Just Jelly Beans and Jealousy by Tammy Falkner

Just Jelly Beans and Jealousy
    By Tammy Falkner

    Sean

    “I don’t think this is a good idea,” I
protest, watching my best friend in the world as she paints her
face. I think she’s even more beautiful when she doesn’t wear
makeup at all. But even I’ll admit that this Lacey is smoking hot.
Her legs are a mile long, and her dress dips deep enough that the
round swells of her breasts are taunting me. Look at me, Sean, you
stupid fucker. You can’t touch them. Nanny, nanny, boo, boo.
    “It’s not like I’m offering up my virginity
to the highest bidder,” she protests, blinking her eyes as she
applies heavy coats of mascara to her lashes. The brush slides
slowly down the miniscule strands of hair, and she sits back, bats
her lashes, and looks at me over her shoulder in the mirror. She
sticks her tongue out.
    “You might as well be offering up your
virginity,” I grumble. Some college-age, hormone-ridden asshole
will guess the number of jelly beans in her jar, and the lucky
bastard will get to kiss her. He’ll get to kiss my girl. Well, she
doesn’t know she’s mine, but she has been for as long as I can
remember. I can’t recall a time when Lacey wasn’t in my life. And
the thought of some dickwad putting his mouth on her has my heart
tripping in my chest like it’s going run away without me.
    Lacey begins to paint her pretty, full,
perfectly kissable lips with a horridly sexy shade of bright red.
She smacks her lips together and makes a kissy face toward the
mirror. I can’t watch anymore. I just can’t. I fall back across the
bed in her dorm room and throw my arm across my eyes, groaning to
myself.
    It’s not fair that she can undo me with a
simple kiss at a mirror when she doesn’t even see me as a real,
live, flesh-and-blood man. She still sees me as the boy who grew up
next door to her. She seems to forget that I’m the one who held her
hair back as she threw up her first few shots of tequila. She
forgets that I’m the one who carried her luggage up three fucking
flights of stairs when I moved her into her dorm room. I’m the one
who hugged her when Dusty Forbes dumped her at the homecoming
dance. I’m the one who left my own date—who was a sure thing, by
the way—standing alone by the wall while I retrieved Lacey from the
ladies’ room and stroked her hair until she could breathe.
    She forgets that I saw her naked. All right,
so she wasn’t completely naked, but it was close enough. Whoever
designed bikinis with those little triangles that cover the naughty
bits should be given a fucking medal. Or buried six feet under. I’m
not sure which.
    The bed dips as she sits down on it, and she
lifts my arm from over my eyes. She’s so fucking beautiful with her
strawberry-blond hair hanging down over her shoulders. It looks
like she’s been rolling around in bed with someone, but I know she
hasn’t because I watched her work for an hour to get it to look
like that.
    Her hip touches mine, and she leans across
me, bracing herself on her forearm. She looks down at me but
doesn’t say anything. I go hard immediately. I’m glad she’s looking
at my face and not at my crotch because she would get the shock of
a lifetime if she glanced down right now. But she doesn’t think of
me like that. She said so. She said, loudly and clearly, that she
wouldn’t go there with me. She didn’t want to lose her best friend
if things didn’t work out. She needs me, she says, as more than an
ex-boyfriend. She needs me to be her best friend. So I am.
    But good God, I want her.
    “What?” I grouse.
    “Stop pouting,” she says quietly. She pushes
up off her propped arm and lays that hand on my chest, her elbow
digging into my belly as she looks at me.
    “Stop trying to impale me.” I grunt and
adjust her elbow. But I don’t want her to move. I like having her
this close. If this is all I can get, I’ll take it. I set my hand
on her naked knee and draw swirls on it with my thumb.
    She shakes her head,