Ten Trends to Seduce Your Bestfriend
: Chapter 10

Amelia knew something was wrong. She filled the silence on our way back to First Hill without asking me any questions, seeming to intrinsically understand I needed space.

But the next morning after breakfast, after I’d tossed and turned and punched my pillow wishing it were Byron’s beautiful, perpetually aloof face, she gave me a hug and whispered softly, “Jeff isn’t worth your time. I’m so sorry I ever tried to encourage the two of you.” Squeezing me, she added, “I wanted to be a good wingwoman.”

“You’re the best wingwoman.” I leaned into the hug. “And I don’t care about Jeff. He’s always been a nice guy, and I hope—whatever happens—we’ll eventually be friends again. But he and Lucy can have each other.”

I hadn’t spared one single second thinking about Jeff since leaving the dinner party. Thinking about Jeff and his perplexing behavior hadn’t even entered my mind. Whereas Byron’s strange confession—how, in a strange bending of my expectations, he’d kept his cool the entire time while I’d been the one to lose my temper—had occupied the whole of my brain for going on twelve hours now. Including my dreams, fitful as they were. He’d popped up in the background over and over again.

I’d dreamt of grocery shopping, he’d been the butcher judging my choice of tenderloin cuts. I’d dreamt of giving a presentation at a Parent-Teacher Organization meeting, he’d been the AV specialist, judging the quality of my PowerPoint graphics. I’d dreamt of going to my doctor’s for a checkup, he’d been the visiting gynecologist.

That one got weird real fast.

No one should be having sexy dreams involving specula and stirrups, especially when their orgasm is judged on the Wong-Baker Faces Pain Scale afterward. Worse, I’d woken up feeling both turned on and distressed, self-conscious and horny. Explain the science behind that.

And don’t even get me started as to why—in the name of all that is hot and unholy—I would be having sex dreams about Byron Visser now.

You know why.

I swallowed around the stone of truth: I had big like for Byron. Or, more precisely, my body had BIG SEXY LIKE for him, and this feeling was nothing like I’d felt for Jeff, or any of my ex-boyfriends, or anyone else I’d ever met. What I experienced whenever Byron entered my radius felt more akin to the intense embarrassment I’d experienced during those first two weeks of high school, when the soccer team had messed with me, than what I generally thought of and experienced as attraction. Sᴇaʀ*ᴄh the FɪndNøvel.ɴet website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

What I needed to do was read up on the chemistry of pheromones. Something about his biology made mine go berserk, and if I could figure it out, maybe I could stop it. Oh! This would make a good STEM lesson for Instagram.

“Winnie?” Amelia leaned away from our hug and tried to capture my eyes. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

I chewed on the inside of my lip, debating whether to ask her opinion about Byron.

If he was messing with me, if he’d somehow figured out that my mitochondria carried a torch for him and he was playing pituitary gland games (a.k.a. mind games), I didn’t want Amelia to be angry on my behalf. I didn’t want to insert myself into their relationship, even indirectly.

And if he wasn’t messing with me, if he was telling the truth and he had a thing for me, I wasn’t sure I wanted Amelia to know that either. Amelia never shied away from confrontation.

In the end, I simply nodded and shrugged, not allowing myself to make my problem her problem. I made a mental note to make Instant Pot chicken tikka masala tonight. She and Elijah were going snowshoeing this afternoon and I wanted them to come home to spicy, savory food.

As soon as she left for Elijah’s, I rushed to the bathroom, took a long, hot shower, and unsuccessfully fought the urge to touch myself while imagining Byron giving me quietly spoken, hypercritical feedback on my masturbation technique, and then fantasy me shut him up by pushing him to his knees, twisting my fingers into his black hair, and bringing his mouth to my body. Fantasy Byron seemed more than happy to oblige.

I came in the shower harder than I had a right to, given the bizarre nature of my imagination, awash in steam and confusion. Was criticism my kink? Did some part of me yearn to be reprimanded and judged and mistreated? If so, what the heck was wrong with me?

Whatever it was, I needed to pull myself together before he showed up at 10:00 a.m. with scones. As I toweled off and dressed, bits and pieces of our conversations from the night before danced around in my head, taunting me.

“So you a little bit like me.”

“No. I a lot like you.”

My skin felt too tight at the memory, the heated look in his hooded eyes, the gravelly texture of his voice. But then I recalled that he’d followed it up with,

“It’s not a big deal.”

“I don’t want or need anything from you.”

“I like you, but I don’t particularly want to.”

A jolt of anger cooled my body’s ardor while sending my blood pressure spiking. By the time I was dressed and drying my hair, I felt like I could’ve breathed fire.

Only Byron. Only Byron could make someone feel foolish while confessing feelings for them. Maybe in his own twisted, apathetic kind of way he did like me. Or maybe he didn’t like me. Or maybe I would never know. But—I reflected as I applied my moisturizer and mascara—did it matter?

