I don’t know what the fuck happened.

Elle and I had always had a dynamic friendship, pretty much since grade school. She’d been one of the weirder kids, and a lot of the others had made fun of her for it. But I’d thought she was fucking fascinating, even then, and not much had changed since.

It was never a sexual thing, not with Elvis. Some people were just too fucking awesome to complicate shit with sex. She was special to me, and I’d never made any qualms about admitting that. Not to her and not to anybody else, either. After years of the same, everybody seemed to understand that about us.

We’d been fine. We’d been perfect. Elle and I had been coasting on a perfectly functional relationship for years. Until recently.

I liked girls. I liked hooking up. I even liked relationships. It was fun to see how two people gelled together and what stupid shit we managed to get bent out of shape about with each other in the process. What shit eventually ended it. But the thing all of my relationships had in common? Yeah… They all fucking ended. Mostly on good terms, but me and the girl were sure as shit not best friends before or after it. And it was okay when those girls came and went. When things changed… As long as the big things stayed the fucking same. And Elvis Hirsche was one of those big things.

Which was why—without ever really talking about it—Elle and I had decided to avoid that whole fucking messy minefield. It had never needed a conversation before.

So why the fuck did I feel like it needed one now?

Maybe it was just me? Maybe I was making a bigger deal where there wasn’t one. I couldn’t be sure. It suddenly felt like I couldn’t be sure of anything where Elle was concerned.

“Gavin?” The sound of my name on her lips let me know that she’d said my name more than once while I lost myself in thought about her. Elle’s impatient face confirmed that assumption. “Am I playing this right? It sounds off?” 

I tried to listen as Elle strummed on my guitar, but all I could hear was the rushing sound of blood in my veins as I watched her bite down on her bottom lip in concentration. And it was mother-fucking distracting, to say the least.

I cleared my throat and forced my eyes away from her cute little body, bent over my guitar on the sofa in my living room. Today’s lesson had been longer than anticipated, and it was all my fault, I knew it.

“Sorry baby, do that one more time for me.” 

I had to clear my head if it was the last thing that I did. There was something off track in me when I couldn’t seem to stop thinking about how it felt to wake up with Elle curled up in my arms, with the scent of her hair pressed against my nose.

I liked my girlfriend—a lot. And I didn’t see that changing any time soon. So I really couldn’t understand where the frustration had snuck in from. 

Elle strummed the series of chords again without complaint, effectively pulling me out of myself long enough to concentrate on the music. It was a rare fucking day where music didn’t have my full attention, but apparently I was going a bit against the grain today.

She was right, actually, about something being off. But it wasn’t because she’d done what I showed her wrong. Quickly, I realized my own mistake. I was supposed to be teaching her a new song, but my mind was so off topic that I hadn’t even played it right for her to learn from me.

“It seems like it should go more like this…” She played in a way that better rounded the music, creating a more complete tune with barely a mistake. For a moment I could only sit in stunned silence as I processed what had just happened. It wasn’t like Elle was playing by ear—not exactly—because I was teaching her something that I wrote. And so she’d taken my mistake and fixed it, then somehow managed to make it sound even better without my input.

“Gavin?” She prodded me with her foot, lifting her face from the guitar to stare at me. One of her eyebrows arched and I realized that I had been silent for too long. “Where is your mind today?” 

“I only just taught you those chords last month!” I knew it sounded like a complaint, but I really couldn’t help myself. “Fuck, Elle! Maybe I should stop teaching you, before you become a better guitarist than me.” 

She beamed at me, all the smugness splayed across her expression, and shrugged. “Better watch your back, Gavin Porter.” Elle tapped my guitar gently and shot me a warning look. “I might be taking your spot in the band soon!” 

“Hey, hey!” I cupped my heart in mock-offense. “That’s so fucking rude.” I shook my head at her. “I thought we were starting our own band. What happened to that?” 

“Oh, yeah!” Elle actually wiggled on the sofa with my guitar in her lap, she was so excited by the thought. “I could play the bongos and we could travel in one of those campers.” 

“Now that’s the life.” I laughed at the genuine gleam of excitement in her eyes; it was hard not to take her seriously when she said outrageous things like that. I suspected she actually meant them all.

“We could live off love and a tip jar,” she announced with a sage nod of her head. 

My smile softened as I agreed with her. “Sounds good to me, baby. Sign me up.” 

She shifted, settling my guitar down next to the sofa, propped up against the end table. “What do you think we should name our band? And can I finish my fashion design degree first?” 

Yeah, okay. She was probably fucking serious. I shrugged. “You should definitely finish your degree first. Garrett and Amy would never let me hear the fucking end of it if I ran off with you and didn’t let you finish school. You know, they think I’m a bad influence on you?!”

Elle scoffed. “It’s like your parents have never met my parents before…” She shook her head, but the smile on her face gave away her actual appreciation of my parents’ assessment of our friendship. She snapped her fingers at me in the way people do when someone’s being too slow about something. “Names, bucko!” 

I blinked at her. “Uh-uh.” I shook my head. “You’re better at that stuff than me. You pick.”

She squirmed again, and I could practically see the wheels turning in her head. “I’ll have to think about it, then. And you’re not allowed to veto anything that I pick! Since you’re not contributing.” 

“Those are some steep terms, Elle.” I regarded her seriously but she didn’t even flinch. “All right, fine. But no boy band references!” I had to at least have that much assurance. “Non-negotiable.” 

She pouted at me. An honest to god, serious fucking pout that had me nervous all over again. Fuck. Everything. “Non-negotiable, baby.” I repeated, refusing to be swayed. 

