Unfriended(Love in New Highland Book 1)(7)

I'd thought, well fuck, she's actually right. We weren't friends, but your girlfriend should be your friend. Right?

It was tempting. I mean, I'd witnessed friendship in my parents.

My parents. The perfect example of fuck buddies who are also best  friends. Ever watch The Brady Bunch? Imagine if Carol and Mike Brady had  made all those kids together. That right there is Mama and Dad. They  had six kids, three girls and three boys. It's not much of a stretch to  say my parents have fucked every day of their marriage, with maybe a 2%  room for error.

And yet they hang out together all the time.

So yeah, I'd been willing to try to change things up, to break the  inertia with Aura if there was a chance I could have what my parents  had.                       
       
           



       

"Oh." Sloane sounded confused. "It worked?"

"Yeah. I learned once and for all that Aura and I should not spend all our time together ever again."

"I see. What did you do, if you don't mind my asking?"

"Yoga. Ellipticals. Core conditioning."

Charis burst out laughing. "No way."

She's well aware I consider those activities hell on earth. Aura  considers them "spiritually fulfilling." Me, I go for competitive  sports. Basketball, squash, swimming, soccer, track-hell, ping-pong  works. It's all about winning.

The whole body sculpting craze is my idea of torture. And yoga? Listen,  you can "resonate with your inner mind-body chi" or whatever it is all  you want, just don't make me fucking join in.

Charis, by the way, is just as bad. She can't drag me to her zumba  classes. The one time she tried to bribe me to go along to a  body-mind-energy thingamafuck taught by some "amazing" old guy, I  laughed in her face.

But I did it for my girlfriend. I'd been told by the foremost  authority-my friend Joel-that you have to do that noble shit for women  you're serious about.

"Is that all?" Charis snorted. "I can't believe that was a dealbreaker. I  mean, not to seem unsupportive, here, dude, but if that was the extent  of it … "

"No, it's not all. We did this thing she called quality time. Meaning we ate every meal together."

"That's actually kind of nice? You know?"

"Right, let me disillusion you about that. We ate together no matter how  irregular our schedules. I spent more time shuttling between campus and  my coworking office than I ever spent with you gaming. Look at these  circles under my eyes."

She gazed at me, blinked, then looked away. "Yeah, you look like crap,"  she mumbled. "But at least you, uh, talked, right? You bonded that way."

I lifted one eyebrow. "Sure, we talked. Damn if I know what about. Celebrities. Fashion. Dieting."

Girl shit. I didn't say it. I mean, Charis is a girl, and she doesn't  talk about those things. So logically, that would imply she wasn't a  girl, which I've learned over time never gets my balls not kicked. Plus  I'm not a hundred percent insensitive all the time.

But seriously, it had been hell.

The inane conversation … and the shopping. Dude, the shopping-for  furniture, for shoes, for collectibles, for phones. For fucking hours on  end. Just the memory made me go pale. I recall somewhere in there I did  manage to persuade Aura to try gaming again, but she burst into tears  in one of her perfectionist snits. Chalk up one more defunct attempt at  bonding.

But you know what all that bonding time with Aura really did? It raised the cray-cray bar with that girl.

There was that time she went down on me and actually chewed on my balls.  She fucking drew blood. Now I'm all up for nails digging into the back  and some hot, frenzied roughness, but that wasn't fun, that was passive  aggressive messed-up shit and not a little disturbing.

Not that I could tell Sloane that story.

The ban had been successful, all right. It had told me I didn't actually like my girlfriend.

"Okay, well, I can see that didn't work. But don't tell me you broke up  because you found you didn't have a lot in common. I mean, you must have  known that by now."

"Sure, I knew it." I swallowed the last finger and refilled. "It wasn't  just that. I didn't need her to be my best friend. That's what you're  for."

I smiled at her cockily.

Would you believe that before Sloane, I've never even had a "best  friend?" Swear to God, I've never needed one. My tribe is big. Far as I  know, no Norrell has ever been lonely for more than fifteen minutes.  There's always somebody to join up with.

Sloane is a different animal, the first person to give me most  everything I need. She's the one I count on for every mood, every  time … the one person I consistently choose to be with. I'd fucking keep  her stashed in my back pocket if I could. Come to think of it, I did  have her there, before the ban. She's all over my phone.

Really, the only thing missing between me and her is sex.

Vaguely I sensed her widening the space between us, curling up along the arm of the long sofa and cradling her drink.

"Fair enough," she said. "Then why?"

"We basically broke up," I said, "because Aura didn't believe what I  told her. She didn't trust me. She didn't think I wanted her. Nothing  got through to her. I'd had it with trying to convince her."

Charis was silent for a bit. Then she said, "Okay, that was wrong. Everybody knows you're crazy about her."

I shrugged. "I wasn't a saint either. My time commitments didn't help the situation."

"That doesn't make it right," she stated. "It's stupid the way people treat each other sometimes."                       
       
           



       

Sloane's got four years on me and plenty of smarts, but they're not what  I'd call people smarts. As an only child of self-absorbed artists, she  was left on her own a lot. She's carved her own path in life, and in  many ways that left her sheltered from the world's harshness. She  doesn't get why people act like assholes.

And when she thinks someone's been assholish to me? She always takes my  side. You've heard the phrase "loyal to a fault?" That's Charis Sloane.

I have to admit, it packs a powerful punch, her faith in me.

I fucking love Charis.

"What's up?" I prodded as she frowned.

Her slim chest rose and fell. She clasped her hands in front of her.  "Have you ever considered that Aura might suffer from an eating  disorder?"

I narrowed my eyes. "What do you know about eating disorders, Ms. Eats Anything That Walks?"

Charis sighed. "One, my mom was a ballet dancer. She and all her cronies  have definite issues with body image. Two, I watched a video where-"

"Have mercy, Sloane." Sloane can turn any subject into a forty-five minute lecture. "The answer's no. I'd have known."

"Not necessarily," she argued. "A person can-"

"Yes. I would."

"Asher-"

"I know every detail of her body, inside and out," I said crudely. "I  know all her habits. I know her story. She had a traumatic childhood  with a controlling mother who made her feel like shit about her body, a  brother who bullied her, and a father who emotionally abused her. She's  screwed up in other ways. Believe me, I'd fucking throw a party if it  were that simple. I could have made one call and gotten her help."

Charis flushed, to my amusement. She generally did when I referred  explicitly to my sex life. Which I didn't often do around her, it's  true. I blame the booze.

"Eating disorders are not simple," she argued. "They're complicated and devastating. Maybe bulimia was why-"

"No. She doesn't have bulimia. Zero percent chance. Trust me on this."

"Oh! I forgot about your cousin in the Tri-Cities with the teeth," she conceded.

"Damn right. There's a whole shitload of signs that someone has bulimia, it's not just the teeth."

"Hmm, okay, you win. So … today you just said that's it, we're through?"

"No. I told her the tantrums had to stop. She said if I was going to criticize her, we had to stop and we were through."

"Ouch. So she was the one who called it off."

"No, she was bluffing. It happens. This time I called her bluff."

"I see. Um, out of morbid curiosity, how did you do that?"

"Why do I feel like I'm in high school again?" I smirked.

"Hey, Norrell, I wasn't the one who came here and-"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm teasing you. What I said was I guess we're through,  then. So she backed off and said maybe we can work things out."

I paused, opting not to detail Aura's next move, which had been to stick  her hand down my fly. That maneuver hadn't worked, though it had been  touch and go, I'll admit. Rock on, Stage Three.

"I told her I'd had enough and to get out. She threatened never to come back."