The frederick pohl omnib.., p.2
Willing Me Him, page 2
Joe had my back, and I had his.
“So be like Joe. Make everyone like you,” I suggest, knowing how bad she wants to build the damn app. It’s for some noble shit, right up her honorable-alley-ass. Something I envy and respect about her.
“Joey didn’t force people to like him. He was just likable.”
“You’re likable.”
She glances up at me. Her eyes lower to my mouth and then my shirtless chest.
“I like you,” I tell her.
Her straying eyes pop back up to mine, but the linger on my naked chest hadn’t gone unnoticed.
Sometimes, I catch her looking at me oddly. Well, it’s not really odd. I know what the look means when other women do it. And sometimes, I end up in bed with them.
Not Jody. She’s different.
I must be confusing the look because I haven’t gotten laid in a while.
Besides, I can’t have sex with her.
It’s against the bro-code.
Granted, it’s my bro-code. Joe has nothing to do with it. I mean, he never said she was off-limits, but after he died, I made a pact in his honor to keep her safe from guys like me.
So I shut down the hard-on I get from the sight of her perfect tits and wandering eyes. Not to mention the way she bites her plump-pink bottom lip while concentrating on something or how her eyes linger on me for the same amount of time it takes for me to strip her naked in my mind.
All of that shit gets turned right the fuck off.
And I get it done by convincing myself that she doesn’t want me.
She can’t.
She’s had ample opportunity to take advantage of our friendship and never has.
I’ve come to accept that we are the reminiscence of the love we both share for Joe. To be without each other would be like letting him go, and after almost five years, I don’t think either of us is ready to say goodbye.
Hell, as long as I have Jody in my life, I’ll always have Joe.
I’m not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing.
Eventually, she’ll meet a guy, and I’ll have to take a back seat to her life … again.
Fuck. I had to do it with Todd. He was perfect. Joe would’ve approved.
Thankfully, the relationship ended, and I got Jody back all to myself.
Yeah, I know. I’m a selfish dickhead when it comes to her.
Honestly, though, something changed after she dated Todd.
I know she lost her virginity, but something else happened.
“Is this where I’m supposed to say, I like you too?” She smirks, biting her bottom lip while pressing the dough into the pizza pan.
“No. I know how you feel about me.” I wink and pick up the DVD on the counter before she has time to come back with another smart-ass remark. “The Meg?”
She loves shark movies but not the stupid ones where they fly in the air like on Sharknado. She’s more into ones like Jaws and The Deep Blue Sea.
“Sorry, The Kissing Booth 3 wasn’t available.” She scrunches her nose and puts the pizza in the oven.
“What’s wrong with a little rom-com once in a while?”
“Nothing.” She shrugs with a snicker as she backs away from the stove.
“Hey, your brother got me into them. He made me watch Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and it was all over.”
“Joey only liked that movie because he got a full-frontal view of Jason Segel.”
“Oh yeah, that’s right.” At the time, I didn’t know Joe was gay. We laughed our asses off about it. “But it was impressive.” I pick up my cell. “Let me see if I can find it for you.”
“That’s okay.” She laughs, placing her hand over mine. “I saw it.”
“You did?”
“Yeah. Mom grounded us for a week when she caught us watching it.”
“Was it the first penis you saw?”
“Shut up.” She shoves me in the chest. Her cheeks turn red, but as usual, she’s quick to recover. “We’re watching The Meg, end of story.” She picks up the DVD and walks into the living room.
Jumping up from the stool, I follow her. “But there are so many great rom-coms like My Best Friend’s Girl, There’s Something About Mary, Say Anything—”
“And don’t forget 10 Things I Hate About You.” She smirks.
I know what she’s doing. So I return, “Or How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days.”
“Huh!” She slips the DVD into the player. “More like five years and still trying,” she mumbles under her breath.
I heard it just the same.
Standing behind her, I get a strong whiff of her feminine scent.
Fuck, she always smells so good. Clean. Like she was just pulled out of the dryer.
I lean in close to her ear. “P.S. I Love You?”
“Oh!” She circles around, eyes wide and sparkling. “I love that movie!”
“Let’s watch that then,” I say with exaggerated excitement lifting my eyebrows. “Oh, wait, that’s right, we can’t.” I drop my brows. “Just like air-conditioning, you don’t have the internet. You really need to get with the times, Walker.”
“I have internet. I just don’t have it hooked up to my TV.” She waves. “Now, go away and put some clothes on.” She plops down on the sofa.
“What’s the problem? It didn’t bother Joe when I sat around in nothing but jeans.” I lean down closer to her. “And he liked my sex.”
“Shut up, smart-ass.” She shoves my chest. “Just because I don’t get all googly-eyed over you doesn’t mean I’m gay.”
“It’s okay if you are.”
“I know it is, asshole!” She throws a pillow at me.
I dodge it.
“Seriously, I just wanted to make sure you knew I’d be okay with it. I know Joe had no problem screaming it out to the world, but you’re the type who probably couldn’t whisper it alone in your own closet.”
