Ten Trends to Seduce Your Bestfriend
: Chapter 3

Just before sitting down to join the Stardew Valley game, armed with my mug of hot chocolate and plate of Swiss cheese slices, I made the mistake of checking the stats on the sports drink lab video I’d recorded earlier in the day. To my complete shock and abject fascination, it had been viewed over one hundred thousand times and counting. And I’d gained over three thousand new followers. But then I discovered that 80 percent of the comments were about Byron Visser and the other 20 percent were about him and I having “great chemistry.”

How could we have great chemistry? We’d shared the screen for exactly ten seconds.

“Why does your face look like that? You’re blushing.” Amelia sat across from me at our small oval kitchen table; she’d procured herself another cup of peppermint tea and three more ginger cookies on a white plate. Her addiction to my gluten-free ginger cookies was likely why she hadn’t abandoned me yet for a place of her own. Thank God for her willingness to share expenses, the cost of rent in Seattle was insane. Without a roommate, there was no way I’d be able to afford any place near the school where I taught. Plus, I loved her, and I would miss her desperately if—when—she moved out.

I turned off my phone and set it next to my laptop. “I’m reading comments on my video from earlier. Are you logged in yet?”

“Yep. So is Laura, but Jeff texted that he’s running late. I watched your video, it was really good.” Amelia picked up her phone, lifting an eyebrow at whatever she read there, then quickly typed out a response with her thumbs.

“Did you read the comments?” I asked, trying not to feel despondent, tearing a slice of cheese in half as I waited for the game platform to load.

“No, why?” Her eyes were still on her phone.

“Most of them were about Byron,” I muttered.

I wasn’t jealous this time, I swear. Of course his readers and fans would be excited to see him, and I didn’t begrudge him or them that excitement. But I couldn’t help feeling disappointed. I took a lot of pride in my STEM videos and the experiments I pulled together. I worked really hard, and I guess it felt demoralizing on some level to have my video and the comments hijacked, the conversation steered away from STEM.

If you do these romance challenges and the other videos, then you’ll be diluting your STEM-focused message all the time. Is that okay with you?

Amelia’s gaze flicked up, held mine for a few seconds, then returned to her phone screen. “Well, Byron has no social media accounts, won’t do interviews anymore, won’t go to any events or cons, doesn’t respond to fan mail, won’t sign books—not even for charity auctions—so I imagine seeing him pop up in your video was quite a thrill for fans of his books.”

“Why is he like that?” I clicked on the Join Co-op button at the prompt. “Why can’t he engage more with his readers?”

This also confused me about Byron. He had—literally—millions of loyal fans, hungry for his next book or a scrap of information about his personal life, and he never gave status updates or interviews. It seemed so strange to me.

Amelia didn’t respond, so I glanced up from the loading screen to look at her. Her lips were curved in a sneaky-looking smile.

“Who are you texting?” I asked.

“Jeff.”

My frown was immediate. “What are you two texting about?”

She tried and failed to quell a smile. “Nothing.”

Alarm shot through me. “Amelia!”

Giving into her grin, she typed out another message. “Give me a sec . . .”

“Do not—”

“He said yes!” She let her phone fall to the table with a clack and lifted both her arms, fist-pumping the air.

I stared at her, horrified, worried, curious, and horrified again. “What did you do?”

She picked up the cell and held it out to me, a series of text messages on the screen. “Jeff agreed to do the romantic challenges with you for TikTok.”

My jaw dropped as I committed fully to being horrified, a rush of hot anxiety rolling through me. With shaking hands, I took her phone and scrolled through the messages.

Amelia: Here’s a hint, Winnie needs a favor and she doesn’t want to ask you because she feels like she’d be using you

Jeff: Are you logged into SDV yet? I’m running late. What’s the favor

Amelia: You know that community manager job? She needs to gain more followers on social media, so I think she should do romantic challenges with someone and I think that someone should be you

Jeff: What kind of romantic challenges

Amelia: You’ve seen the Sit on your best guy friend’s lap one? Or Kiss your crush one? She has a list of ten we’re working on

Jeff: Fuck yeah! But would Win want to do that stuff with me?

Amelia: Come on

Jeff: What? Really?

Amelia: Talk to her

Jeff: Srsly?

“YOU TOLD HIM!” I screeched, staring at my former friend, the shock pouring from every cell of my body. “How could you do that?”

“Winnie, please.” She rolled her eyes. “As I told you earlier today, he’s into you.”

“What? No, he’s not.”

“Yes. He is.” She picked up her tea, giving me a flat look over the rim of the cup. “He asked if I thought you’d go out with him. Did you scroll all the way up to earlier today?”