No!

It didn’t matter. He had no intention of ever actually doing anything about his alleged feelings, otherwise he wouldn’t have called them “no big deal.”

Likewise, I couldn’t imagine a reality or a universe where I ever acted on my body’s preoccupation with him. Byron Visser was the human manifestation of caution tape holding a red flag and a flare while setting off a smoke alarm.

What mattered was that he was adamant about doing these challenges with me. While trying to thoughtfully consider everything, I uncapped my lip gloss and applied it. He wanted to do the videos? We’d do them. I’d amass enough followers to be competitive for the community manager position, then I’d be able to pay back my student loans while also teaching and (hopefully) making a difference in the world.

I really hope I can make a difference in the world. I really hope something wonderful comes out of this. I really hope this isn’t all pointless—

A knock sounded from the front door, interrupting my existential debate and rage application of lip gloss. Closing my eyes and leaning against the bathroom sink, I gave myself three seconds to calm down. If he yelled at me today, if he screamed at me or raised his voice or nitpicked my pronunciation of a word or anything else, I was ending the agreement. I simply would not put up with that. Capping the makeup, I set it lightly in my tray and strolled unhurriedly to the door.

I couldn’t decide if he was messing with me, but I was determined to be cool and reserved, calm and collected.

“Who is it?” I asked, even though it was 10:00 a.m. on the dot.

Beyond the door, I heard Byron clear his throat, remaining silent for a long stretch, then eventually saying, “The scones are both gluten-free and blueberry.”

A shiver started behind my ears and raced down my spine at the sound of his rumbly voice. I clamped down on the feeling, strangling it.

“How many?” I asked, unlatching the top lock, willing my fingers to remain steady.

“Four.”

Flipping the dead bolt, I opened the door, swallowing around a knot as his broody, unsmiling, perfect face came into view.

“Hi,” I said, struggling to not launch a hundred questions at him, like when did he start having a thing for me, and why, and how come he hadn’t ever said anything, and how could he possibly like someone he also clearly didn’t actually like?

He held up the bag in his hand. “The ransom.”

Pressing my lips together to stem a wry smile at his sarcasm, I backed up, giving him space. As he moved forward, I turned, trying frantically to grab hold of my indifference again. “Thank you for the scones, and for coming over. I appreciate your time. If you don’t mind, please put the scones on the kitchen table. I’ll be back in a sec.”

I walked to my bedroom, grabbed my phone and my daily journal, took several deep breaths, then returned to the kitchen. The bag of scones had been placed on the table and, without looking, I sensed Byron leaning against the wall in the small dining area—his preferred spot to hover and pass judgment—his arms crossed. In my peripheral vision, I saw his jacket had been folded over the chair closest to the front door.

“We’re doing the Best Friend Check-In / Opposites Attract today,” I said, all business. “Technically, it should’ve been the first video we posted, but it should be okay that numbers one and two got flipped.” Setting the journal on the table facing him, I opened it to the original handwritten list of trends for the challenge videos.

He didn’t move. He remained silent. I steeled my expression and glanced at him. Byron stared at me as though waiting for . . . something.

Refusing to think about his words last night or allow them to further rattle me, I straightened from the table and crossed my arms, mimicking his stance while maintaining my professional tone. “I have a ton of work to do this weekend and I’m sure you do too, so we can make this quick. I don’t want to waste your time. If you want to choose your own caption or help me brainstorm ideas for the both of us, feel free to speak up. But I know you said you didn’t want to rehearse or talk about the videos ahead of time. I can grab the footage of you real fast, we’ll dance around in our little circle holding hands, and then you don’t need to stay.”

Byron regarded me thoughtfully, which was both better and worse than his typical contemptuous glares. Better because I wasn’t feeling immediately frustrated by his mere presence, but worse because his lack of outward arrogance meant I noticed how breathtakingly handsome he looked this morning.

His hair was either damp or artfully styled, pushed back and away from his features in a sweeping wave. His jaw was freshly shaven, leaving his face smooth of its usual dark shadow. I’d bet a million dollars he smelled fantastic. He wore a gun metal gray button-down shirt and black wool dress pants instead of his usual black T and jeans. I wondered if he’d had a fancy business meeting this morning, some important event he’d needed to dress to impress for, prior to coming over.

“Remind me, what’s the Best Friend Check-In?” Byron pushed away from the wall, the movement shifting my attention from his clothes to his face.

A tightness in my chest eased. He’d dialed down the belligerence today and at least appeared willing to pitch in, even if it did mean we’d be bending one of his rules by discussing the video before filming it.

