Twenty-five

Haley

Despite her flight being over an hour late, Haley was in a positive mood when she landed in Boston late on Friday night. Only a week until the party. And only a week before Scott came back from California. She took an Uber home and after a quick hello to her roommates, she went to bed.

But sleep didn’t come easy; Haley was too excited. Scott was coming home in only seven days. How would it be to finally have him back?

Excitement quickly turned to worry. What if California had changed Scott?

And what if being alone here has changed me?

If nothing else, one thing had already changed for sure.

When Scott had left, Haley had positively hated his brother. But now they were friends of sorts, and David… he loved her, and she hadn’t told Scott about his confession. Should she? Did Scott know anyway? No matter how much the two brothers claimed not to stand each other, they always seemed to get the other like no one else could.

Would it be weird to go to Scott’s apartment and see David there?

Yeah-ah.

David had promised not to be a jerk anymore, and that he wouldn’t try to come between her and Scott. And Scott had seemed to accept Haley’s friendship with his brother after her dad’s heart attack. But would the three of them all living in the same city again tip the balance?

The next morning, Haley was still nervous. As always when she needed to calm down, she turned to coding. Only she didn’t have an assignment or any inspiration for a new program. She just sat there staring at the black screen while fidgeting with the necklace David had given her for her birthday. Since that day, she’d never taken it off or used the USB key hidden inside. Haley weighed the ball of metal in her hand and then, on impulse, she opened the locket and plugged the tiny key into her laptop.

The memory was empty except for a folder called Miss Robot. Haley opened it. Inside there was a single JPEG file also named Miss_Robot. With trembling fingers, Haley clicked on the picture.

A black and white portrait popped up on the screen, its lines crude and sharp, but the final result no less powerful for it. Haley stared transfixed at the raw sketch of her face.

Was this how David saw her? Beautiful, but strong and also… mysterious. It wasn’t so much that she looked pretty in the drawing. It was the expression he’d immortalized—one of deep concentration Haley had never seen on herself—that struck Haley. Yeah, maybe she’d never seen that expression because when it came on she was too busy with whatever she was doing to look in a mirror.

And who would’ve guessed bad-boy David Williams had an artistic side? And was he really that much of a bad boy anyway? Or was it a mask he wore? A different kind from the one he’d had on the night they’d met. Was it a cover he put on every day to pretend nothing touched him when the exact opposite was true?

Haley still had David’s number saved on her phone from the night Madison had forwarded her the contact for her to call him and ask if he’d told Scott about the kiss. She couldn’t help but scoff and shake her head at the memory. That David had been a royal D-bag. But not the David who had driven seven hours to get her home to her sick dad. And not the David who had told her in the most romantic summer storm that he loved her. And not the David who had drawn this sketch.

Rolling her phone in her hands—left, right, left—Haley was itching to call him. Maybe a call was too much; a simple text would be better. She typed an easy-going:

Hey

Unoriginal, but safe. He probably wouldn’t even see it or hit her back, and then it’d be fine. Unfortunately, three pulsing dots appeared on the screen almost immediately; David was composing a reply.

Hey?

Haley could almost picture the surprised-but-pleased frown on his face.

I’m impressed by your drawing skills

Easy with your perfect posing skills

I wasn’t posing

No, I know

You’re a natural

Some time passed with neither of them texting until a bubble appeared again on Haley’s screen.

The library is not the same without you

You there?

Yep, you still in Buffalo?

For no reason, Haley’s heart beat super-fast as she typed:

No, in Boston

Got back last night

Want to grab a beer later?

That sounded dangerously like a date. And as if reading her mind, David’s next text came in pronto:

It’s not a date

Still, Haley did not reply.

Okay, Miss Robot

Let’s do it this way

I’ll be at the Plough and the Stars

The Irish Pub down Mass Ave.

At around 7

If you feel like joining

You know where to find me

I’m not coming

Haley finally typed.

I’ll still be there

In case you change your mind

I won’t

Never say never

Gotta get back to work now

See you later?

Haley did not reply this time. She locked the screen and shut the phone in a drawer as if it had suddenly become radioactive. Texting David had been a bad idea. An awful, stupid, wicked idea.

***

The tiny clock window on Haley’s laptop kept teasing her. She tried to concentrate harder on the job she was doing—she’d settled for updating her coding cheat-sheet with everything she’d learned over the summer—but the task was dull enough to leave her mind free to roam. Plus the little, ever-changing numbers on the digital clock and their implied meaning kept distracting her.

The house was silent. For once, both Alice and Madison were out, and Haley was left alone to listen to the sound of silence. Or, more like the sound of a thousand imaginary clocks ticking away the seconds inside her head.

