Lines We Cross by Marika Ray

Author:Marika Ray [Ray, Marika]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781950141166
Publisher: Marika Ray Publishing
Published: 2020-03-19T04:00:00+00:00

“I’m just saying it’s a classic,” I told her, arms crossed over my chest.

She looked up at the ceiling and laughed, her hair a flaming mess across my mattress where we were lying, having just finished watching The Princess Bride. It only took us three hours to set up one dresser, on which my TV currently sat. I didn’t have cable yet, so I’d hooked it up to an old DVD player and found a movie in my boxes.

“I’m not going to argue that. I’m just saying it’s not in the top three funniest movies of all time.”

Rae sat up and grabbed another slice of pizza out of the box we’d almost finished. One new thing I learned about Nickel Bay was the existence of delivery pizza from A Nickel Ain’t a Lot of Dough, nicknamed Dough by the locals. It was delicious. Then again, Rae informed me the owner was Dom Scoricelli, an Italian-born New Yorker who moved to Nickel Bay a few years ago. According to Rae, he had some sordid history about loving and losing a woman and that’s what drove him to the West Coast. I thought maybe she was just sniffing out a romance where there was none, but who knew.

“Listen, as your friend, I gotta say. You need to reevaluate your favorite movie.” Watching her devour pizza was both adorable and disconcerting. A man shouldn’t say he was interested in a woman because of the way she ate with gusto, should he?

She chewed her bite thoughtfully and then twisted to make eye contact with me. “Are we, Max?”

I rolled and lifted onto one elbow, my arm brushing her thigh. “Are we what?”

“Friends?” she asked quietly.

I felt like that guy on a gameshow who needed to call a friend or poll the audience for the right answer. That was a trick question. The idea of being friends with Rae appealed to me because I genuinely liked her. I liked her drive, her obvious love for friends and family, and the way she cared about people, even if she was mad at them. But the idea of only being friends with Rae?

Like a knife to the heart.

The idea might be up there with never playing baseball again. Might even be worse since I’d had years to enjoy baseball before it was taken away. I’d never had time with Rae. To show her how I felt or to explore where this might lead. Baseball was looking like my past and now Rae might not even be my future either.

I put my hand on her knee and promised what she needed to hear, even as it killed the hope in my chest. “Always friends.”

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