Ten Trends to Seduce Your Bestfriend
: Chapter 4

Unable to believe my ears, I tripped over my words, “You—you want me to—you want me to sit on—on your—”

Byron patted the couch at his side. “I’m going to show Jeff how to do it right, without destroying the plot of the story you and Amelia mapped out.”

My stomach swirled and I chased my breath. “Uh—” I looked at Amelia and found her eyes on me.

My friend shrugged, giving her chin a slight lift toward the surly writer. “I agree with Byron. That kiss was terrible—sorry Jeff—and we can’t use the other ones. If you posted any one of those, no one would tune in to replace out what happens next between you two.”

“Fine, fine.” Jeff chuckled, finally looking remorseful. “Sorry. Go ahead, Win. Let’s see how I should do this.”

Byron stared straight ahead at the television, navigating through the Mario Brothers game prompts until he started a saved session. He began playing a board, his attention wholly focused on the screen.

I scratched my neck as the momentum of the moment caught up with me. What the heck? They wanted me to crawl over and straddle Byron Visser’s lap? That’s what they wanted me to do? The swirls in my stomach morphed into a hurricane.

I couldn’t do that.

Sucking in a deep breath, I turned to Byron, planning to tell him that it was okay, we’d go with what we already filmed, but before I could, he said, “You don’t want to touch me?” His sharp gaze sliced to mine, gave me a perfunctory examination, and then cut away. All the while he wore a supremely bored expression.

“No.” I stood straighter. “I just—”

“It’ll take one minute,” he said, sighing as though to punctuate and underline his boredom. “I want to help.”

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to, Win,” Amelia piped in softly, lowering my phone. “We’ll figure something else out.”

I looked at her, at the compassion and concern in her gaze, and I realized how silly I was acting. I had no doubt in my mind that whatever Byron was planning, it would be exactly right for what we needed. I’d read his books. They were just as amazing and impressive as he was. If there was one thing Byron seemed to understand intrinsically, it was how to tell a great story, and ultimately wasn’t that what we were trying to do?

Then Jeff could reenact the scene and we’d be finished. Amelia was doing everything in her power to assist me in obtaining that community manager position, giving up her Monday night, helping me strategize, lending her expertise and support. The least I could do was sit on Byron’s lap so he could act out the scene for Jeff.

Finally, I managed a somewhat convincing “It’s really okay, no big deal” and gave my friend a smile.

Her gaze hinted at concern, but she lifted the phone back into position. “Give me a second, let me start a new video. I think—here. Okay, on the count of three, go. One, two, three.”

Squaring my shoulders, I stepped into the frame and looked at the camera for a beat, raising my finger to my lips just as I’d done before while also attempting to calm the storm in my stomach. This is fine. This is no big deal. Do your part.

Ignoring all the warning bells, alarms, and fire horns blaring between my ears telling me this was a bad idea, I forced the same grin I’d worn earlier. Or I tried to force a smile. I had a feeling this one carried an undercurrent of uncertainty.

Wiping my damp hands on my yoga pants, I strolled forward. Just like before, I placed a knee on the couch. Byron continued to play the game—actually play it—as I crawled over to him. When I reached his side, I stared at the sharp lines of his handsome profile and paused, gulping, my heart bouncing around my ribcage. Hints of warm, woodsy aftershave and clean soap teased my nose.

He smells really good.

Byron glanced at me and then performed a perfect and totally believable double take. “Uh, hi,” he said, sounding and looking confused. “Can I help you with something?”

I rolled my lips between my teeth and held my breath. And then I did it. I placed a hand on his shoulder, lifted to my knees, and climbed on.

I sat on Byron Visser’s lap. Straddling his narrow hips, our stomachs and chests scant inches apart. I exhaled as my palms slid from his shoulders to twine my arms around his neck. My face even with his. Our breath mingled. Our eyes locked. And I felt like I was going to swallow my tongue.

Oh God.

Breathe.

Breathe!

Peripherally, I was aware of Amelia taking a step or two toward us, getting a closer shot of our faces as Byron’s gorgeous and unusual eyes—now wide with mock surprise—moved between mine, searching.

“What are you doing?” he asked, his voice rough, like he had trouble getting the sentence out.

“I wanted to sit here.” I said my line, the words breathless.

He blinked several times, his lips parting. “Okay,” he croaked before swallowing thickly. A flicker of something hot and needy passed behind his eyes and—I swear to God—I forgot what I was supposed to do next.

His thighs were so solid beneath me, his body warm and firm. His presence seemed to surround me, draw me closer even though we didn’t touch anywhere except where I touched him. Unlike Jeff in his calamitous multiple takes, Byron hadn’t placed his hands on my thighs or butt. He’d kept them up and away from my body at first, and then placed them on the couch on either side of my legs.

