My Favorite Half-Night Stand by Christina Lauren

chapter two

reid

I’ve never hooked up with a friend before . . . is that what’s happening right now?

I mean, it seems like it might be. Millie is being herself but a little . . . more. Giving me a shy smile while her eyes wander a lot more than I’m used to, then twisting her fingers in mine when I held her hand in the car . . .

It’s like unlocking a window and letting the wind blow it wide open. If Millie is flirting, then what? Should I flirt back? This is a very The Usual Suspects moment—I had no idea Millie was this person.

Are we doing this?

I blatantly check out her backside when she ducks into the fridge to grab us each a can of sparkling water. It feels nearly clinical the way I study her.

Objectively, it is a fantastic ass.

It’s just that it’s Millie’s ass. Initially—briefly—she was known as Dustin’s Millie. Later—and better—she was known as one-of-the-guys Millie, Our Millie. Now, it appears, she’s Drunk Flirty Millie.

I’ve looked at her ass before, of course. I’ve looked at all of her, frankly, but I’ve done it in the dissociated way all guys look at women—almost without realizing we’re doing it. Casually, too, and entirely due to the habit of proximity: while helping her out of her coat, while holding her beer as she takes off a sweater, while examining her outside a changing room when she asks whether she should buy a particular pair of jeans. Regardless, no matter how objectively pretty she is, Millie Morris has always been off-limits.

But mostly I think she’s been off-limits because she’s never shown any particular interest in any of us.

She clears her throat and I drag my eyes back up to her face. Which, it’s fair to say, may be the best part of her: the enormous bright green eyes, the sarcastic mouth, the splash of freckles across her nose and cheeks. She’s beautiful, yes, but I’ve never truly veered into Is she sexy? territory until tonight.

“I was checking out your ass.”

“And?” She leans a hip against the counter and gives me a smile that’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen from her. Most of her smiles are openmouthed, delighted, often given through a choking laugh as she quickly swallows a mouthful of beer. Other smiles are half-baked, amused at us while we try to get a rise out of her. The rare smile is triumphant—when she gives us the perfect amount of shit. They’re rare only because she so infrequently shows her cards.

But this one is a little like being told a secret. She seems to agree, because she bites her bottom lip halfway through it, like she’s trying to put it away.

I think she wants a rating on her backside, but it’s probably clear from my expression that I’d give her high marks. “What’s with you tonight?”

A bare shoulder lifts and drops. “I’m tipsy.”

This makes me bark out a laugh. “ ‘Tipsy’? I’d be amazed if Chris has any wine left in his house.”

“Don’t blame that on me,” she says. “You’re the one who went and got tenure. Besides, Ed took down two bottles by himself, and Alex was pouring mine.”

“Ed’s blood is ninety percent alcohol.”

“And ten percent Cheeto dust.”

She moves over to me, waters in hand, and the only way to describe her gait is sashay-y. It’s so dramatic it makes me start to laugh. We’ve known each other for more than two years, and I never would have predicted this playful, seductive side of her. But the sound is cut off in my throat when she puts the waters down on the end table near me and puts her hands squarely on my chest.

Anticipation comes alive beneath my skin.

“Mills.”

“Reids.”

Speaking through the pressurized air in my throat, I say, “What are you doing?”

“Seducing you.” She lifts one hand and draws a pinky down the side of her face, pulling away a strand of auburn hair. “Is it working?”

I’ve never had reason to check myself around her before, and the answer easily slides out of me, unfiltered: “Yes. But why?”

Another shrug. “I haven’t had sex in a while. You were doing dishes earlier.”

“Dishes?”

“It was sexy. And you stretched. I saw stomach muscles and happy trail.”

“Oh, well, of course we should end up here.”

She growls a little as she stretches to press her nose into my neck, inhaling. “I like how you smell.”

I freeze. When she says this, it feels a little like standing at the static center of a spinning room. Again: Millie. This is Millie Morris. Goofball. Colleague. Stealer of my Stanford sweatshirt. Woman who shares my exact tastes in beer. The glue of our circle of friends. “You do?”

“Yeah,” she says, and blazes heat into me with the press of her mouth over my pulse point. “It’s familiar, but I never realized until now how nice it is up close.”

While she kisses up my neck, I’m dragged back two years, when Dustin brought her along with him to meet up with the rest of us for drinks. Chris, Alex, and I thought he seemed like a cool guy; maybe he’d be another colleague we could end up hanging with. Academia is hard as hell, and it helps to have a community of people who get the schedule, understand the pressures. But within a half hour, Dustin was playing darts with some surfers, and Millie got us all drunk on car bombs and dirty jokes. From that night on, Millie seemed more ours than his. I know they ostensibly broke up because their schedules weren’t compatible, and they hit a plateau—also he was basically a dick—but I sometimes wonder how much her friendship with us contributed to the breakup.

