Not out on a date.
But how long until the awkward lunchtime meeting he’d watched through the window of Spice turned into an evening movie? A walk to the front door?
A kiss.
Misery laced his organs and pulled them taut, tying tight like a sneaker. So tight, he had to press a hand to his stomach and rub at the ache. He’d known it would come to this eventually. Hell, he’d been gifted a thirty-year reprieve from witnessing Jiya with another man. He might even consider himself lucky if there was room for anything else but cold-blooded jealousy.
No, that wasn’t true, though. Was it? There was room for a lot more.
Andrew turned his head and their gazes collided through their bedroom windows, the very sight of her expanding his lungs, his heart. All of him. This routine originated back in middle school, when she’d been unable to sneak into his room any longer—thanks to boobs—as she’d been doing since they were nine and ten. Before that…God, he didn’t want to think of a time before Jiya. A time when his best friend wasn’t in his life. Living next door.
Occupying his every waking thought.
She stood with her hand frozen in mid-air, having just turned on the bedroom light. Eyes he knew to be hickory brown with tiny golden flecks around the iris were widened on him.
Surprised? Why?
With a jolt, Andrew realized he hadn’t put a shirt on yet. He was standing in his bedroom in black slacks, naked from the waist up—and that was not part of the routine. His image reflected back at him from the bedroom window and he could admit without vanity that it was a strong body. With his day job being what it was, staying in good shape was a given. And Jiya had seen him without a shirt before. Hundreds of times. He was a lifeguard for chrissakes and her family restaurant where she worked was within spitting distance of his usual lifeguard chair. But she’d never seen him shirtless while encapsulated in this nightly ritual of saying good night through their bedroom windows.
Maybe it was the jealousy that still boiled in his belly two weeks after seeing her on a date, maybe it was the sense that their relationship was slipping through his fingers like fine sand. Whatever the reason, Andrew let himself wonder for a split second what she thought of his body. How she thought about it. If she compared it to the guy from the restaurant.
Get dressed, asshole. You’ll ruin everything.
Dragging his attention away from the most beautiful women to grace the earth wasn’t easy. It never was. But he did it now, ripping the top shirt out of his drawer and covering himself. Forcing an apologetic half-smile on to his face, he padded to the low window and lifted it fully, dropping to his knees so he could lean out, forearms braced on the sill.
“Hey,” he mouthed.
Jiya broke from her state of suspended animation with a jolt. As she dropped off her purse of the nightstand and fussed with the scrunchie around her wrist, Andrew let his guard drop and soaked her in. Just for a few seconds and then he’d go back to being Andrew the friend. Andrew only, ever, just her friend.
Jiya wore a white button-down shirt and black pants that Andrew knew were way too snug in the ass department. If he was Jiya’s boyfriend—and he’d taken a lot of time to think about this—he’d ask her if she was aware that her ass was insanely sexy. Knowing Jiya, she’d say yes, she was well aware. And when she did, when she expected him to demand she wear looser pants, he’d peel them down her butt and ask permission to eat that thing instead.
That wouldn’t stop him from hating every customer at Spice for getting a front row seat to the perfect twitch of her buns when she walked. Christ knew he was aware of her attributes enough for everyone and their brother.
Brutally, endlessly aware.
And he would be for the rest of his life. He was resigned to it.
Andrew closed his eyes and breathed through his nose, knowing from experience he’d have an erection until they closed their respective blinds, signaling the end of their goodnights—and there was nothing he could do about it. Sometimes his cock would be stiff for days before he finally gave in and disrespected the Jiya in his imagination, jacking himself off in the shower with his mouth open and panting against the wet tile, picturing them in all manner of positions.
There were no consequences for making love to his best friend inside his own head. Except for maybe guilt. Okay, definite guilt. But he would only ever be with Jiya, the object of his admiration, affection and lust, within the walls of his own brain. He’d made his own bed and now he would lie in it, uncomfortably, forever. Watching from behind a wall of prison bars as some other man eventually made her laugh, instead of boring her to death, like the last one.