“It’s the Opposites Attract Challenge. We don’t speak at all. The background music we’re supposed to use is already loaded on the app. Basically, we show a quick video of you being yourself, whatever you want to do that’s reflective of the caption we pick. Then we show a quick video of me doing something that’s reflective of my caption. Then we place the phone on the ground, filming upward, and hold hands above the phone while swinging our arms.” I pointed to the description in my journal. “We dance quickly in a circle with the word ‘bestfriends’ flashing in the middle. That’s it.”

He frowned at my written notes. “‘Best friends’ is an open compound word, it shouldn’t be connected like that.”

Ah. There he is.

I smiled tightly, working really hard to keep irritation from my voice. “I know that, Byron. But sometimes for this challenge, and for other best friend challenges on social media, the young people of today write it as one word, not two. We can write ‘best friend’ as two words or one. Either should be fine.”

His eyelids didn’t do their usual droop-of-disdain thing as I spoke. Instead, he lifted his chin slightly, still inspecting me thoughtfully, and then nodded. “You would know better than I.”

My lips parted at his statement, said simply and without a drop of sarcasm. He’d admitted that I might know more about something than he did. He didn’t press the issue, he didn’t call me an idiot, he hadn’t raised his voice. He’d just . . . acquiesced.

“Uh. . .” I gaped, then remembered myself and blinked my attention away, opting to focus on my day journal. “We should, uh, maybe figure out the captions first.”

“They have to be opposites, right?” Ambling the short distance to the table, he placed his hands on the back of a chair, his long fingers relaxed. He has nice hands.

Something low in my abdomen twisted.

“More or less,” I said, ignoring my stomach. “The captions and associated actions should show how different we are.” I picked up the bag of scones and peeked inside to distract myself from his hands. I wasn’t hungry, but the scones smelled heavenly. “It can be anything, as long as we highlight our differences. Some people have done tall friend, short friend. Others have shown one person as a party animal and the other person being straightlaced or a nondrinker. I saw another video where one friend was super into fashion and the best friend wasn’t at all. That kind of thing.”

“What are you thinking? For our captions.”

Twisting my lips to the side, I returned the bag of scones to the table and tilted my head to read what I’d listed in the journal weeks ago. “Let’s see. I made a list here of ways people can be opposite. We could pick one of these.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to pick something authentic? Unique to us?”

I glanced at him, bracing myself for whatever he was thinking, my palms suddenly sweaty. “Like what?”

His eyelids did that drooping thing. But instead of looking disdainful, he appeared mildly amused. “You like people. I don’t.”

I felt one side of my mouth give a tug. “I doubt your publicist would like that caption.”

He shrugged, the barest hint of a smile hovering over his lips. “So what?”

“I don’t want to make anyone’s job harder.”

Byron opened his mouth as though to argue the point, so I—not wanting to argue at all—cut him off. “But that should be something we can work with. The general idea is good. How about, I have a ton of social media accounts and you have none?”

His thoughtful expression returned, and he pressed the tip of an index finger against his lower lip. “That’s a good one.”

I straightened, cautiously pleased by his praise. “Thank . . . you . . .?”

“Was that a question?”

“No . . .?” Realizing how that sounded, I hastily amended, “Wait. No. That wasn’t a question. It was a statement. Thank you. Thank. You.”

His attention suddenly felt somehow heavier, more intense. “You shouldn’t thank me.”

Here we go.

My brain went on high alert, my whole body tensed, and I hated it. I hated that, with one sentence, our benign conversation had turned into another round of Byron critiquing Winnie, which—even if he never yelled at me—would lead to me gritting my teeth and ignoring Byron and wishing he would leave. I didn’t want that, not if we had eight more videos to record after this one.

But I couldn’t help feeling a flicker of hope. He’d acquiesced so quickly when I’d explained the alternate acceptable spelling of “bestfriend,” and maybe, like with some of my students’ parents, if I took a minute to explain the issue, he’d listen.

Almost every instinct demanded that I call off our agreement once and for all, but the Winnie that was tired of avoiding confrontation refused to tense up, and I refused to shut down, so I appealed to him with openness and honesty. “Can we—can we not? Please. Can we just not.” Something had to give between us.

“Not what?”

“Not argue. Can I say thank you when you compliment me without you telling me not to? Can I speak without you telling me how what I say is wrong, or inaccurate, or unnecessary? Is that possible?”

Eyes still locked on mine, Byron pulled his bottom lip between his teeth and chewed on it, his gaze losing none of its weight or intensity, but he was processing my request, internal wheels turning. His fingers flexed on the back of the chair as his dark, wing-like eyebrows pulled together.

At this point, I was girding my loins for another critique, an explanation from him as to why he’d said what he said—my feelings didn’t matter, he was right, and I was the one who required additional enlightenment—and how I should be thankful for his brilliant elucidation of the facts and the world according to Byron.

But then, apropos of nothing, he blurted, “You are extraordinary.”

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