The ground beneath my feet felt unsteady as I shifted my attention back to the phone. I scrolled up to the messages from this afternoon.

Jeff: Is Winnie still not dating anyone

Amelia: Depends. Why

Jeff: Do you think she’d go on a date with me if I asked

Amelia: You should ask and replace out

Jeff: Any hints? Tell me if I have a chance. Help a guy out

Amelia: Here’s a hint, Winnie needs a favor and she doesn’t want to ask you because she feels like she’d be using you

I gasped, covering my mouth, then I returned my eyes to Amelia. Her grin had morphed into a smirky smile.

“I told you. Ask him to help you with the romantic challenges. He’d be perfect for so many reasons. You’re both teachers, you both have a STEM-focused social media following already. Just think, you two can document your love story in real time.”

Legs unsteady, I sat in my chair, rereading the text messages again because I couldn’t believe it. My heart expanded in my chest and I felt a squee bubbling up from the well of excited happiness inside me, but before I could give voice to it, Amelia’s phone rang.

I jerked upright, staring at Jeff’s face on her screen. “It’s Jeff!”

“Ooo-kay.” Amelia lifted an eyebrow.

“What should I do?”

“You can either give it to me or you can—”

“I’m going to answer it,” I said, sliding the bar at the bottom and bringing it to my ear. “Hello?”

“Uh, Amelia?”

“No.” I grimaced, second-guessing my impulsive decision to answer my friend’s phone. “No, it’s Winnie. But I can put her on.”

“No, no. I’m glad you answered.” Jeff chuckled, it carried an edge of nervousness. “I guess she showed you our text messages?”

“Maaaybe.” I grinned like an idiot, certain I now floated on a cloud.

“If you want me to help you with those TikTok challenges, I’m happy to. You wouldn’t be using me.”

I released a silent sigh because he was just so . . . so . . .

“He’s so cute.” Amelia chuckled, her eyes on her laptop screen.

“But I have to be up-front with you, Win,” he continued. “I just broke up with Lucy—or she broke up with me. It was time, and it’s been two months, but it’s still fresh, you know?”

The reminder of his ex-girlfriend sobered me from my internal squeeing rainbow of happiness cloud vibes. I nodded. “I understand. And I appreciate your honesty about it. So I feel like I should tell you, I’ve had a—a—” I gulped. “Well, I’ve liked you for a while. And so you should know that before you agree to help me with TikTok.” I felt Amelia’s attention on me, and I looked at her. She was staring at me with wide eyes, clearly surprised by my sudden emotional bravery.

She knew the household where I’d grown up had punished honesty. Asking for what I needed—let alone what I wanted—would be punished by withholding whatever I’d asked for, and then I would be further punished for being greedy. If I needed something, if I wanted something, I had to figure out how to make my uncle think it had been his idea.

Since leaving for college, I’d been working really, really hard to change the ingrained habits that had become instincts, but the path had been rocky. Even with Amelia, who I trusted more than anyone else, I still felt reticent about admitting the truth of my feelings.

But if Jeff could be honest and brave, then so could I. See? I knew we’d be perfect for each other.

“Are you serious?” His laugh this time sounded disbelieving.

“Yes.” I studied the thigh pocket on the side of my green cargo pants, shoving away the panic threatening to choke me. He likes you, he wanted to ask you out, stop being a nincompoop. “But I would never have said anything if you were still with Lucy.”

He sighed, chuckling some more. “Life is so weird. I can’t believe this.”

“Do you still want to do the challenges? No pressure if—”

“No, no. I want to do it. We’re—well, we’ve been friends for a long time.” I heard him shift, like he’d gone from standing to sitting. “I would love to do them with you, and maybe we can, I don’t know, have fun together?”

“I’d like that.” I worked to keep my grin under control, but it wouldn’t be curtailed, it took over my face and my cheeks hurt. Ah! Best day ever!

“Okay. Good.” He sounded like he was smiling as well. “Hey, send me over the list of challenges, okay?”

“Yeah. Sure. I’ll do that tonight.” I turned back to my computer, pulling up the list Amelia and I had been working on this afternoon.

“When can we get started?” he asked. “Tomorrow?”

Now I laughed because he sounded so eager, and heck if that didn’t send my heart soaring. “I can’t tomorrow or Sunday, but how about Monday?” It was spring break for both of us. I’d planned to spend the week prepping all my assignments for the remainder of the year and getting a jump on the thirty-second videos for TikTok, but spending Monday strategizing romantic challenge videos with Jeff sounded so much better.

