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.