“Why are you so obsessed with this?” She sits up on the cushion. “Is it because I don’t want you? Your ego is so big, you need to find some reason as to why I don’t want to fuck you? We’re friends, Nash. Why can’t that be reason enough?”
“It is.” I shrug at the lie, not wanting to make a big deal about it and draw more attention to the unspoken truth. “Want another beer?”
A few seconds later, I enter the small living room and hand her a beer. “But, really, why no internet on your TV?”
I drop onto the sofa next to her.
Her eyes scan over my naked chest.
“I don’t want it, and as far as the air-conditioning, I can’t afford all of that shit,” she says before taking a long sip from the bottle.
“Oh.” I watch her, waiting for her to finish the healthy gulp.
I love that she loves beer. Most girls drink wine or some kind of fruity shit, but Jody, she’s a beer drinker. Not that her body is any evidence of it. She’s in shape and takes care of herself.
I raise a brow. “I could move in and help out with the bills.”
“Oh-ho!” She laughs. “Wouldn’t that be a disaster?”
“Why?”
“Look around.” She waves a hand. “It’d be hard enough to fit all of your clothes, let alone your ego, into this place.”
“That’s not the disaster I thought you were talking about.”
“What other could there be?”
“I figured it was because you might want to sleep with me, ya know, now that we cleared up the whole ‘you’re not gay’ thing.”
“Well…” Her lips pucker. “That could be a problem, I guess.” She stares at me for a long second.
Is she saying she wants to sleep with me? Or better yet, she wants to have sex with me?
Like the hand of a reluctant kid in the classroom with the answer, my dick slowly lifts.
She’s fucking with me.
We don’t tease about shit like this. Instead, I usually say something sexual, she laughs it off or returns with something sarcastic to shut me down, and we carry on.
I lift my beer, still not ready to let the eager rush of blood pump entirely to the tip of my dick.
“There’s only enough room for one bed.” She smiles.
I grin. “Well, that settles it then.” I say, “We’ll have to sleep in it together.”
At the same time, she says, “You won’t be moving in then.”
I flick my brows and curse my dick.
It’s gotta get it together and stop acting up around her. Not getting laid in a while is no excuse.
I’m not giving it free rein when it comes to her.
Not to Joe’s sister.
My eyes lower to her perfect tits.
Fuck!
I smile, tip back my beer, and take a long swig.
Be a good best friend.
Eat your pizza, drink your beer and go home, asshole.
Nash and Joe
AGE 10
I slam my foot on the back of my skateboard and stop in front of a group of punks picking on a small kid.
“Hey.” I grab my board from the ground and take a step toward them. “Leave him alone!”
“Why?” The biggest one lifts his chin. “What are you gonna do about it.”
“Touch him again.” I smile, up for the challenge. “And I’ll show you.”
The bully takes a long look at me.
I hold my smile, flashing him my crazy eyes.
“Screw this shit.” The punk nods to the other three kids, and surprisingly, they do the intelligent thing and walk away.
The scrawny boy they were shoving around, the one I just saved, pushes me. “What’d ya do that for?”
I look down at my arm, where he touched me, then at his shirt that says, tough guys wear pink.
I blink away the statement, shake my head, and look into his livid blue eyes. “You wanted them to kick your ass?”
“Yeah.” His nose scrunches. “Maybe.” He shrugs. “I don’t know.”
“What’s wrong with you?” I take another glimpse of him. He’s clean. I don’t see any battle marks on his body. It looks like he’s from a good home. “Why would you come to a skate park in that shirt?”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s pink,” I state the obvious.
“So let me get this right. A group of kids don’t scare you, but the color pink does?”
“Shut up.” I snarl at the kid’s logic. “Did you want them to kick your ass?”
“Maybe.”
This kid is four cents short of a nickel. “Why?”
“Ya know Mary Beth Lewis?”
“The girl who wears braids to school every day.”
“Yeah.” He nods. “You know how all the pictures she draws in class are of perfect houses with a bright yellow sun over it with a mom and a dad, a brother, a sister, and a dog. Well, that’s my life, minus the dad and the dog. My brother’s allergic to dogs, not dads.” He laughs at his stupid joke.
“So what, you got a perfect life, and you think you need someone to kick your ass for it?”
“No! I’m not an idiot.”
“You could’ve fooled me.”
“Like mine, Mary Beth’s life is plain and boring. So yeah. Maybe I wanted to know what it’d feel like to get into a fight.”
“Four against one ain’t no fight.” I stare at the stupid kid for a long minute.
He stares blankly back at me.
Screw it.
I haul back and punch him in the face.
The little shit falls to the ground.
He presses his hand to his bloody nose. “What’d ya do that for?”
I bend down. “Now imagine that being done to your face by four kids. Ya still want to know what it feels like to get into a fight?”
He pulls himself from the ground, brushing off his shirt. “None of them are as big as you. It probably wouldn’t be that bad.”
“There’s something wrong with you.”
“Yeah, I know.” He flicks his sandy blond hair from his face. “I’m Joey.” His bright blue eyes move to my skateboard. “You’re Theodore Nash, right?” He squints against the sun to look up at me. “You just moved here from Nashville.”
I nod. “Call me Nash.”