But his eyes—his truly magnificent eyes with their rings of hazel and green and blue—told me my touch wasn’t unwelcomed. He craved it. He’d been thinking about it. A lot. And being caught in the snare of his brilliant stare was absolutely intoxicating.

I leaned a millimeter closer. His gaze seemed to flare and heat a split second before it dropped to my mouth. And I—

Oh no.

Oh no. No. No. No, Winnie. This is Byron Visser.

He’s acting. He. Is. Acting.

This is an act. He calls you Fred because he doesn’t remember your name. He doesn’t like you. He never opens his mouth except to criticize.

This. Is. An. Act!

I felt the rising and sobering flush of embarrassment a moment before the heat climbed over my cheeks and I yanked away, tearing my eyes from his captivating face.

“Sorry, sorry. This was a dumb idea. Sorry.” Instead of placing my head on his shoulder and smiling at the camera as we’d planned, I untwined my arms from around his neck and pushed off him.

Byron’s hand closed over mine. “Wait—”

“Forget about it.” Sitting on the couch briefly to get my bearings, I wrenched my hand from his grip, then launched myself up and walked quickly away, heading blindly for somewhere else, anywhere not in the same room as Byron Visser. What the hell, Win?

“Winnie. Win, wait—” Byron called, the sound of his voice drowned out by the rushing of blood between my ears and the music from the TV announcing that one of the Mario Brothers had perished.

“Holy shit, that was great!” Jeff jumped in front of me like a clown from a jack-in-the-box, sending my heart straight to my throat. Not seeming to notice that I was startled, he placed his hands on my shoulders and beamed down at me. “So much better than what I did. And I see now what you wanted me to do, how you want it to play out. I’m on the edge of my seat now, wondering what’s going to happen next.”

My mouth opened and closed as I wrestled with distress. Was it not obvious that I’d spaced out and forgotten Byron and I were being filmed?

“I agree, that was great,” Amelia said from the other side of the room. I turned, my eyes instinctively searching for Byron and replaceing him some distance behind Amelia, facing away from the family room and leaning both hands against the quartz countertop of the kitchen island.

Amelia crossed to me, holding my phone up, her gaze encouraging. “I recorded the whole thing. We can play it back and Jeff can try to mimic what Byron did. I really liked how you changed it up though. Leaving the room, that was a good addition. People will be squealing at their screens. Much better than ending the scene with you still on his lap. Oh, thanks Byron!”

Byron had pushed away and straightened from the counter. He walked toward the salon. Not sparing any of us a glance, he lifted a hand and gave a vague wave before exiting. A moment later, his unhurried steps sounded on the front stairs leading to the second floor.

I stared at the doorway for several seconds while Jeff and Amelia discussed and picked apart the scene, and I thought I might be losing it.

What just happened?

Was I losing it? Had he been merely acting? The way he’d looked at me, that flicker of heat, he’d been so entirely convincing. Or was that—did he—was Byron—gah!

“Here, let me play it back. You can see what he does with his hands. He doesn’t touch her, and it was very effective. It made the moment deliciously tense.” Amelia typed in the password for my cell.

But before she could navigate to the video, Jeff’s phone chimed and he pulled it out, frowning at the screen and then suddenly flinching back.

“I have to go.” Now he sounded breathless, and not at all the jokester he’d been all evening.

Amelia lowered my phone. “Anything wrong?”

“It’s Lucy.” Jeff’s voice cracked on the last syllable of his ex-girlfriend’s name and his eyes shifted to mine, an apology carved on his features. “I’m sorry, Win. She wants me to meet her. I haven’t heard from her in months. Maybe we could—maybe you could come back later? Or we could figure out—”

“Don’t worry about it.” I sent him a soft smile to cover my pang of disappointment. “We should be heading out anyway.”

Jeff wrapped his fingers around my hand—the same hand Byron had grabbed earlier—and squeezed. “Thanks. I’ll—I’ll call you when I get back from camping. We’ll—uh—hang out.”

Nodding, I forced a smile and walked to the front door, my heart sinking even as my stomach continued to spin and swirl with the aftereffects of Byron’s acting. I pulled on my coat, unsure what bothered me more: Jeff dropping me the second his ex-girlfriend messaged him or that Byron Visser’s short and impromptu performance had been so entirely convincing that I’d almost fallen for it.

If I could help it, I never worked at our apartment when Amelia wasn’t there. I’d discovered during undergrad that my productivity increased when I worked in a public place or adjacent to someone else. Something about the noise and motion, the ebb and flow of another person, helped me concentrate.

