The Decoy Girlfriend(81)
Her throat burns like she’s just downed six shots.
Once she can swallow again, Freya says gently, “It’s not about pretending or forgetting. You can acknowledge that everything you’re letting go once meant something to you. But whatever threads tied you to them? They vanished the moment your personal and professional situations changed. Some were cut, others just weakened with time and lack of care. It’s not your fault. Sometimes people just outgrow each other.”
“I didn’t outgrow them,” he says automatically, almost defensive.
She gets why he thinks moving on means resigning himself to a haunted house of memories he doesn’t know anymore, but she needs him to know it won’t always hurt this way.
Freya shakes her head. “It’s not a failing, baby. It’s . . . it’s life. Unscripted, ugly, unpredictable life. You don’t always get a reason, closure, whatever. People leave. But sometimes they stay.”
And I want to prove myself to you. I want to be someone you can trust to stay, she doesn’t allow herself to say, but it lingers in the subtext.
She doesn’t know if that’s something in her power to promise, anyway, no matter how much she means it. They haven’t known each other that long, and any number of things could happen between now and the premiere. It’s strange that she lives for romantic slow burns in fiction but craves something faster and more frantic in real life.
He half smiles. “Got any tips about evicting and possibly exorcising really shitty emotional ghosts?”
“Actually, yes.” Freya meets his eyes. “Don’t accept anything less than what you deserve. Better friends will come along. Tell yourself that when it comes to your heart, compromise is never an option. You deserve to have true friends in your life who champion you. Not because they’re keeping track of tit-for-tat obligatory reciprocity but because it’s important to them to be there for you the way you’re always there. Having needs doesn’t make you needy.”
It hurts her heart to see how much Taft gives away to people who treat it like nothing. He goes all out with the people he loves, both with big gestures and quiet consideration, and he doesn’t expect it back in return. He’s learned to live with so little from others, and that ends now.
“You’re going to meet someone who is going to be”—Freya’s breath catches—“so soft and gentle with your heart. That person is going to make you believe in how much more you deserve. Because you do, Taft. You deserve all the good things. A heart like yours deserves nothing but the best.”
There’s a caged emotion in Taft’s eyes, a little wild and lion bright, like he’s never been this seen before and doesn’t know what to do with it. He’s such a good guy, and it kills Freya that his friendship and loyalty have gone unnoticed and unappreciated all this time. Her chest burns with hot coals. Givers need to set boundaries, because god knows the takers don’t have any.
“Experiences can bring you together,” she says. “Nothing bonds like-minded people more than going through the same rite of passage together.” Being a writer showed her that. “But sometimes, once you don’t have those shared, relatable experiences anymore, friendship can take a nosedive.”
Writing showed her that, too. Success—or the lack of—often showed you who your real friends were. Those who hung around hoping some of your star power would rub off. Who ditched you once they eclipsed you by some unknown metric that only mattered to them.
With a pang, she realizes how much she lucked out with Steph, Mimi, Ava, and Hero. It wasn’t until she met someone so deserving of friendship as Taft that it truly sunk in that she’d taken her friends for granted. That she did them a disservice by not letting them be there for her. Didn’t even let them try.
“The good outweighs the bad,” says Taft. “Sometimes.”
“Does it, though?”
He looks wounded in a way she never wants to see on his face again. She doesn’t want to be another person who hurts him, and she knows that by being so blunt right now she’s taking a battering ram to his already bruised heart, but he’s holding on to people who have long let him go. Now it’s his turn to walk away.
Biting her lip, she leans in to slant her mouth over his. Soft and teasing. Breaking the kiss before he can deepen it, she scrunches her fingers in his curls and keeps their foreheads together.
“We’re used to bit-part friends in our lives turning into headline names, but it can go the other way, too,” Freya whispers against his lips, each word moving like a hungry kiss even though they aren’t touching. His mouth mirrors hers; she’s not even sure he realizes what he’s doing. “Sometimes the leading people become cameos ghosting in and out of your universe. Maybe, in the end, so small they don’t even get their name in the credits.”
“Freya Lal,” he states, somber as a sacrament.
A lightning strike zaps down her spine. The moment between them is charged and new. He doesn’t usually say her name like that, all pronouncement-like and irrefutable and with a sexy trace of barely-there Texan drawl that he’s all but shed.
It’s the kind of voice that makes her still with anticipation, quirking a brow as she waits for the rest.
Taft smiles with his eyes. “You’ll always be a headline name to me.”