“I leave for the camping trip on Wednesday, but I’ll be back Saturday. We can do more when I get back.”

“That works.”

Amelia reached over and wiggled the screen of my laptop. “Ask him if we can shoot it at Byron’s house. He and Byron have much better light than we do.”

I nodded. I was in such a good mood, not even the thought of seeing Byron again could dampen it. “Hey, can we shoot it at your place? Amelia can hold the camera. We’ve been working on a script for the first one.”

“A script?”

“Yes, we want to script each one so we can get it right with minimal takes and tell a story. Let me put you on speaker phone.” I put him on speaker and placed her cell on the table so Amelia could join in on our planning conversation.

“Hey Jeff,” she said, grinning at me.

“Hey Amelia, old buddy, old pal.”

Ah! He is SO CUTE!

“Ha ha. So, listen. We want to do this right. Each TikTok challenge will build on the last and tell a story, okay?” Amelia was all business. “We want people to tune in and check back frequently on her account to see if a new romantic challenge has been posted. We’re going for viral here, a viral romance, got it?”

“Uh, I think so. Yeah.”

“So that means the first few videos will be you two as friends, creating tension—will they, won’t they—and then the later videos will be you two as . . .” Amelia glanced at me, seeming to search my face for permission to finish her thought. I nodded, and she continued, “Well, they’d be like you two are dating, even if you’re not dating. We can film them this week and next, and then release them over the next ten weeks. You might have to do some acting. Is that okay?”

“Totally fine! I’m happy to help, and it all sounds good to me.”

I exhaled a relieved breath, nibbling my bottom lip before adding quickly, “It might be a good idea for us to record as many as possible on Monday, to get them out of the way. What do you think?”

“Yeah, yeah, sure. Sounds good. What time are you coming over?” He sounded like he was genuinely looking forward to it.

I looked to Amelia, and she shrugged. “I can get off at five at the earliest, so five thirty? Six? Then we’ll do as many as we can.”

“Okay, see you guys then.”

Amelia plucked her phone from the table, turned off the speaker function, and lifted it to her ear. “We’ll see you then. And Jeff? You owe me.”

I thought I heard him laugh on the other side. His happy sound plus how Amelia was wagging her eyebrows in my direction made me feel light-headed and giddy.

I couldn’t believe it. This was happening. After six years of not allowing myself to think about the possibility of being with Jeff Choi, this was finally, finally happening.

This couldn’t be happening.

“That one was pretty great.” Jeff grinned at Amelia.

The look she gave him could only be described as pained. I tried to muster a smile, but it felt tight and weird on my face. This is a disaster.

Everything had been perfect at first. When we’d initially walked into Byron’s house in the fancy section of Capitol Hill, I’d been on cloud nine. Jeff had taken our coats, offered us a drink, made us laugh, told a few jokes—like he always did. He’d then handed me my water and sat next to me on their couch in the front room—a.k.a. the salon—putting his arm behind me, his thigh brushing mine. Both actions had felt like giant and positive steps over the platonic-friendship line.

But then Byron had sauntered down the stairs in his signature black pants and black long-sleeved shirt and strolled into the salon. My stomach had tensed and my heart had taken off at a gallop. He’d given Amelia a quick chin lift as a hello. His eyes then drifted over to me, narrowing on Jeff’s arm placement. They’d seemed to narrow further as they slid to where our legs touched. He’d halted midstride.

“You two, this is happening?” he’d asked, looking between us, tone flat.

My neck heated. The way Byron had looked at me—chin angled down, that right side of his lip barely curling, the blue-green intensity of his eyes darkening—I felt like I’d been caught, like my hope of something with Jeff made me foolish.

It’s all in your head, Winnie. Byron barely knows who you are, he’s not thinking about you, he doesn’t care about you and Jeff getting together, he doesn’t care about you at all. Ignore him.

Jeff had laughed and squeezed my shoulder. “Come on, man. I’m helping Winnie with those videos. I told you they were coming over.”

Byron had leaned his back against the wall and folded his arms such that the black Henley he wore stretched over his broad shoulders. His eyes had seemed to darken further as they’d locked with mine. “Oh yeah. Mind if I watch?”

My heart had gone from a gallop to warp speed.

Mind if I watch?

I’d fought a shiver.

If I’d felt comfortable being honest, I would have said, Yes, I mind. But that’s not how I’d been raised. I’d been taught that admitting to being bothered by a person—especially when I was a guest in their house—was rude, because it was rude.

So I’d choked out “Of course not” while my insides twisted and tightened.

After that, everything had gone horribly wrong.