It was a friendship that came at the perfect time. I was still reeling from Isla calling off our engagement, was still finding my friend clan at the university. Chris, Alex, Ed, and I hung out, but it was spontaneous—never something we planned or assumed. As soon as Millie joined our little gang, though, being together became the default: barbecues at Chris’s when it was nice out. Football at Millie’s on Sundays with a big TV and best furniture. Game night at Ed’s. Inside jokes and familiarity. We fell into a rhythm and built a scaffold of community. Before Millie we got together when we randomly bumped into each other; because of her we now have lunch every Monday and Wednesday, and I can’t imagine a week without it.

I fucking love all of them, but romance wasn’t even on the table. Now it’s just me and Millie here, standing so close our chests touch. I’m trying not to contemplate what the others would think right now.

When I focus again, it’s hard to think of anything; Millie has been busy. One finger is tucked into my belt loop and her lips are hovering near my chin, skirting along my jaw. It’s decision time. All I have to do is tilt my face down to her, and we’ll be kissing. I’m already getting hard, and the question whether this is a great or disastrous decision is growing cloudier.

“Are we going to do this?” This time I say it out loud. Her breath, against my mouth, is sweet with wine and the apple Jolly Rancher she swiped from Chris’s counter on our way out the door.

“I really, really want sex tonight,” she admits. “Specifically, I’d like sex with you, but if you’re weirded out by this, then it’s cool if you leave and I dive into the drawer of sin in my bedroom.”

I haven’t exactly made up my mind, but my lips pass over hers once—just to see—then again, and it’s not weird, not even a little. It’s soft and easy. My pulse taps out an impatient beat inside me. “The drawer of sin?”

“Sex toys.”

“No,” I say, kissing her again, “I translated that. I mean . . . you have an entire drawer of them?”

“It’s not a huge drawer.” Her mouth comes over mine, firmer now, and then she grins into the kiss. “But yeah. It’s full.”

Wow, her lips are unbelievable—playful, soft, immediately addicting. It takes almost no time for her to transition from Millie, my friend into Millie, sexpot, and for a tiny flicker, I desperately hope that we can transition back just as easily.

But then her hands come up under my shirt, and I hope instead that time snags on this night, so it doesn’t ever end.

Her palms are soft slides of heat, up over my stomach, to my chest. Fingernails teasing, fingertips mapping every inch of me. Her sounds vibrate against my lips, into my mouth. My shirt is up and gone. Her hands work madly at my belt, my button, my zipper, until my jeans are a puddle of black at my feet.

All the thoughts we shouldn’t have about our friends are unleashed—how she kisses, what sounds she makes, does she take charge, is she fun?—and by her grin I can tell the same thing files through her thoughts. What a relief to find all the unexpected ways we’re compatible.

I like her little gasp when she digs into my boxers and feels me. I like the sneaky smile that presses against mine. “Reid. I’m touching your dick.”

“I know.”

“I like it,” she whispers.

“Coincidence? I do, too.”

She giggles, pulling her hand out of my boxers and cupping her hands at my waist while she walks backward, leading me down the hall to her bedroom. She kisses my collarbones, my neck, my jaw.

Millie is easy to undress: just a tug of fabric up over her head, and then she’s standing there in nothing but her underwear. I’ve always semiconsciously suspected she had a great chest, but now I get to confirm with my eyes, and hands, and mouth. I’ve always appreciated that she likes to swim, that she eats pretty well—but now I get to see the definition along her arms, her stomach, the strength of her thighs. Her hair is a mess; her mouth is a little swollen from me already. I haven’t had sex in months, and I’m momentarily overwhelmed—a starving man at a buffet, unsure where to start.

“You’re overthinking something,” she says, and then moves closer, hooking her thumbs into the waistband of my boxers. “Don’t think.”

I twist a strand of her hair around my index finger. “Should we establish some ground rules?”

When Millie pulls away slightly, her eyes are dark and heavy. “If you want?”

“I just feel like we should.”

Her lips return to my neck, sucking. “Okay, one, we both come.”

I pull back and look at her. “Seriously? That needs to be said?”

A wry curve tugs at her mouth. “Oh, you’d be surprised.”

