Life's Too Short (The Friend Zone #3)(44)

She was right about a lot of things.

Vanessa made me different. Better. She made me see the world through a new lens—or a lens that I’d forgotten existed.

It was like I was a kid again. We played like children. Had squirt gun fights in her living room, played the floor is lava. When it was negative five outside, we boiled water and threw it off the balcony to make fog. We blew bubbles to watch them freeze, made snow angels on the roof, had snowball fights that made me want to fall into a snow drift in our coats and kiss her.

I laughed until my stomach hurt, noticed the beauty around me, and marveled at the fact that I’d stopped seeing it in the first place. I felt like I’d been half-dead and I didn’t even know it, walking through my life in a sleepy fog until she’d woken me up.

Vanessa had said once that money can’t make you happy unless you know what you want. And it was becoming clearer and clearer to me by the moment what that was. With every day that I spent with Vanessa and Grace, I became more sure of it. But the thing that I wanted couldn’t be bought. I had to earn it.

I just didn’t know if I could.

I was still in the conference room scanning the Bueller police report when Becky made a shrieking noise from across the table. Becky being dramatic wasn’t usually cause for me to look up from what I was doing, so I didn’t see Vanessa come in with Grace in her stroller until she cleared her throat in the doorway.

“You must be Becky?” she said, smiling at my hypnotized paralegal over my shoulder.

My heart skipped at the unexpected sight of her.

She was beautiful. She was always beautiful, but I hadn’t been braced to see her.

She had on a purple sweater I’d never seen her wear before, and her hair was down and curled. It gave me a twinge of pride that this woman had just walked through my office to see me.

I got up, grinning. “Hey, I didn’t know you were coming.”

“Since I’m not hanging out with you tonight, I thought I’d come down to surprise you and bring you lunch.” She held up a paper bag.

I stood there, just smiling at her like an idiot until Becky made a whimpering noise from behind me. “I’m gonna go have lunch at my desk,” she squeaked.

She clutched a jumbled pile of paperwork to her chest and grinned at Vanessa like a lunatic as she edged past her and closed the door.

Vanessa beamed at me. “You know, you’re even hotter in your office.”

I laughed.

Grace smiled at me from her stroller. She’d been doing that now for the last few days. Every time she had her pacifier in and I made her smile, it popped out and she’d beam up at me, all gums and twinkling eyes. And if I tickled her, she giggled. I couldn’t get enough of it. I loved playing with her.

I reached down to scoop her into my arms and nuzzled her with my nose. She had on a tiny blue fleece onesie with snowflakes on it and she smelled like baby powder and Vanessa’s perfume.

She smelled like home.

She put a fat little hand up, and I bit her fingers with my lips and she made happy giggling noises. I couldn’t stop smiling.

I suddenly understood what it felt like to have family come see you at work, like a wife and kids. I’d never had that jolt of happiness at seeing someone I cared about when I wasn’t expecting it. I wanted to hold Grace while I walked Vanessa around to show her my desk. Introduce her to Marcus. Revive Becky and formally introduce her too.

“What are we eating?” I asked, looking up at Vanessa.

She was watching me holding Grace. I couldn’t make out her expression, but there was something distant about it.

I nodded over to the table. “Come sit with me.” I moved some files with my free hand and cleared a spot for her.

“I got us Thai food,” she said, setting down the bag she’d brought. “Oh, and before I forget to tell you, I can’t hang out on Monday. I just found out.” She looked at me and put her bottom lip into a pout.

I felt my face fall. “Why not?”

“A work thing came up,” she said, reaching into the bag and pulling out to-go containers.

I had to force down my disappointment. That was two nights that I wasn’t seeing her.

“Do you want me to watch Grace?” I asked, hoping she couldn’t hear the letdown in my tone.

She opened a container of fried rice and scooped it onto a plate. “You don’t have to. I was going to ask Yoga Lady.”

“I can do it,” I said, putting Grace down in her stroller and taking the chair next to Vanessa’s.

She shrugged. “All right. If you want to. I didn’t want to assume.” She finished serving my food and slid it over to me.

I looked at her while she was making her own plate. She wasn’t paying attention.

She’d dyed the ends of her hair last week for a video. They were blue and purple to match her sweater. It looked exotic. She had a little dimple on her cheek that came out when she smiled. Soft freckles along the bridge of her nose, long lashes.

Beautiful.

I felt that thing happening, that urge to keep looking at her for longer than was appropriate. It was something that I’d been dealing with almost constantly for the last week or so.

I felt like a teenage boy panting over some girl in my gym class. I wanted to touch her. All the time. When she sat next to me on the couch, I wanted to put an arm around her. I wanted to hold her hand at the grocery store, pull her onto my lap when she’d come see what I was working on at my desk at home. It was ridiculous how strong the impulse was.