At 6:28, she wondered what David was doing, if he was getting ready to go out. She imagined him at his house smiling his crooked smile in front of the bathroom mirror.

And at 6:39, Haley pictured him putting on his black leather jacket and walking outside the apartment.

For the next fifteen minutes, Haley mapped in her head David’s walking progress from his house, up on Cambridge Street, left onto Prospect, and finally right onto Massachusetts Avenue.

At 7:05, Haley figured David must be at the Plough and the Stars waiting for her. How long would he wait before he accepted she wasn’t going?

By 7:09, Haley realized she was already monumentally late, and she had to go now if she wanted to reach the pub before David left. Surely he wouldn’t wait more than half an hour. He wasn’t that desperate.

On impulse, she got up from her chair, making it scrape on the floor. No time to get changed. Haley checked herself out in the mirror; her eyes were red from staring at a screen all afternoon, and her hair not as bouncy as if she’d just washed it. Her clothes were no better; her dark gray jeans and black flimsy tank top over a white T-shirt weren’t exactly sexy-wear, but David never seemed to have a problem with how she looked or dressed.

David.

Haley sat on the bed, fidgeting with the locket hanging from her neck. Was she really going to meet him? Why not? Why make such a big deal out of it? It was only a beer with a friend. No, it wasn’t. David didn’t want to be her friend, and Haley… she didn’t know what she wanted. What?! No, no. She knew. She wanted to be with Scott one hundred percent. Nothing else. No one else.

Pity her boyfriend had almost disappeared in the last few days. Scott had been even more sparse than usual with his texts and they hadn’t talked in what seemed like forever. After two months without seeing him or talking to him for more than ten minutes at a time over the phone, Haley had started wondering—secretly, in a dark space at the back of her mind—if the epic romance she’d thought they’d shared had not entirely been inside her head. Scott would be home soon, true, but would their relationship be the same? Could they just pick up where they’d left as if nothing had changed?

And was seeing David an unasked-for complication?

Oh, forget it. She could go have a beer with David without it having any apocalyptic, life-changing meaning. It was only a drink.

Right.

Haley stood up, grabbed her leather bag from the chair next to the desk, and walked down the hall of her apartment. Before opening the door, she fished out a tube of lip gloss and coated her lips in front of the hallway mirror, smacking them together in an imaginary kiss. There, she was ready.

Grabbing her keys from the plate on the small cabinet propped against the entrance wall, Haley threw the apartment door open and gasped, blinking several times while the rest of her body froze in utter shock.

Scott was standing on her doorstep. In the early sunset light filtering through the hallway windows, his perfectly tousled curls shone dark honey-gold, streaked with sandy highlights from his summer in California. His skin was tanned and dotted with even more adorable freckles than usual. His ripped chest and arms made Haley want to be crushed into a never-ending embrace. And his lips, curled up at the corners in a timid, nervous smile, were begging to be kissed.

Haley’s pulse raced and butterflies exploded in her belly. How could she have thought even for a second not to be in love with Scott? Now that he was standing in front of her, it was clear her feelings hadn’t changed. She’d never stopped loving him. Scott was her guy. It would always be Scott.

“Hey,” Scott said.

Haley’s lips broke into a wide, incredulous grin. “You’re back a week early.”

“Surprise.”

“Is that why you disappeared in the last few days?”

A mischievous smile appeared on his face. “Are you mad?”

“No.” Haley shook her head.

“Going somewhere?” Scott asked, tilting his chin toward the bag looped over her shoulder.

Haley blinked, confused. She honestly couldn’t remember where she was headed. “No, I wasn’t going anywhere,” she said. She stared into Scott’s sparkling green eyes a moment longer before he pulled her close and their lips collided.

To Be Continued

###

Dear Reader,

I hope you enjoyed My Best Friend’s Boyfriend. Thank you for sticking with the series so far. It means the world that you’re still here with me.

Book four in the series, , will focus again on your favorite foursome: Madison, Haley, and the Williams brothers, and I hope you’ll want to keep following them on their journey.

Which brother do you prefer? Bad-boy David or sweet-hottie Scott?

Now I have to ask you a huge favor. If you loved My Best Friend’s Boyfriend, please leave a review on the retailer website where you purchased the book, or Goodreads, or wherever you like to post reviews (your blog, your Facebook wall, your bedroom wall, in a text to your best friend...) Reviews are the biggest gift you can give to an author, and word-of-mouth is the most powerful means of book discovery.

Thank you for your constant support!

Camilla, x