Georgia nodded, her blond ponytail swaying as she held her finger out and pointed at everything on the counter. “Let the phone ring two times before answering, people coming for the first time need a forty-five-minute guided tour of the machines before they can go alone, the schedule for classes is in the calendar, and the price list is right here.” She finished by tapping the price list. “I got it. You can go for lunch. One hour alone isn’t going to kill me.”
“All right. Are you sure?”
“I have your number if there’s a problem.”
“I won’t be far. Just down the street. I can be back in two minutes.”
“Stop panicking!” She laughed. “It’s not like I’m here alone. Lisa’s over there and, uh…” She paused, her finger hovering in the direction of the tall, heavy-built black guy who was currently instructing a young woman on how to use the treadmills.
“Liam,” I said, lips twitching. “Lisa and Liam. Are you sure you can remember?”
“Yes. I’ll be fine.” She smiled at me.
“All right. See you soon.” I knocked on the counter and left the main floor of the gym, heading for the staff room and the lockers there to get my phone and wallet. Sean was already waiting for me in there, and he looked rough as hell.
“Took you long enough,” he grumbled, rubbing his hand through his hair.
“That’s a lot of thanks for someone who gave up his sofa and had to spent sixty bucks on pizza, wine, and Oreos for his grumpy roommate last night,” I retorted, tapping the combo for my locker in and opening the door. “I didn’t even get any of the pizza. She squirreled it away into her room before she went to your place and spent the night with Brie.”
He grunted.
“Still not talkin’ to her, huh?”
He followed me out to the staircase to the lower floor. “We spoke this morning. She’s going to her mom’s tonight because her grandma’s going over for dinner, so I guess we’ll talk tomorrow.”
“You guess you’ll talk?” I snorted and pushed open the glass gym doors. “You’ve been together for two years. You’ve lived together for six months. And you’re going to stop talking to each other because you were texting a woman you—actually, yeah, never mind. I think I might be on Brie’s side here.”
Sean groaned, shoving his hands in his pockets. “She assumed I was only texting her. I was texting my mom most of the time, and anyway, Georgia’s texts were completely innocent. She’d forgotten to write down her hours, and I was talking her through logging into the employee portal.”
“Did you tell Brie that?”
“While she was blind drunk? No. I fed her Advil and water and put her ass to bed.” He shuddered. “The more pissed she got at me, the more she drank. I told her I was texting my mom, but she didn’t listen.”
“Why were you texting your mom?”
“My grandpa’s in the hospital getting tests done. She didn’t get back until late the other night. It’s a three-hour drive either way, and she needed more clothes.” He shrugged.
“And you didn’t tell your long-term girlfriend that?”
He side-eyed me. “If I did, would I be here bitchin’ about it to you?”
“You could try calling her and telling her, you know. It won’t kill you.”
“Yeah, but I don’t know what’s up with him yet.”
“And you think keeping it a secret is going to make it better?”
He stopped on the sidewalk outside the restaurant. “Yeah? How’s it going since you told Shelby you’re in love with her?”
“I’m not in love with her,” I ground out, shoving past him to get into the restaurant. “I’m attracted to her and have unwelcome feelings for her, but it’s not love.”
Sean snorted. “Yeah, all right; I believe you.”
I shook my head and went up to the counter, turning my attention to the menu like I didn’t come in here every day when I was working.
He could believe what he wanted. He was keeping something important from his girlfriend—I was keeping inappropriate feelings from my best friend.
I had no desire to make things awkward with Shelby. There wasn’t a chance she felt the same way about me, and we lived together.
Lived. Together.
I liked living with her. I liked what we had, even if she was going to bankrupt me with her love of Oreos. There were some things better left unsaid, and telling your best friend you had feelings for her was one of those things.
Nothing or nobody could change my mind about that.
Besides—I didn’t want to tell her. I didn’t need to. It was just a crush, an awareness of how fucking gorgeous she was now that we were together more than normal.
An awareness of my attraction to her, the conscious thoughts of how badly I was attracted to her, mixed with basic human lust.