“Okay, Nash.”
“I’ll call you Joe.”
“Whatever.” He shrugs. “But Joey is my name. It’s on my birth certificate.”
“Really?” This kid is just weirder by the second.
“Yeah.”
“Huh.” I glare down at the awkward kid. “So, where’s your dad?”
“In outer space.”
“Really?” That’s kinda cool.
“No.” He touches his nose to check for more blood. “He’s dead.”
I glare at him, not sure if I should believe him or not. “Maybe I should’ve let them kick your ass.”
“Yeah, you probably should’ve.” He laughs.
I drop my board on the ground and skate away from the small, weird kid.
CHAPTER THREE
Nash
I jump out of the car when I see Joe’s mom struggling with the grocery bags from the back of the SUV.
“Hey, Mrs. Walker!” I jog up the driveway. “Let me take care of those for you.”
“Oh!” She blows loose strands of her long gray-streaked hair from her face, greeting me with a smile. “Hi, Theodore. If you could just grab the last two, that’d be great.”
“No problem.” I pick them up, flick my foot under the SUV to close the hatchback, and follow her inside. I place the bags on the counter and look around.
Whenever I’m here, I see Joe everywhere. Sitting at the kitchen table with his cell in his hand, holding his skateboard at the sliding glass doors, or grabbing a glass of water after returning from a hard skate.
“Is Aiden around?” I turn back to the woman who is like a mom to me. “I have some extra time today. Thought I’d take him for a jump.” Now that he’s home from college, Joe’s little brother, Aiden, has been asking me to take him skydiving.
“No. Brian, you know, his friend from down the street, had some landscaping work for him today.” Her shoulders drop. “He’s going to be upset that he missed the opportunity to go with you. I know he’s been excited about it.”
“Yeah. He’ll be bummed,” I agree with a nod. “How about we don’t tell him I was here, and I’ll try again another time?”
“Mum’s the word.” She smiles. “Oh, you know Jody’s birthday is in a few weeks. I’m thinking of having a surprise party here for her on the sixth, so make sure you leave that day open.”
“For sure. Let me know if you need me to do anything.”
Oh, Jody is going to hate that! She shies away from any form of attention on herself.
“I will. I’m going to have Charlotte’s cater it. She loves that place. I have a guest list started. I was thinking of calling her boss, Ashley, about inviting some of her coworkers. I also asked Trent from the firehouse to come. They’ve gone out a few times. Jody says they’re just friends, but I see the way he looks at her, and…”
Yeah, she lost me at the unfamiliar name. Trent?
Who the fuck is Trent?
This is the first I’m hearing of the guy. Jody’s been dating some dude from the firehouse, and she didn’t tell me about it?
That’s…Well, I’d like to say it’s strange, but Jody’s been secretive about stuff even as a kid. It took her a month to tell me her favorite color. Hell, I didn’t even find out about her firefighting training until after she was done.
Not to mention, I didn’t know she was going to the prom with Hale Freedman until I saw them walk through the doors together.
Fuck. She was beautiful. Seeing Jody Walker in anything other than baggy T-shirts, jeans, or yoga pants is rare.
I guess having a brother who stood in the limelight, arms in the air for all the world to see. Maybe, it forced her into the opposite direction.
Not that they were rivals or anything.
My best friend cherished his sister. He wanted the best for her. He envied her. But most of all, he loved her.
Mrs. Walker glances at her watch. “Shoot!” She looks at the grocery bags. “I need to get those put away. I told Jody I’d drop something off at work for her presentation today.”
“I can drop it off.”
She stops and looks at me with hopeful eyes. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I don’t have anything else going on.”
“Oh, that’d be great. Thanks.” She drops her purse on the counter. “I’ll go grab it from my office. It’s one of those flash drive things.”
“No problem.” I nod, jumping at the opportunity to check out where Jody works.
She rarely talks about her day job. Or the one that has her chasing fires.
I’m interested to see how she spends her days.
And I’m anxious to grill her about Trent.
I pull into the parking lot filled with an array of colorful vehicles, from electric Mini Coopers to gas guzzlers struggling to hold on to their rusty fenders.
I spot Jody’s white, safe, and sensible Trax. Unfortunately, it’s not the only one in the lot. I know it’s hers from the dent she got from a fender-bender with a streetlight pole last year.
As a joke, I put a bumper sticker under the damaged part that said, Battle Wound.
It took her a few days to notice it.
I thought for sure she’d rip it off. Surprisingly, she left it on.
She never got the fender fixed. Maybe she pocketed the insurance claim money.
I didn’t realize how hard up for cash she was until last night when she explained why she doesn’t have air-conditioning.
She develops apps, for fuck’s sake. Here, I always thought she didn’t have the internet. It’s the playing field for what she’s creating. It’s like trying to fuck a chick without a dick.
I had a notion of getting her one—an air conditioner, not my dick—but I knew how that’d go over.
She’d toss it out the door. Everything she has, she’s worked hard for it and with no help. She’s twenty-five and owns her own home.
Makes sense why I wouldn’t try to give her my dick. Especially if I didn’t make her work for it first.