We lived within walking distance of approximately fifty thousand coffee shops (or it felt that way) where I could’ve camped out and sipped on a cold brew while hogging a table for hours. But—and don’t judge me too harshly—I didn’t drink caffeine.

That’s right. I lived in the coffee capital of the United States, and I didn’t drink coffee. Even small doses of caffeine made me feel wonky and jittery. I was one of those white chocolate eating, kombucha brewing, herbal tea drinking people. My caffeine aversion plus my wheat allergy plus my unwillingness to pay four dollars for a cup of tea meant I rarely entered a coffee shop.

So why live in Seattle? If the rent and cost of living were so high and I didn’t work in tech and I didn’t partake in coffee culture?

Several reasons: proximity to world-class hiking, boating, snowboarding, and skiing; proximity to Amelia and Serena and my other awesome college buds; public transportation and the Washington State Ferries system; the rain, I loved the rain; bountiful fresh fish any time of year at the market; and the Seattle Public Library.

You haven’t truly lived until you’ve spent a day exploring the downtown Seattle Public Library. It was magical. With its diamond-shaped windows and geometric lines, the exterior looked like a giant glass sculpture in the middle of a bustling downtown.

But the inside—especially on gray, rainy days—was akin to what I imagined being within a cloud filled with books, floating on a sky island might feel like. And it was my work location of choice any time I had a full planning day. My second location of choice was the Seattle to Bremerton Island ferry, and only if I had thirty bucks burning a hole in my pocket and two hours of work to finish, which rarely happened.

My point was, no one gave me dirty looks for buying the cheapest thing on the menu and then hogging a table for four hours at the library. And, come on, sitting in a book-filled cloud on a sky island? What could be better than that?

I’d been working at my favorite table for a while, not noticing or keeping track of the time, when a person slid into the chair across from me and closed my laptop. I flinched, taken aback by the audacity of this interloper until my eyes connected with Amelia’s, her fingers lingering on my computer.

“What are you doing here?” I whispered, frowning at her wet rain jacket. She had the hood up.

My roommate leaned forward, clasping her hands in front of her on the table, her gaze serious business. “First and foremost, you need to remember that we have years of friendship under our belt. We’re basically soul mates.”

Confused by her sudden appearance and her cryptic words, I woke up my phone and checked the time. “It’s just after eleven. Are you here to grab lunch?”

She waved away my question, her eyes rimmed with something between worry and panic. “And you’re not allowed to hate your soul mate. It’s against soul mate law.”

I squinted at her. “What are you talking about?”

“Similar to bird law, soul mate law disallows hating your—”

“I heard you the first time. Why do you think I would hate you? And why are you stalking me in the middle of the day?” To be sure, I quickly turned over my shoulder to inspect the clock on the wall above the door. 11:03 a.m.

“Because I . . .” she wore a grimace and croaked, “I made a mistake.”

Cocking my head to the side, I glanced left and right to ascertain whether we were causing a disturbance. No one seemed to care. This was another great thing about living in Seattle. As long as you didn’t try to actively befriend anyone or get to know them, you could literally dance naked in the street and people wouldn’t give you a second glance.

Ask for directions? Folks would fall all over themselves trying to be helpful.

Drop your wallet? They’d track you down ten blocks to return it (ask me how I know).

Try to make chitchat or a friend connection? No. Nope. Nopity nope nope nope. I say good day, sir.

“What kind of mistake?” I asked, deciding my lesson plans could wait.

“I pressed the wrong button,” she whined quietly, threading, unthreading, and then rethreading her fingers.

I smiled at her nervousness. It was kinda cute. “What does that mean?”

Amelia let her hands drop. “That means you have to promise we’re okay, no matter what, and you won’t hate me.”

“Hate you for what?”

“Promise first,” she demanded.

“Fine, I promise.” That was easy, I couldn’t fathom a reality where I hated Amelia.

Earlier today, she’d made me breakfast and then proceeded to trash-talk Jeff, ranting about his shoddy treatment of me the night before. I hadn’t felt like discussing it—or anything else that had occurred—when we’d arrived home last night from Byron’s palatial house. But with tea and eggs this morning, she’d helped me feel better, telling me how awesome I was, that I deserved better than being overlooked and undervalued by Jeff Choi. I think I’d needed to hear those words.

After she’d left for work this morning, I’d played sad music and took a bath, coming to the conclusion that what happened with Jeff—him getting my hopes up and then ditching me for Lucy after a single text—had been a good thing.

Jeff had been the only man I’d met since high school that I really liked, could really see myself with past a few dates, and could actually see myself being intimate with. Maybe he was the good guy I thought he was. But he hadn’t been a good guy to me yesterday, and wasn’t that all that mattered?