“I’ve got you,” I say, kissing her smile. “But my rule is we don’t tell the guys.” Ed is so genuinely optimistic, he’d probably be happy for us even if it’s just one night of fun. But Alex is a smart-ass who would give us unending shit and Chris would be horrified.

It’s her turn to pull back in surprise. “That needs to be said?”

“I feel like they’d be jealous, I guess.”

“Of me, obviously. Clearly everyone wants to bang Reid.”

This makes me laugh. “Clearly.”

“So, you’re not telling Chris? You tell him everything.”

She’s right, but he would never be on board for this kind of impulsive decision. Chris is the most intentional, cautious person I’ve ever known. “I swear I won’t.”

Her hand slides over my stomach, and a fingertip traces the line of hair above my boxers. “Any other rules?

“I have condoms,” I say. “But they’re in my car.”

“I have some in my drawer of sin.”

I can hear the smile in her voice, but the blunt mention of something so physically related to the act makes her neck go warm under my mouth.

Her bra comes off with a little slip of my fingers, and I lose even more of my plan to savor this when I fit my hand around the warm curve of her breast. “What do you like?”

“Everything,” she says, quickly adding, “except anal.”

“Wow.” I pull back, looking down at her. “Never mind. If that’s off the table then I gotta go.”

She pinches my nipple, laughing at my high-pitched shriek.

“I was kidding.” I punctuate my point by pushing her underwear down her hips.

“I know.” Her mouth slides over my shoulder. “But I wasn’t.”

“I’m not really into it, either.”

“Really?” she says, and I love the genuine way she searches my eyes. I’ve never been this close to her before, and she’s certainly never looked at me like this—with the combined tenderness of best friend and lover. “I assumed you were into everything.”

“When did you assume this?”

Her hand comes around me, stroking slowly, and my mind goes all wavy. “You know. Just . . . random Reid thoughts.”

“While we were at Gio’s last week, you looked at me and thought, ‘Huh. I bet he likes anal.’ ”

“I think it was when you were eating a club sandwich at lunch Wednesday,” she jokes.

I laugh, and it fuses with a groan when she leans forward to drag her teeth along my neck. “I swear, Ed needs to never wear that shirt again.”

“The white one?” she asks. “Chest hair extravaganza?”

“It’s just so thin . . .”

I bend to kiss her throat, her shoulder, and then I forget what I was saying because she’s pulling me down onto the bed, and her nipple is in my mouth and she’s stroking me and I probably couldn’t remember my own name if asked.

“Is this weird?” I murmur into her skin. “Why are we talking about the guys while I’m doing this?”

“I like talking,” she says, and digs her free hand into my hair. “I like talking to you while—”

Her voice falls away when I suck.

I half expect it to be like this the entire night—easy conversation like we’ve always had, but through kisses, touches, even through the sex itself. But when her hand finds a certain rhythm, it shifts something over inside me, something more instinct than conscious thought. I make my way down her body, she later makes her way down mine, and when she finally comes back up over me, on top of me, she looks directly into my eyes as she sinks down and I wonder during the first gasping burst of sensation why we haven’t been doing this every day for the past two years.

I leave Millie’s around two, when she’s fast asleep and starfished across ninety percent of the mattress. I kiss her cheek when I go; it feels weird to leave after only half a night together—but I have to think it would be even weirder to wake up with your best friend naked in your bed.

I didn’t have much to drink, but the next morning I feel hungover anyway. It’s a cocktail of the light-headed relief that comes on the heels of a night of great sex . . . mixed with the nauseating anxiety over a fight with a friend.

Not that Millie and I are fighting. I mean, I can’t even imagine Millie angry. She wasn’t that drunk, but if there’s anything that could piss her off, it’d be the perception that I took advantage of her last night.

Chris’s office is in the building next to mine, and just inside the entrance closest to the campus coffee kiosk. This proximity means that he’s lucky enough to be able to slip out and back in for coffee without running into fifteen colleagues in the hall, but it also means that people are constantly walking past his office, on their way to or from the kiosk, interrupting his workday.

Like I do now, stepping through the open door and into his office. “Hey.”

For a chemistry professor, Chris keeps his office impressively tidy. There are no teetering stacks of dusty lab notebooks or piles of outdated textbooks being used as makeshift tables. He has a small plant on his desk, a jar of pencils, a few molecular models here and there, but—much like the man himself—Chris’s office is much more put-together than any of the rest of us seem to manage.

He looks up, pulling his glasses off and setting them down near his keyboard. “Hey. I assume you guys got home okay last night?”

I expected him to ask, but the way the question comes out so immediately feels almost accusatory—almost knowing. The answer bursts out of me, a touch hysterically: “Of course we did.”

