Once Upon A Friendship

And for each other.

He wanted to tell Marie he wasn’t afraid. But these were his best friends. The one place he was completely honest with himself. “Maybe.”

“So playing cards tonight...that was to get back at him for it?” Gabrielle’s derogatory opinion was clear.

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Don’t throw your life away because of him.” Marie spoke next. “Don’t throw your life away for anyone.” Her tone took on a bitter note that had him studying her more closely. And then he remembered something. She never went to bed with her hair still in a ponytail. He’d woken them up enough times to know that. The three of them had probably had a late-night conversation somewhere along the way about getting ready for bed, too. They’d talked about everything else in the world over the past three years.

“You guys weren’t asleep, were you?”

“No.”

He sat forward, studying the two of them as he jetted himself out of the self-pitying fog he’d allowed himself to sink into.

“What’s going on? What happened?” he asked, ready to get up and go find whoever had upset them.

At one in the morning.

Gabrielle looked at Marie, as though waiting for her to tell him. As if it was Marie’s story to tell. Which meant...

“It’s the med student, isn’t it? What’d he do?”

Marie’s lower lip started to quiver.

“He has some big presentation coming up Monday and was going to be studying tonight, so Marie agreed to cover for a coworker who wanted the night off,” Gabrielle said. “As it turns out they were slow and Marie got off early. She made jerk face’s favorite coffee drink and took it over to his place to surprise him.”

“He was...with the girl I was covering for at work.”

Now he understood the edge Marie was carrying. It hadn’t been about the hour of his visit, or him at all. “They knew you wouldn’t find out because they made sure you were busy,” Liam summarized, watching Marie fight with heartache, wondering what on earth he was supposed to say to her.

This was why he could never even think about getting involved with either one of them. He’d rather die than be the cause of that look on Marie’s face.

And then it occurred to him. “You know this isn’t about you, right?”

Marie and Gabrielle exchanged a glance. One of those glances. The ones that left him out in the cold.

“You’re gorgeous, Marie. That blond hair and brown eyes...”

“I’m too short.”

She was shorter than Gabrielle, who was long and leggy, but— “You are definitely not too short.”

“It’s not about her looks,” Gabrielle interrupted, with a sound resembling a snort. She was gorgeous, too. Not an obvious showstopper like Marie. But more in line with the kind of girl he went for. He was more of a leg man.

“What is it with men?” Marie’s derisive tone wasn’t directed at him, but he sure felt as if it was. And took the brunt of her watery brown-eyed glare for all men. “Why can’t they be trustworthy?”

“They can be.” Of that he was sure. Which was why his father’s actions earlier that day had upset him so much.

“I sure didn’t see that tonight. Nor a good part of the time I was growing up...”

Her father, who’d been unfaithful to her mother in the past and who’d only a few years earlier been brought back into the family fold, had been with another woman at their cabin in northern Arizona that summer. The girls had been the ones to discover him there. From what Gabrielle had told him, Marie had taken it pretty hard.

“And Brad, freshman year.” A guy Gabi had dated who’d broken up with her when she wouldn’t sleep with him.

“Jimmy Jones.” A cowboy the girls had met when they’d gone to a rodeo the year before. He’d played one for the other and gotten caught in the middle. For a day or two there, Liam had sweated that the jerk might break up a friendship he’d considered unbreakable. But the girls had surprised him—seeing through Jimmy and giving him a taste of his own medicine. Poor guy hadn’t seen what was coming...

“Don’t forget Mark,” Marie said. She’d dated him the beginning of sophomore year. Until she’d found out that he had a fiancée at home in Phoenix.

“All right, already,” Liam said, holding up a hand in surrender.

“It’s like guys’ drive for sex is stronger than their hearts. Or their morals,” Marie added.

“It’s a driving force,” Liam allowed, feeling only a little uncomfortable in his beanbag seat beneath the girls. They were family. Talked about anything. Everything. “The desire to have sex with women is always there,” he continued, knowing that the one thing he could give his friends was an honesty they probably wouldn’t get anywhere else. “It doesn’t matter how much you’re in love with a girl—you can’t help reacting when you see a beautiful woman. You’re right about that. But being attracted and acting on that feeling are two entirely different things.”

“So when you were going with Karen last year, you were still attracted to other women?”

“Of course!” His honesty was going to help Marie see that this had nothing to do with her. Needing to do what he could to erase the hurt from her eyes, he continued. “Karen had this woman who groomed her dog. I don’t know what it was about her, but she did it to me every time. I just had to see someone that reminded me of her and...”

“Did you ever come on to her?”

“No.” It would have been indecent and, having grown up in a superficial world, Liam put his highest value on authenticity. As his father had taught him by example. And that wasn’t what this conversation was about. He was trying to save Marie from self-flagellation. “But that didn’t mean I didn’t want to. Or that I didn’t think about it. Or try to find her when Karen and I broke up. She’d moved.” And he’d moved on.

Marie’s med student was a schmuck. But since there was no chance that they would still have a relationship, there was no reason to belabor that point.

“Did Karen know?” Gabi’s question was softly spoken.

“Of course not.” He was authentic—not stupid. “I didn’t tell her when I thought the dress she had on made her look heavier than she was, either,” he said, to prove his point. “Nor did I admit it when she asked me if I saw the cellulite on her thigh.” He’d grabbed her up in a hug instead, telling her that she was beautiful and she needed to quit worrying so much. He’d distracted her with a kiss.

And he’d noticed that cellulite every time he saw her after that. But only because she’d made such a big deal about it. Not because it changed—in any way—how he felt about her.

“So, like I said, guys are jerks,” Marie said. But she was kind of smiling and didn’t look as though she was going to break any minute.

“I wouldn’t go that far.” Liam had to defend his sex. “Some take longer to mature than others.” He was grinning, too. And then sobered. “I think there are men who, for whatever reason, just like women. In the plural,” he told her with complete honesty.

“Like you.”

“Maybe. And maybe I’m just immature. But whichever, at least I’m accountable enough to know not to promise forever. And if I’m in a monogamous relationship, it stays that way until I’m out.”

“You don’t think you’ll ever marry?”

“Not unless something changes inside of me. Right now...” He shrugged. “I figure I’m just not the marrying kind.”

They’d passed through the bullet hole, on to the other side. Again.

The three of them chatted for another half hour. Gabrielle cajoled Marie and Liam into volunteering with her that next weekend, bagging donated food to hand out to homeless people. They talked about meeting up for pizza on Sunday. And then, with a shudder at the thought of graduating from college and the three of them going off their separate ways, Liam reminded himself not to borrow trouble and went home to bed.

CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_920e06ab-d4e4-5603-a1ef-c0ba6525b42e)