Catch up with the story! Chapter one is linked here. Chapter two is linked here. Chapter three is linked here. Chapter four is linked here. Chapter five is linked here. Chapter six is linked here.
THE BLIND DATE
Chapter seven - Arrangements
“I’ve set your date,” Marty announces.
My stomach falls into the floor. I can’t explain exactly when it happened, but I stopped wanting to go on a date with anyone, anyone other than my best friend, that is.
It’s a bad situation, sure. Impossible even. But there it is.
“Oh. Um, when?”
“Saturday,” he says. He is literally bouncing on his feet. He looks so happy about this, and it’s killing me.
“Oh. Um. I’m not sure I’m free,” I say, desperately searching around in my head to see if I can find a decent excuse to not show up.
Marty moves around the island in my kitchen. I am sitting on the bar stool and he is standing in front of me. He takes his index finger and plants it on the underside of my chin.
I am staring down at my bare feet, trying to disappear. But Marty won’t let me run from this and he pulls my chin up with that one finger so I am forced to look at him.
His eyes are dark and serious, but there is a curl to his lips that indicates amusement. “I don’t buy that.”
I shrug weakly.
“What are you afraid of?”
I swallow hard. What can I say? That in the last few weeks I’ve come to realize that I want my best friend. That I’ve come to understand that the person with whom I the most comfortable, the happiest, and the most deeply understood, is the only person I am interested in having a relationship with?
I can’t say these things, because Marty is my friend. And while I may feel an attraction to him, it’s not mutual. I am pretty sure of that. And if I were to just reach up and kiss those amazing lips…it could end in disaster.
What if there was no spark? What if Marty freaks out and runs away? What if my attraction fades when faced with the realization that kissing my best friend is like kissing my brother?
With every reason in the world not to, I do it anyway. I lean forward so that my lips are almost, but not quite, touching his. I close my eyes, waiting to see if this moment will change everything, or if Marty will pull back and I will make some crazy excuse for my behavior.
He doesn’t pull back. I feel his breath mingling with my own. My lips part, and then he’s there, pressing his own lips against me in a searing kiss.
It doesn’t stop, that kiss. Not for an eternity. Marty and I are fused together and it’s everything I wanted it to be and so much more. There’s spark all right. There’s passion. There’s intensity. There is most definitely no brotherly anything.
Even as Marty ends the kiss and pulls away from me, I want more.
He smiles, it’s soft and genuine. “I promise you won’t be disappointed.” Then he straightens up, grabs his keys off the counter, and he’s gone.
Next chapter available here.
Meanwhile you can check out my full-length romance novels here.
-Kay Harris
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