He stares at me a second longer before he reaches for the paper takeaway cup I’ve put down on his desk. “Cool. Thanks for the coffee.”

Out of all of us, Chris is the most intuitive, and—because he and I first met in graduate school nearly a decade ago—he also knows me better than anyone else. If even a flicker of last night passes through my thoughts, he’ll see it. But maybe that’s exactly why I’m here. Millie and I drove a mallet into our easy rhythm, creating a fault line that will either lie dormant or break everything into pieces. I need to know I can still act normal . . . where normal means I pretend the fault line is not directly underfoot.

“You good?” Chris asks.

“Oh, yeah.” I stare with intense focus at his bookshelves, specifically studying a worn copy of Wade’s Organic Chemistry, and finally, the moment snaps free. “Just wanted to come by and say thanks again for hosting last night.”

“Of course, man. I’m really happy for you.”

My gaze swings higher up on his bookshelf, to some molecular models, some awards on small pedestals, and . . . “Nice cock.”

He groans, standing so he can reach for the rooster-shaped stress ball and toss it into the trash. “You have my students in on this rooster thing now.”

“A student gave you cock?”

He jerks his attention past me, out into the hallway, before giving me the expression that speaks to the mental murder happening inside his brain. “Think you could keep your voice down?”

I grin. “I can try.”

“What do you have going on today?”

Checking my watch, I tell him, “I’m giving our department seminar in thirty. Wanna come?”

“No.”

“Then I’ll see you at lunch.”

I’m halfway through my fifty-minute presentation on optic nerve inflammation when the back door to the theater creaks loudly open the way it always does when someone unfamiliar with it tries it from the wrong side. Heads turn, and my chest suffers a weird, painful hiccup as Millie steps in. Dressed in black jeans and a deep green sweater, she tiptoes down the aisle with a paper bag in her hand and a dramatically apologetic expression for the disruption of her entrance. Millie has never come to one of my seminars; given that I’m in neuroscience and she’s in criminology, she’d have no reason to. How did she even know where to find me? Maybe she wants a word with me afterward . . . ? The thought makes me uneasy.

Last night was good, right? I mean, to me, last night was incredible. We had sex twice. We talked for an hour in between, about all the kind of stuff we always talk about: Ed’s latest lab disasters, Millie’s upcoming lecture at Princeton, whether Alex will get tenure this year. Nothing too personal, nothing deep. Eventually pillow talk turned into touching, which turned into me climbing over her and words falling away. Before last night, I couldn’t have even imagined the quiet, rhythmic sounds she would make, but I can’t seem to get them out of my head today.

Glancing at the slide up on the large screen, I find my place again. As the only retinal specialist in the department, I try to keep my presentations sharp, interesting, and accessible. Millie knows my biggest gripe—that the rest of the neuroscience department likes to forget that the retina is part of the brain—and I catch her grinning when an image of the central nervous system comes up, with the retina highlighted right up front. The smile unknots the seed of tension in me.

This is Millie. She’s unflappable. Of course we’re okay.

In fact, she meets me halfway up the aisle as everyone is filing out and pulls a small pastry box out of the bag, handing it over. Inside, there is a cupcake with a unicorn sculpted out of frosting.

“What’s this for?” I look up at her. “We celebrated my tenure last night, and my birthday is still a month away.”

Millie grins. “It’s the morning-after cupcake.” When I don’t figure out a response fast enough, she adds in a whisper, “It’s a good job with the orgasms cupcake.” Pausing, she looks down at my hands. “And it’s an Are we okay? cupcake.”

This rare display of vulnerability tilts me sideways, so I close the lid and boop her nose with my index finger, the way she always does to us. “You know we’re fine.”

“Then come to Cajé with me.” She tugs my hand. “I need caffeination.”

“I already had some . . . with Chris . . .”

But she’s already turned to head up the aisle. I should have led with the more compelling I need to get into the lab explanation, because to Millie, work always comes first, but there’s no such thing as too much coffee.

Cajé is a coffee shop right near campus and it’s generally populated by the scruffiest representation of our student body. I’d wager there are as many white people with dreadlocks outside on the patio as there are baristas inside. And, although I know Millie can slob it up with the best of them on the weekend, right now in her fitted jeans, heels, and cashmere sweater, she stands out like a spray of flowers in a field of dry grass.

Without even bothering to ask what I want—she knows, anyway—she leans in and orders two medium Americanos, extra hot, and then, in a rushed flurry, points to a miraculously empty table for me to snag.

