More Than Friends

Chapter 2: Charlotte

Charlotte loved it when Brady spent the night; it made her feel safe. She cherished their nights together, loved that he could stay over and it wouldn’t be weird, and that she could be her true self with Brady. She knew how Brady looked at her and how he probably felt about her, although she tried hard not to think about it. If she worked at it, she could compartmentalize. She knew from the beginning that he had wanted something more, but she knew he was special and hadn’t wanted to ruin it by hooking up. She had been clear with him from the start of their friendship that they were only going to be friends, nothing more.

And they had been friends, best friends, for the past seven years. If he still had feelings for her, that simply couldn’t be helped. And she had done her best not to encourage them. If she had any feelings for him, she had stuffed them into a box in her mind, shut it firmly, and locked it away. She never wanted to lose Brady; his friendship was too important to her. Over the years, she had grown so comfortable with him that she sometimes forgot he was a regular guy with regular desires. Watching him continue pulling a pillow onto his lap to hide his obvious arousal gave her a small niggle of guilt, but she quickly brushed it away. That was just a natural, physical response and nothing more.

She probably shouldn’t be quite so comfortable around him and maybe she should put on a bra… but he spent so much time at her place that she had lost that pretense long ago. If Charlotte was being brutally honest with herself, she would admit that she enjoyed the way that he looked at her, she enjoyed knowing that she turned him on, and she liked the power she had. But if that thought so much as poked its tiny head into her consciousness, she shoved it back down. She didn’t like that part of herself and rarely allowed herself to admit it.

Charlotte had always assumed that at some point, she and Brady would stop spending so much time together. For three years after college, they had lived in the same city and worked at the same publishing company, so it only made sense that they spent a lot of time together. And as the years passed, she kept thinking that one of them would find a relationship with someone else that stuck and that would naturally cut down the time they spent together. But they kept hanging out and no other relationships had lasted long enough to interfere for very long.

She gave him his beer and jumped onto her chair. When she pulled her legs underneath her, cross-legged, she instantly realized that the opening of her boxer shorts was wide open and quickly adjusted her position. As soon as she got home from work, she would take all her work clothes off, even her bra and panties, and immediately put on comfy clothes. Sometimes she forgot that her boxers could be revealing. She saw that Brady noticed and felt the thrill of being seen, the arousal that rippled across his face. She tried to suppress her own feelings, her own flutter of excitement at the moment that passed between them.

“So, if you don’t like my cheesy meet-cute, what ideas do you have?” Brady asked, obviously trying to shift his attention elsewhere as he pulled a pillow back onto his lap.

“I hate the term meet cute,” she said. “It doesn’t even sound like a real word.”

“It’s two words, actually,” Brady answered.

“You know what I mean,” she said, snickering. “It’s a dumb term for when a couple in a rom-com book or movie or whoever meets for the first time.”

“A rom-com book?” Brady said, laughing. “I don’t think there is such a thing. There are rom-coms, which are movies and romance novels which are, well… novels. But I’m not sure anyone would agree with rom-com books.”

“Maybe there should be rom com books,” Charlotte laughed, her head was starting to feel a little spinny. “No, I definitely think there are rom-com books.”

Brady was laughing too, and she could tell by the pitch of his laughter and the glassy look in his eyes that he was tipsy too. Sometimes she was shocked that they had never hooked up, considering the number of times they had been drunk together, often alone, and late at night.

Brady was cute, not necessarily hot, but cute. Sandy blonde hair, green eyes, he even had dimples when he smiled. He was the guy people thought of when someone said things like, all American, apple pie, and football. The guy you bring home to mom or live happily ever after with, but not the guy who rocks your world. Still, sometimes Charlotte thought about what it would be like to do something more, just to see.

She looked over at her friend, who had his head tipped back and his eyes closed. She imagined sliding onto his lap, his eyes opening in surprise, the beer bottle he was holding falling to the ground, forgotten. She sees him grabbing her face and kissing her, deeply and passionately, his hands not able to get enough of her body. As her mind wandered further, he picked her up, carried her to her bedroom, and they were making wild, fervent love all night.

Charlotte snapped herself out of her own imagination— Brady wasn’t like that. He was quintessentially good. She couldn’t imagine him taking control like that, being uninhabited or passionate. He was strait-laced, a rule follower, respectful—almost to a fault. Which wasn’t a bad thing, she had just never been attracted to that. For Charlotte, it had always been the guys who were hot instead of just cute, a little rough instead of soft and sweet, the kind of guy who just takes control and knows exactly what he’s doing. She couldn’t imagine the real Brady doing any of that and she’d never been willing to risk finding out and losing one of the most important friendships of her life.

“Well?” Brady asked, opening his eyes, and looking at her.

“Well, what?” she asked, trying to remember what they’d been talking about.

“Welllll… what’s your newest book idea for us to write?” he said with a look of, duh on his face. “What’s going to be our big, million-dollar idea? Or, at the very least, what’s going to get us out of assistant editors and into a more exciting role?”

“Oh right,” Charlotte said.

They had both been working as assistant editors at the same publishing house for three years and had dreamed of writing the next best-seller. And they had agreed long ago that if they wanted Hughes Publishing to publish any book they came up with, it would have to be a romance novel, since they were the most successful romance publishing company in the nation. Charlotte had her own ideas about Hughes Publishing Company and what she thought they should be doing, but she had kept those to herself. She was waiting for the right time. She hadn’t even told Brady and while she had originally planned on sharing it tonight, she just wasn’t ready yet. So instead of bringing up her big idea, she offered up something else, something off the cuff. She smiled a wicked grin as something came to mind, knowing it would rattle Brady to his bones.

