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Fairytale Love - Becca & Brian(3)

By:Melanie Shawn


His cousin Josh, however, had always been a grease monkey, and he wanted  to step in when Brian's dad finally announced his impending retirement.  Since Brian had been back home, taking an undetermined hiatus from NYU  to help his parents after his dad's heart attack, he'd spent quite a lot  of time in the garages of Scott Auto and Josh had been indispensable.

Growing up, Josh had always been the one to do things like trick out  their ten speeds or switch out the wheels on their skateboards to make  them go faster. In high school, he'd spent two summers rebuilding the  engine on a '67 Chevy Camaro the boys had inherited from their  grandfather. Gears, engines, cars-that was his cousin's passion. In  Brian's mind, even though he had unexpectedly ended up back in Harper's  Crossing, everything had worked out exactly how it was supposed to.

As a kid, he'd always loved movies and been fascinated by everything it  took to make them. In his teens, he'd studied films by Alfred Hitchcock,  Steven Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen,  Francis Ford Coppola, Orson Welles, Billy Wilder, and Clint Eastwood.  Brian had read everything he could about film production, from lighting  and cinematography, to wardrobe and location scouting. Film, movies,  production-that had always been his passion.                       
       
           



       

The alarm on his phone buzzed loudly, interrupting Brian's short mental  reprieve from obsessing about Becca. He reached down to turn off the  alert. He'd set it to go off when Becca's plane landed.

She was here. Back in Illinois. He was going to be seeing her face to  face for the first time since her sister's wedding back in December.

The thumping of his heart was pounding loudly between Brian's ears. As  he took a deep breath, his head fell back against the headrest. His  palms were beginning to grow damp. He opened his fingers, stretching  them out before closing them again, gripping the steering wheel.

Looking up, he saw that his exit was in one and a half miles. At the  rate traffic was moving, it'd probably take him ten minutes to reach it.  He tried to calculate parking and then how long it would take him to  make it to baggage claim. He probably had a good forty-five minutes  before he saw her. Before his acting skills would really be tested.

Brian started gauging roughly how much time they would be spending  together this summer. How much time he would have to pretend that  nothing had changed between them. Pretend that his feelings hadn't  decided to take on a life of their own. Pretend that he didn't know how  her soft lips felt. Pretend that he didn't think about-on a nearly  constant basis-what her tongue brushing against his had done to him.  Pretend his thoughts weren't consumed with the visceral reaction his  body had had when her soft curves had been pressed up against him.

Basically, he needed to know how much time he would have to disguise,  suppress, and hide his true feelings about the most important person in  his life.

He guessed it all really depended on the outcome of the open call today.  If it went well, then Brian would be gone for half the summer shooting  and then promoting the reality show. If he didn't book it, then he was  going to have to find some other way to keep his distance from  her-without drawing any attention to the fact that that was what he was  doing.

Frustration flooded through him. Never in his life would Brian have  guessed that he would be trying to come up with reasons, situations, and  excuses to avoid Becca. She was his favorite person in the entire  world. The yin to his yang. The Scrappy Doo to his Scooby Doo. The Robin  to his Batman. His partner in crime. Becca was his heart.

Which was exactly the reason that she absolutely could not know that anything had changed between them.

As he turned the wheel to pull off the freeway, he tried to think about  what the fallout would be if Becca found out, somehow, that his feelings  had changed. Just the thought made his entire body tense. She was the  sweetest, most understanding girl in the world. There was no doubt in  Brian's mind that, if she knew what was going on, she would be kind and  gracious, but there was also no doubt in his mind that things would  change between them. Forever.

Brian hated pretending or acting with the most important person in the  world to him, but he would never forgive himself if he did something  that damaged their relationship. Also, he never wanted to put Becca in  the position of having to let him down easy or ever feeling like she  couldn't go to him because things were weird. As much as she meant to  him, he also knew what he meant to her. She depended on Brian. She told  Brian everything. She trusted Brian completely. When good or bad things  happened in either of their lives, the first call they made was to each  other.

Their relationship was like those old MasterCard commercials a few years ago-priceless. It was irreplaceable. It was everything.

Brian's thoughts continued to turn over scenario after scenario of what  if or worst case until he rolled down the window to his Jeep and pressed  the square button on the ticket dispenser at the entry of the parking  structure. As he pulled the ticket from the silver box, the bar rose and  Brian pressed on the gas pedal. He drove up and down the rows of parked  cars looking for an open space and thinking about the one question that  had been eating him up for the past year.

Was it better to just be best friends with your soul mate-knowing the  agony you felt from the fact that "friends" was all you would ever  be-but still have them in your life? Every time he battled with that  question, he came up with the same answer. Yes. Yes, it was. The risk  reward was just not worth it. Because the risk meant losing what he and  Becca had.

So, after he pulled into a spot, he turned the ignition off and looked  into the rearview mirror with determination burning brightly in his  brown eyes. It was showtime.





Chapter Two





"Is that yours, dear?" Stella asked, pointing her wrinkled finger topped  with a long, fire-engine-red press-on nail towards a huge,  neon-green-and-bright-pink, leopard-print suitcase.                       
       
           



       

Really?

Becca realized that she'd only known Stella a whopping, grand total of  the four hours it had taken to fly from San Francisco to Chicago, but  she really would have thought that it was glaringly clear that Becca was  not a flashy-colored leopard-print girl. She wished she were a  flashy-colored leopard-print girl, but she knew she was a taupe-luggage  girl. Sure, she'd tied a purple band around the handle so that her  plain-Jane baggage would stand out from the rest, but the luggage itself  was still boring, safe, run-of-the-mill taupe.

But maybe this woman, who Becca barely knew, saw something in her that  she herself didn't see. After taking several psych classes over the  years, Becca knew that most people's perceptions of themselves were  drastically different than the reality of what others saw them as.  Still, it was hard for her to believe that anyone would see her as  flashy or risk-taking, which, in Becca's opinion, was exactly what  neon-green-and-bright-pink luggage screamed of its owner.

"Nope, that's not mine," Becca answered, feeling a twinge of  disappointment that it wasn't, her eyes following the loud suitcase as  it passed by.

Taking a deep breath, Becca tried to calm her jittery nerves and racing  heart as she stood in the baggage claim area watching the conveyor belt  go round and round. Her mind was so scattered that she wasn't sure if  she'd missed her plain-Jane suitcases or if they just hadn't made an  appearance yet. She'd been standing here for, at least, fifteen minutes  with the sole task of grabbing her luggage. Simple, right? Yeah, not so  much.

Her mind kept getting sidetracked by the fact that, any second now, her  ride would be here. Any second now, she would come face to face with her  Brian. Her best friend in the whole world. Star of her extremely  inappropriate (naughty!) dreams.

They really had gotten worse over the past six months since the wedding.  The wedding she only remembered bits and pieces of thanks to her good  friend Jose Cuervo. What had begun as one shot to loosen up after finals  had turned out to be a slippery slope of alcoholic consumption. After  taking one too many turns on the slip-n-slide of shots, a lot of the  evening was a total blank or at least really fuzzy.

Except one moment. The kiss. Becca clearly remembered being lip to lip  with her lifelong best friend, Brian. At least she thought that's what  she remembered. She wasn't sure what had led up to the smooch or what  had transpired after, but that moment seemed as real as it could be, and  for the life of her, she could not erase it from her memory. It was  permanently tattooed on her consciousness.