I wipe the table off with a couple of napkins, trying to calm the unfamiliar anxiety I’m feeling about an upcoming conversation with Millie.

My best friend, Millie, who puts moisturizing facial masks on me while we watch our favorite 1990s gangster movies and generously eats all the melon in my fruit salads.

With two steaming cups in her hands, she walks toward me at the table, and I have to make a conscious effort to look normal, which I’m pretty sure negates any potential for success.

This is so weird.

I mean, it’s impossible to ignore the way her jeans curve over her hips, and then I’m boomeranged into wondering whether I would have noticed this before last night.

Sitting wordlessly, she smiles, touching her cheek, and the motion catches my eye as she drags a few wayward strands of hair behind her ear. There’s a new, bare honesty here, an unspoken awareness captured by eye contact and screaming, We had sex! My gaze slides down to her neck and trips over something there. I don’t think I would normally notice the tiny red bruise on her throat if I hadn’t been the one to inflict it.

She notices me noticing and covers it with a fingertip. “I’ll put some more makeup on it before lunch.”

That’s right. It’s Wednesday, one of two days each week we all meet at Summit Café, near the library.

“It’s cool. It’s small,” I say. “I mean, sorry.”

“Oh, don’t be sorry.”

The sex is front and center now. Millie stares directly at me and it’s a lot, having her undivided attention like this; it always is. Only now instead of simply enjoying it, my mind toggles between the calming surety of her expression and the memory of her eyes falling closed in relief when she moved on top of me and found that buckling moment of pleasure.

“You sure you’re okay today?” I ask.

She nods decisively. “One hundred percent. You?”

“Same.” I wonder whether she’s also having these disruptive flashes of recollection. I don’t exactly know how to extricate us from this topic, but letting the words “It was really good, though” tumble out of my mouth is probably not the way to do it.

She could make this awkward—and it’s absolutely what I expect her to do because making us uncomfortable is Millie’s favorite pastime. But she’s feeling generous, apparently. “Of course it was good. We’re both amazing in bed.” When I laugh, she adds, “But . . . we’re still on the same page, right? About . . . us being friends?”

“We’re on the same page.”

And we are. For as good as last night was, I don’t want to be with Millie that way again. At least, I don’t think I do. I definitely shouldn’t. We’re too good at being smart-ass friends to be very good tender lovers. I can’t really imagine Millie like that, anyway.

She reaches across, squeezing my hand. “You’re my best friend, Reid.”

“You’re going to make me cry.”

With a laugh, she shoves my hand away. “But seriously, I can’t do the dating-a-colleague thing again. What a disaster he was.”

“To be fair,” I say, grateful for this easy entrance back into normal, “his name is Dustin.”

She quickly swallows a sip of coffee to protest this. “There are some who might say Reid is an especially pretentious name.”

With a hand to my chest, I feign insult. “No one says that.”

Millie reaches out, curling her hand around the forearm of a passing student. “Sorry. Quick question. Is ‘Reid’ a douchey name?”

The guy doesn’t even hesitate or bother to look at me. “Totally.”

Millie releases him with a smug smile and brings her mug to her lips.

I mirror her movement with my own mug. “He just said yes because he was intimidated by the obvious, hot professor randomly grabbing him.”

“Be my guest,” she says, spreading a generous hand. “Ask someone yourself.”

“Excuse me,” I say, stopping a female student with a raised finger. “Would you say the name ‘Reid’ is pretentious?”

She’s very pretty—soft brown skin, a halo of curly hair—and when our eyes meet, she flushes. “Is that your name?”

“It’s immaterial,” I say, softening it with what Millie calls my Flirty Eyes.

“I mean,” the girl says, “I don’t think it’s a pretentious name.”

I thank her and she wanders off when I turn back to Millie. “See?”

“Her answer sounded like a nice way of saying, ‘The consensus is that name is douchey.’ ”

I laugh. “Her answer was a clear no.”

“If it was a no, it’s because she wants to fuck you.”

The word fuck coming out of her mouth does strange things to my pulse. She says it all the time, but just last night she gasped it into my ear, right before telling me she was close.

Again.

I try to make my voice sound as wounded as possible. “I had no idea you think my name is douchey.”

Millie is not falling for it. She grins over the top of my mug. “I don’t, really.”

We fall into an easy silence and I try not to think about Sex Millie too much or study Friend Millie too closely. She’s completely rebounded. Millie really is as constitutionally solid as she seems.

And holy shit, she’s just as fun in bed as I would have guessed.

“So,” she says out of the quiet, “in the interest of returning to Best Friendship, we should probably find other dates for commencement.”

“Looks like it.”