She began, “Okay, what about this for a meet cute…

Lola knocked softly on the office door, “Excuse me, Mr.—

“Ugh… this is a Lola story?” Brady moaned.

“Yes, of course it’s a Lola story!” Charlotte snapped back. “Stop interrupting me!”

“I don’t understand why you always put your alter ego into your stories. It’s creepy,” he complained.

“She’s not my alter ego,” Charlotte said, heat creeping up her neck. “And why is it creepy?”

“Because it’s like all of your weird fantasies being played out in a book and it creeps me out,” Brady made a face.

“First of all, these are not my fantasies. Lola is that girl that all women want to be—confident, sure of herself, unapologetically bad ass. Just because I happen to think she can be kind of awesome, doesn’t make everything she does my fantasies,” Charlotte said. “Second of all, since Lola came to me in high school, I’ve just been writing what she tells me. It’s like she just unfurls in my imagination and it’s my duty to write it all down. Plus, I think we need to have more Lolas in our books—women who know what they want and aren’t afraid to go for it. And, yes, maybe also a little slutty.”

“A little?” Brady laughed. “Lola is like if p**n and Wonder Woman had a baby.”

“Stop calling it p**n!” Charlotte said. “Just because you clutch your pearls at any open-door romance doesn’t mean it’s p**n!”

“All I’m saying is that Hughes is strictly a closed-door romance kind of company, meaning whatever happens behind the door, all the gritty details, stay out of the books,” Brady said. “You can leave something to the reader’s imagination.”

“I know the difference between closed- and open-door romance. You don’t need to man-splain romance writing to me, we work at the same place,” Charlotte retorted. “And I happen to think that Hughes needs to widen its scope. Anyway, this is the latest installment of Lola— in this story, our Lola is a college student.”

“Oh God…” Brady said with a mock groan, but then waved her on with his hand.

Lola knocked softly on the office door, “Excuse me, Mr. Adams?”

“Come on in,” came a deep voice from around the corner.

Lola crept into her professor’s office, peeking her head around the corner first. She waved and gave him her most demure smile.

“Hi, professor,” she said sweetly. “I know these aren’t your actual office hours, but I was hoping that you could offer me a little extra help.”

“Of course, Lola,” he said, letting his eyes roam over her body, taking in her large breasts straining and braless against her sheer, white shirt, and her startlingly short skirt. “Why don’t you close the door?”

Lola licked her lips seductively and bit her bottom lip before turning around to close, and lock, the door to her professor’s office. This was her third year at Central University, and she knew the professors who were willing to use unconventional grading methods for what she liked to think of as “extra help.”

At twenty-years-old, she was far enough away from jailbait and still plenty young enough to fulfill a fantasy or two.

“What can I do for you?” asked Mr. Adams, leaning back and exposing an obvious erection. This was going to be easier than she thought.

Lola put her backpack on a desk in the front of the room and pulled out a notebook and a pencil. She “accidentally” dropped her pencil and when she bent down to pick it up, she made sure that her back was to her professor so he would have a full view of her lacy thong.

She stood up and turned around saying, “Here, I’ll show you where I’m stuck.”

She walked over so that she was standing in front of him and sat on his desk. He spread her legs apart and he rubbed his hands up her thighs, grazing his thumb under the seam of her thong.

“I definitely see the problem here,” he said, standing up.

“Now, before I show you everything that I’m struggling with,” she said, emphasizing the word, everything. “I want to make sure that you’ll be able to help me get an A in this class.”

Mr. Adams was already unzipping his pants when he said, “Of course you’ll get an A, I’m an excellent professor.”

And with that he ripped off her thong and—

“Holy s**t, Char!” said Brady. “Okay—if that’s not p**n, what is?!”

“Oh my God—lighten up!” she said, laughing. “Just because it’s hot, doesn’t mean that it’s p**n! And what do you think open-door romance is?”

“How is that hot? Screwing your professor for an A?” Brady said in surprise. “How can you even write that after all the Me-Too stuff out there?”

“No, it’s the opposite of Me-Too. It’s the woman taking control of the situation, not being taken advantage of,” Charlotte reasoned. “It’s different.”

“Maybe… but that is not romance,” Brady said. “And there is no way that Hughes would ever publish anything close to that.”

“Okay, maybe not in the classic sense,” Charlotte countered. “But not every romance novel has to be all the same tropes. And I’m so sick of everything being happily-ever-after.”

“Happily-ever-after is literally part of the romance code!” Brady nearly shouted, with a barking, incredulous laugh. “And maybe you’re sick of it, but romance novels have tropes, there is a formula. And I’d say it’s a pretty successful one, since Hughes has built a pretty successful company around it.”

Charlotte paused, thinking it through. Brady was right. She wasn’t going to get anywhere trying to publish a different kind of romance novel, which brought her back to her bigger idea. The one she didn’t want to voice just yet.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” she said, relenting. “I guess I just get tired of the same kind of thing—it just gets boring after a while.”

“I can agree with that,” Brady replied, closing his eyes and resting his head on the back of the couch.

“Plus, even if the ending is tied up in a pretty bow, it can definitely be more fun getting there than bumping into someone with your name at a coffee shop,” Charlotte said, throwing a pillow at Brady.

“Okay, fine,” Brady said, tossing the pillow back to her. “You’re definitely better at coming up with more sizzling content.”

She stood up, grabbed the empty beer bottles, and walked to the kitchen. He collected the empty pizza box and plates from their dinner earlier that evening.

“Let’s just go to bed, we can write our best seller in the morning,” Charlotte said, yawning, knowing that Brady would be gone by the time she woke up.

“Okay,” said Brady, pulling her in for a hug and kissing the top of her head. “Sleep tight.”

She hugged him back before making her way back to her room and shutting the door.