I shouldn’t have been surprised when she threw herself in my lap. I mean, fucking honestly. I should have seen it coming, because this was Elle, and this was just the shit that we did. But damn.

I was on the floor, a notebook opened on the coffee table in front of me, and literally at Elle’s feet from where she sat on the sofa. And one second she was there, pouting, and the next she had launched herself onto my lap like it was no big deal.

It shouldn’t have been—it wasn’t always—but it really fucking was.

It wasn’t a sexy thing that she did. I mean, it wasn’t supposed to be… She was in some regular jeans and a hoodie and nothing fucking special, and I had held her in my arms a hundred thousand times. So it should have been run of the mill.

Except it was Elle, all warm and soft, and smelling like vanilla for some fucking reason. And when she wrapped her arms around me, all I could think about was sliding my tongue up the curve of her neck, and it was really fucking me up.

My heart started going a hundred miles an hour, which was just so fucking dumb. But I was a hundred and fucking ten percent sure she tasted better than she smelled, and all I could think about was finding out for sure. 

“I’m sorry we fought last night.” Her breath and her hair tickled along my neck, as I carefully wrapped my arms around her. “It was stupid. I hate fighting with you. I’m sorry I ruined your date.”

I tried to tell my heart to calm the fuck down but it just wouldn’t listen. I breathed, slowly in and slowly out, before even trying to respond to her. “I’m sorry I ditched you, baby. It was my fault.”

It wasn’t.

Elle had been less than gracious about Tyler from the start, and I had been pretending not to notice all along. But shit, I was noticing now.

“What's your problem with Tyler?” Elle shrugged and I felt, more than saw, her shoulders rising with it.

“I don’t know. I don’t have a problem with her?” She tipped her head back so that she could look at me. Which was a horrible fucking thing for her to do, because it just put her face that much closer to mine. If we shifted, I could have her on her back in a few seconds. Out of the hoodie, out of the shirt, just my hands on her skin. My mouth.

It was soft—Elle’s skin—and smooth and tan and taut. She’d probably let me do it, too. I thought she might.

Un-fucking-believable. I couldn’t focus for three seconds.

I swallowed and leaned my head just slightly back. It took a moment for me to get my thoughts back on track, to reorient myself to the topic of conversation. Girlfriend, right. One that Elle did not like. “I think you kind of do, Elle.” My tone wasn’t as light as I expected it to be, because my tone was usually always light. Soft, uncommitted. But at the moment everything was heavy and filled with tension. Even my vocal chords. 

Elle sighed. “I guess I’m just… jealous.” I could see the word was hard for her to push out, and it was even harder for me to hear. It caused a tightness in my chest that I wasn’t entirely sure what to do with. And I must have looked like something—I don’t fucking know what—but my face was telling Elle something that she apparently did not want to hear. I knew this when she pulled away from me and scooted onto the open space on the floor beside me. She pulled in to herself, drawing her knees up, and rested her chin against them.

I’d been uncomfortable with her right up on me, but I was fucking hating the space that she’d created once she moved.

“I mean… You have someone and I don’t.” She sort of shrugged without looking at me, and her voice had gotten smaller. That tightness in my chest increased, but I couldn’t understand exactly why.

“I think I just need a boyfriend.” At that word—boyfriend—all of my muscles tensed. Like a coiled spring, every part of me clenched together. I was fucking speechless, and breathless too.

For some reason, the idea of Elle needing a boyfriend sucked all of the air out of the room.

“I mean…” she blinked, and her big eyes zeroed back in on my cornered expression. “I spend almost all of my free time with you. And I’m practically graduated college and yet I’m still a virgin! That’s crazy, right?!” 

I couldn’t have answered her if I’d wanted to… Every fucking word in the English language had just erased from my mind.

I must have been quiet for too long, because Elle twisted her body to look at me and arched one eyebrow again. “Gavin?” She prodded my kneecap with her pointer finger. I caught her finger and tugged, encouraging her to come back to me. This time her legs straddled me on either side, and we sat there, face to face for a moment where I really wasn’t sure what I was going to do next.

I settled my hands on her hips and let out the breath that I’d been holding. “Don’t have sex with some asshole just to say you did it, Elle.” There was my voice, and it wasn’t even shaky. It was some kind of fucking miracle. “I would hate that.” The longer I looked at her—this close to my face—the surer I was that I was going to kiss her. Just fuck the consequences, I was practically desperate to feel her lips on my skin. I wasn’t proud of the realization, but I knew for sure that I wanted my tongue in her mouth.

If she moved, if she even breathed hard enough. 

“You should make sure it’s the right asshole, okay?” There was no reason for me to be whispering, except the obvious… That I was still thinking about kissing her, still deciding if I was going to do it. She nodded and it was almost my fucking breaking point.

I could push her hips to my hips, I could slide my hands underneath her shirt. She would definitely let me. I couldn’t even feel my heart, it was beating so fast.

“And you’re not allowed to spend less time with me. I’d miss you too much.” It was meant to be a joke, meant to lighten the mood and create that bit of space I really needed to break this fucking hold she had on me at the moment. But it didn’t work. When I said it, it sounded too much like flirting. And, fuck me, it sort of felt too much like flirting, too. 

“Relax, Gavin,” Elle patted my shoulder reassuringly. She leaned back, so I shifted and she stood. Thank fucking God. She ran her fingers through her hair and rolled her shoulders. “It’s not like I’m going to do the next jerk I go on a blind date with or something. I just mean maybe I should date.” 

She shrugged like it was no big deal, and maybe she was right with that. Maybe it wasn’t.