We’d moved from the salon to the family room to get the best light. Byron’s house had one of those glass accordion patio doors running along the entire back wall off the combo kitchen and family room area, leading out onto an amazing deck with a built-in firepit and Jacuzzi.

The plan Amelia and I had worked out for the scene was as follows: Jeff would sit on the family room couch, pretending to play Super Mario Bros.; I’d step into the camera frame and lift a finger to my lips and grin mischievously, as though telling the audience to be quiet (Amelia said this would make them feel like they were part of the video, in the room with us); I would then crawl on the couch over to Jeff on my hands and knees; he’d do a double take, ask me what I was doing, I’d sit on his lap and tell him I wanted to sit there; he’d be surprised but pleased; and then the video would end with me laying my head on his chest and smiling softly at the camera. End scene. Very PG. Very sweet. Solid challenge video.

That’s not what happened.

“No, it wasn’t great, Jeffrey.” Byron’s full upper lip that always seemed on the precipice of curling with disgust actually did. Arms still crossed, he stepped away from the wall. “You’ve been acting like a dick for two months. Can’t you stop thinking about yourself for ten minutes?”

Yikes. That was harsh.

Amelia lifted her hand in a placating gesture. “Byron—”

“He’s feeling sorry for himself,” he cut her off, not quite shouting, “and none of this helps Fred.”

Confused as to why Byron was taking this so personally, I said weakly, “It was fine.”

But it wasn’t really fine. I couldn’t post that video, or any of the other five we’d filmed. I knew Jeff was trying to help by being spontaneous and goofy, and I adored him for it, but I wished he’d just follow the script.

Making matters worse, Byron had been present for each and every disastrous take: the one where Jeff had broken out into a fit of giggles; the one where Jeff had elbowed me off the couch; the one where he’d whacked me playfully on the butt with the game controller; the two where he’d licked my face and cracked up after; and this last one where he’d shoved his tongue down my throat in a truly ridiculous stage kiss.

Byron hadn’t said a word—just quietly seethed in the corner, the right side of his lip inching higher, his eyes narrowing into blade-like slits—until the last video. And now it seemed he was primed to unleash his ire.

“But you need better than fine, don’t you?” Byron swung his glare to me. When I hesitated, he repeated, “Don’t you?”

Flustered by his directness and confrontational tone, I turned to Amelia for help. She looked tired and exhausted. The sun had set, we hadn’t eaten, and she’d been at work all day. Guilt plucked at my heart. We should go.

“Here.” Flicking his wrist, Byron motioned that Jeff should move out of the way. “Let me show you. Go stand over there, out of the frame.”

“You’re going to show me how to kiss Winnie?” Jeff looked between us.

“No. You shouldn’t have kissed her,” Byron ground out, his jaw working. “Or licked her face.”

“Why not? If given the chance, I’m pretty sure you’d lick her face.” Jeff joked, dutifully leaning against the wall where Byron had stood earlier.

“I could tell you weren’t playing a video game, that part looked obviously fake.” Byron ignored Jeff’s statement, casting his frown around the room, his tone distracted. “And that was a terrible kiss.”

Jeff put a hand on his chest, like Byron had injured him with his words, but his mouth quirked with a small smile. “Bro—”

“You’re wasting everyone’s time.” Byron was not smiling. He pushed his fingers through his longish hair, visibly agitated. “Do it right or not at all.”

The conversation continued around me as I tried not to be disappointed in Jeff. He said he’d help, but it seemed like he was more interested in being the center of attention than being part of a team. Maybe I could just do the makeup tutorials, dance challenges, fashion trends, thirty-second STEM, throw in some video game duets, and forget about the romantic challenges.

“Win, was that a bad kiss?” Jeff’s question had me looking at him. His eyes sparkled like this was all good fun. The two men could not have been more different, and not for the first time I wondered how they’d managed to be roommates for so long.

“If any of those are posted, you would ruin the story arc, deflate the tension before it had any momentum.” Byron glared at Jeff, his tone quiet and accusatory. “The entire narrative lost, boring.”

“And there is no greater sin than a boring narrative,” Amelia said with a small, tired smile.

“Exactly.” Byron sat in the spot Jeff had occupied, picking up the game controller. “Okay, watch this. Fred!”

I stiffened. I’d only been half listening, trying to figure out how to leave without being rude. Amelia needed to eat, and I needed to rethink this whole romantic challenge thing.

“Do the”—without looking at me, Byron flicked his fingers in my direction, motioning that I should come over—“do the thing.”

In my confusion, I looked at Jeff and then at Byron. “The thing?”

“Crawl over and sit on my lap, like you did with Jeffrey. I’ll show him what to do.”