I needed to let the idea of him go because that’s what he was. An idea. A sweet, funny, gregarious idea. But now it was time for me to shake off that idea. If or when I wanted a relationship, I needed to replace a real human person, with real human feelings who reciprocated mine. Not an idea.

And that was another thing!

Maybe I didn’t need a relationship, ever. Maybe I was destined to never have a romantic partner. Or maybe five or ten years from now, once my student loans were paid, when I had a little bit of free time, I should focus on having fun rather than searching for a long-term anything. Maybe I needed to stop being so serious, stop with the preconceived notions of what direction my life should take and take things as they came—starting with whatever presently had Amelia taking a monumentally deep breath, her expression stamped with anxiety.

“Okay. You promised,” she said, pulling out her phone. Navigating through a few screens, she held it out to me. “Remember your promise when I show you this.”

I shifted my focus from my friend to her phone, studying the video playing there. It was Byron, sitting on the couch, playing Super Mario Bros.

“This is the video from yesterday.” My stomach did a weird thing at the sight of him, and the sight of me crawling on all fours toward him, and what came after. I blinked away from the replay, before the part where I’d forgotten we were being filmed. “Why would I be mad at you about this? I knew you were filming.”

“Look harder.”

My forehead wrinkled, giving my attention back to her phone. I didn’t know what she wanted me to see, but now the video was repeating and—

“OH MY GOD!” I grabbed the phone. “This—this is—”

“Shh! Yes.” Now Amelia looked around, presumably to make certain none of the Seattleites surrounding us felt a disturbance in the politeness force. “Yes. I recorded it live. I’m so, so, so sorry.”

I leaned forward. “So that means it’s been—”

“Posted since last night. That’s right.” She covered her face again, groaning. “I’m so sorry.”

My eyes caught on the number of views, and I stood from the table, my chair scraping noisily on the linoleum. “ONE MILLION VIEWS?”

“Sorry!” she whispered loudly to someone at a nearby table. “We’ll just—we’re leaving.” Amelia grabbed my laptop and notebook and tilted her head toward the exit. “Time to go, and it was one point three the last time I checked. Now get your bag.”

Numbly, I lowered her phone and grabbed for my backpack and coat, fumbling with the strap. My fingers didn’t seem to work. She walked around the table and placed a hand on my back, helping to usher me out of the quiet area and waiting until we were standing in the hall to say, “I’m so sorry. It was an accident.”

“I can’t . . .” I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t think, I couldn’t move, I couldn’t speak. One point three million views. What must Byron think? “Oh crap,” I whispered, my gaze swinging around the interior of the library, unable to settle. “What about Byron? Does he know? How is he going to feel about this?”

“I don’t know if he knows. I’ve been trying to call him all morning. He won’t pick up his phone, and I’m frankly a little scared to leave a voice mail. Since he’s not on social media, he might not know.” Stuffing my laptop and notebook into my backpack, Amelia put the strap on my shoulder and took her cell phone from where I still gripped it.

I immediately covered my face like I could hide from this. My cheeks were hot. As much time as I’d spent this morning coming to terms with Jeff’s decisions last night, I’d spent ZERO seconds thinking about my ridiculous reaction to Byron’s performance. I wouldn’t allow myself to think about it. What was the point? He’d been pretending, acting, playing a part, and—as per usual—I’d left the interaction feeling like a fool.

“We have to delete it,” I rasped, my mouth dry, my brain on fire. “Before he sees it and replaces out, we have to delete it.”

“No! No. Don’t do that.” She pressed the phone to her chest.

“What? Why not?”

“Think for a second.” She pushed me toward the elevator. “If you delete it, it might become a whole thing. He’s a famous guy who millions of people are starving to know more about. He has no social media and suddenly he’s on TikTok with you? And this isn’t like your lab video from Friday, this is you two together, acting like you’re close friends crushing on each other. We need to call him—together—and tell him. But first we need him to answer his damn phone.” Amelia nodded at her own assertion while stabbing the elevator call button with her index finger.

“Call him? You want to call him together?” Oh God. I didn’t want to call him. I never wanted to talk to him again. “You don’t think he’ll want us to take it down ASAP? Like you said, millions of people want to know about him. Don’t you think he’ll view this as an invasion of privacy?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe?” I flinched back. “I think you mean, most certainly yes.”

“No.” She pulled me by the arm into the elevator and pressed all the right buttons. “We should call him, leave a voice mail together where we tell him exactly what happened, and ask what he wants to do about it. If you take it down, it might create more difficulty for him than if you left it up and let it run its course.”

I covered my face again, leaning against the wall for support. “I can’t believe this is happening.”

“Hey, on the bright side, you have over ten thousand new followers. That’s . . . something.”

I groaned. I would’ve given up every single one of my new followers if it would’ve somehow undone the posting of that video. What a nightmare.