenger door. “They’re barely shoes at all.”

“Thank you,” I say, holding my head high.

“And I told you I wanted this night to start over. Be a real date.” He throws me a look out of the corner of his eye. “So yeah, I’m going to hide some things from you in the beginning. It’s what people do when they’re starting a new relationship.”

I pause, my diva-glare amping up in ferocity. “You don’t need to mansplain to me about how relationships work,” I say. “And you’ve just illustrated my point. We don’t have to act that way, because we’re not in a real romantic relationship.”

He reaches to open my door, dropping my hand in the process. “If you say so.”

I get in the car before I’ve processed what he’s said, and he slams the door just as I say, “What does that mean?”

He glares at me through the glass, and then goes around the back of the car, so I can’t see him.

“If I say so?” I repeat, my mind in riddle mode now. My heartbeat pounds as I wait for him to get behind the wheel again, and it takes him so long to make the few-second trip around the vehicle.

“What were you doing back there?” I ask.

“Praying for patience,” he says dryly as he clips his seatbelt into place. His car makes the most annoying beeping sound in the world if you don’t buckle up, so I hurry to pull my belt into place too.

“I just want us to still be friends,” I mutter.

He backs out of the driveway and starts down the road. After a few minutes and a turn or two, he says, “If we weren’t best friends, do you think you’d ever go out with me?” He grips the steering wheel like he needs all ten fingers strangling it to keep breathing. “You know, if I ran into you at the coffee shop or even just shopping in the aisles at Paper Trail.”

Elliott cuts me a look out of the corner of his eye, and I’ve seen this tactic before. Usually when he needs me to rescue him from a conversation with another co-worker or a customer. He swallows too, his throat moving like he’s just sucked in a boulder and can’t quite get it to go down.

“Of course,” I say as diplomatically as possible. My voice sounds cool and detached to my own ears, so there’s no way he’ll know I’ve crushed on him multiple times over our several-year friendship. “You’re handsome,” I add. “And employed. What’s not to like?”

He makes a dry coughing sound that takes me a realize is a scoff, and he keeps his eyes straight out the windshield. “Those are your criteria for a boyfriend?”

“Sure,” I say. “I think you’ll find them standard for most women.”

“Hot and employed,” he said.

“I didn’t say hot ,” I argue with him. “But women would like to be attracted to their boyfriends, I’m sure.”

He pulls to a stop at a four-way intersection and looks over to me finally. “There you are,” I say with a smile.

“You’re attracted to me?”

It’s my turn to try to get down a big boulder. I can’t do it, and in fact, I clear my throat and cough like I’ve just contracted the next infectious disease that will start a world pandemic.

Sitting in the road makes me nervous, and I glance into my rearview mirror like there will be a whole line-up of cars behind us. Not one.

“We’ve always been honest with each other,” he says next, and I look over to him. The radio plays quietly in the background, nowhere near loud enough to distract me.

Elliott reaches over and tucks a curled tendril of hair behind my ear. To my horror, I lean into his touch as I duck my head, and that’s a move a woman only does when she’s trying to flirt with a man.

“I think you’re stunningly beautiful,” he says, not a stitch of teasing in his voice at all.

Surprise catches me right in the gut, but I still manage to lift my head up and look into those beautiful eyes. “You do?”

He nods, drops his hand, and glances up to the rearview mirror. I already said he was handsome, and he obviously knows a lot of women are attracted to him. He has to know I am too, whether I say it out loud in words or not.

He eases through the intersection and says, “I don’t want to lose you as my friend either.”

“Okay,” I say.

“You mean the world to me, Ry,” he says, his voice strained and rough. Or, if he were my real boyfriend, maybe I’d classify his voice as husky and hot.

Everything inside me settles, the way it does when Elliott can finally get to my center and help me calm down. “You mean everything to me too, Ell,” I whisper. “That’s why I don’t want this fake-thing to ruin us.”

“It won’t,” he says with enough conviction that I believe him. “It’s just a little hand-holding and kissing.”

He says it seriously, but I still think he’s teasing. “Those things mean something to me, Ell,” I say, my voice taking on the whippish quality it can sometimes get when I’m being grouchy over something. “I know they don’t to you, but?— “

“Of course they mean something to me too,” he says, his tone just as harsh as mine.

I gape at him. “What are you talking about? You’ve been out with seven women this year alone, and you break-up with anyone who even dares to suggest making the relationship one tiny titch past casual.”

He has to be kidding. Hand-holding and kissing don’t mean anything to Elliott. Not the way they do for me, or he wouldn’t have spent the past few years moving through girlfriends like he’s trying to find the flavor of bubblegum he likes best.

“I don’t think titch is a word,” he says, his grip on the steering wheel positively feral now.

“It so is,” I retort. “And this might actually be perfect. You don’t want anything that’s not casual, and I just need a boyfriend for the holidays.”

What am I so worried about?

He pulls into the parking lot at Edna’s, and I reach for the door handle to get out as he asks, “When did we start dating?”

I turn toward him, once again confused. “What?”

“For your family,” he says. “I mean, we’re serious enough for me to go home with you for the holidays. So, that’s…what?” He pauses, thoughtful for a few moments. “For you, I’d say we probably should’ve started dating this past summer.”

He smiles at me and puts one hand on my knee. “Stay there. I’ll get the door, and we’ll establish a timeline while we eat.” Then he gets out and crosses in front of the car this time.

How he’s so calm about all of this makes no sense to me, but at least he hasn’t gone quiet and still, that maddening mask in place like he had back at the Big House.

You mean the world to me, Ry.

I think you’re stunningly beautiful.

What do those things mean for our friendship—and does he really tell all the women he goes out with the same things?

“He must,” I mutter just as he opens my door. No matter what, I can’t start to think things can be different between me and Elliott. I’m no one—and certainly not anyone strong enough or beautiful enough to make a player like Elliott change his ways.

This is just something fun for him to do for the next month—and he will get a free trip to New York out of it. And the holidays away from Charleston, where his family descends every year and complicates his life, reminds him of the absence of his father, and all kinds of things Ell would rather ignore.

I can’t ever forget that, even as Elliott takes my hand again and my hormones shout at me to try to kiss him before he drops me off tonight—this is just something fun for him.

He doesn’t have real feelings for me.

This is just something fun for him…