I walked out of our small kitchen and rounded the couch, willing my eyes away from Easton's bare chest. But it was a losing battle, one I'd lost many times before, thanks to Easton's lack of inclination to wear shirts. His YouTube audience appreciated it as much as I did.
I sank into the couch beside Easton because if I sat beside him, at least I could no longer stare at him. Our tiny apartment was way below what Easton could afford. It was even cheaper than I needed. But Easton had always been a saver, and I guessed that had rubbed off on me as well. We both now had quite the savings, his much larger than mine, and it wasn't like I minded sharing a tiny space with Easton.
"Looking good," Easton said as he gave me a once-over before turning back to the game.
I playfully slugged him in the arm. Yes, the tank top and shorts I always wore to bed along with the slept-on hair was an incredibly attractive look. Easton loved to tease me.
I tried not to let my hand linger as it met the hard muscle of Easton's arm. The guy was tall and lean but built to impress. His broad shoulders were rippled with muscle, and I got to see every one, thanks to Easton's shirtlessness.
"Ouch. So much for complimenting you," Easton said with a grin. But his eyes stayed glued to the wall-mounted TV. Thank goodness, since I was busy taking in his strong profile. I loved his chiseled jaw and his slightly crooked nose. He'd broken it five times over the years. Making a job out of doing the most daring stunts in the world would do that to you.
"So the date?" Easton asked as I shoved a bite of eggs into my mouth.
"Not going to talk about it," I said without bothering to swallow first. That was the only upside to being in love with my best friend. I never had to put on a show for the man I loved. He knew me inside and out. I couldn't change that.
"That means this story is good," Easton said, even turning off the game so that he could give his attention to me.
Another thing I loved about the guy. He liked sports, but he always knew how to put the ones he loved first. Like me. He loved me. Just in the wrong way.
"It's not good," I said as I bit off a piece of bacon.
"You won't even look at me. So you're right. This is much better than good." Easton set down his plate of food, and I knew I had all of his attention. Even in this kind of a circumstance, being at the center of Easton's attention was the only place I ever wanted to be.
"When did you get back?" I asked, trying to change the subject. I was pretty sure it wouldn't work, but I had to give it a try. Easton had been on a trip to Fiji, filming some kind of crazy stunt.
He started his channel seven years ago, during our senior year of college, and back then he'd been a one-man show. But over the years, everything about his brand had grown, making Easton a millionaire many times over and creating a fan base that would follow him to the ends of the earth. He now went everywhere with Max, his camera guy, and Priscilla, his production assistant who also happened to be one of his best friends from high school. To say the extremely organized and high maintenance Priscilla and I weren't the greatest of friends was an understatement. She always stayed in five star resorts when they traveled, while Max and Easton usually bunked down as close to the locals as they could. But even though Priscilla and I weren't fans of each other, we had a kind of unspoken agreement. She got Easton when he was on his trips, and I got him at home. It had worked thus far.
"About six am," Easton said. Which meant he'd landed about five since our town of Saratoga was an hour out of Nashville.
Easton and I met during our freshman year at Livingston University, a small private college in Saratoga, Tennessee. We lived on a floor with eight others, and we all became fast friends. Whit affectionately coined a name for our group: The Ten of Us. Not the most creative of names, but it worked.
We were all drawn to one another, even with our diverse backgrounds and majors, but Easton and I just clicked from day one. He was in the process of breaking up with a girl, Easton did that a lot, and I was passing by with a box of my stuff since I was in the process of moving in.
The girl was about to cry, Easton and I both knew it, so Easton bypassed the girl at his door to take the box out of my arms. He told her he'd promised me he'd helped me move in, and I wasn’t opposed to the idea. One, that meant I had to carry one less box down my hall, and two, the guy was super hot. Even back then.
The girl was left behind, looking bewildered, while Easton introduced his charismatic self to me. We were as different as could be. I was a Georgia girl with a heart full of southern charm and sass, at least I liked to think so, whereas Easton had traveled down from Chicago, his boyish charm strong but different from the southern gentlemen I'd experienced my whole life. His family was practically made of money, and I was the girl on scholarship. But we clicked. He was the one I went to after all of my horrendous first dates, and I was the one he came to after his parents broke his heart time and time again.
"So you must be tired," I said, looking at the clock that read nine am. I doubted Easton had taken a nap.
"Yeah. But not too tired for that story," Easton said with a wicked grin that made my stomach flip. How did he do that? No one else could.
My body began to tremble with Easton's entire focus on me, something that should have worn off after being best friends for ten years but hadn't.
One of the only reasons why my conservative mama was okay with me living with a boy was because that boy was Easton. The same boy who had come to our house for Christmas our junior year of college because he couldn't bear to pick between his parents who were bickering about who got to have their son for the break. And Easton had let me know that the worst part of it all was, even if he had chosen one of them, as soon as Easton got there, they would have ignored him. Anyway, mama had seen the way Easton looked at me and treated me—the same way both of my brothers did. That put Easton in the safe zone and made him the only boy she was okay having me live with, especially after the whole freshman year debacle.
She'd nearly birthed a cow right there in our living room when I'd told her the summer after my freshman year that I'd been living on a co-ed floor of the dorms. When we'd requested dorm rooms before my freshman year, mama had underlined a girls-only floor on my application. But somehow I'd wound up on what my mama liked to call the heathen floor. And since she and daddy were back in Georgia preparing for my brother, Sam's, wedding the following weekend, I’d had to move myself into the dorms and mama was none the wiser. Until I told her that summer, of course, and she hyperventilated into a brown paper sack.
But that was neither here or there as Easton inched his way closer to me, causing my poor stuttering heart to nearly stop. When he lifted his hand and began rubbing my shoulder in an attempt to loosen me and my mouth so I'd spill the story, I swore my entire body felt like it was going to seize. See, this was not a normal reaction to a best friend. This was why I dated the way I did. I needed to get Easton out of my head and heart. But it had proven to be an impossible task.
I drew in a deep breath. I had to pull myself together before Easton figured out why the heck I was acting like such a spaz. Whit and most of our other friends had already sniffed out my crush years ago. I wasn't sure how Easton was still in the dark, but I was only too grateful that he was. I knew he would never see me as a romantic interest, but at least as his best friend he would always be in my life. Because I needed Easton.