Page 6 of The Best Friend Experiment
Maybe you had to venture into online dating for that.Ugh.Brooke couldn’t bear the thought of it. She didn’t want it bad enough to deal with weeding out all the creeps and jumping through hoops just to find out if someone was attractive or repulsive.
Brooke was convinced she just wasn’t cut out for coupledom. She’d tried dating—again and again and again—but it always felt like more trouble than it was worth. The physical intimacy could be a lot of fun—although too often it was a disappointment—but emotional intimacy never seemed to follow. As soon as a guy tried to get closer to her, she started itching to get away.
She couldn’t even put the blame on the men, necessarily. The last few had been perfectly nice, decent guys. It must be her fault.
The closest she’d ever come to cohabitating was when her last boyfriend had a burst pipe in his apartment building and had to stay with her for three weeks until it was fixed. They’d driven each other up the freaking wall. By the time Garrett’s apartment had been habitable again, they were both on their last nerve and ready to call it quits. Brooke had never been so happy to see the backside of a relationship, and she hadn’t been tempted to date again since.
She was even a little nervous about Dylan staying with her for a whole week. Sure, they’d been friends forever, but they hadn’t spent any real time together in years. Even when they used to hang out regularly, they’d never shared a living space. She could always go back to her own home at the end of the day.
What if he drove her bonkers? What if they’d grown apart so much since high school they didn’t have anything to talk about? What if he’d turned into a douche in New York? Or a dirtbag? Or a snob?
Which reminded her, she still needed to get some things for her apartment before he arrived next weekend.
The conversation at the table around her had returned to the subject of destination weddings, which Brooke had no opinions about, so she slipped her phone out of her pocket and navigated to the Pottery Barn website as she nibbled on a piece of English cheddar. If she was going to have a houseguest, she should probably upgrade some of her amenities.
“What are you looking at?” Olivia asked, leaning in to peer over Brooke’s shoulder.
Brooke looked up guiltily from her phone. “Towels?”
“Are you shopping?” Jinny asked. “Let me see!” She held out her hand and Brooke passed her the phone. “I like those,” Jinny declared with an approving nod. “Their towels are really nice and thick.”
“I like that they look like fancy hotel towels,” Brooke said. They were a lot nicer than her current towels—and a lot more expensive too.
“Didn’t you just buy new towels last year?” Olivia asked. “You did! The cute ones with the whales all over them.”
Brooke accepted her phone back from Jinny. “Those are Target towels and I got them in the kids’ department. I was thinking of investing in something a little more grown-up before Dylan gets here.” At the time, she’d thought whale towels would be cute—but now they seemed too juvenile for company.
“Who’s Dylan?” Esther asked.
“Just a friend from high school,” Brooke answered, putting her phone away. “He’s coming to LA next week and he’s going to stay with me.”
Cynthia made a face. “Why are you buying new towels for a man? He’s just going to leave them in a heap on the floor with his dirty gym clothes and socks.”
“You’d understand if you’d seen this guy,” Olivia told her. “He’s next-level gorgeous.”
“Oh my gosh, is this Hot Butt we’re talking about?” Penny asked, leaning forward. “He’s coming here?”
Brooke blinked at her. “Hotwhat?”
Penny reached for her wineglass. “The underwear model, right?”
“How do you know about him?” Brooke was almost positive she’d never mentioned Dylan to Penny. She didn’t talk about himthat much, did she?
“I might have told Penny about him,” Olivia admitted with a shrug.
“And we totally stalked his Insta too. Hoo boy!” Penny fanned herself with her hand.
Olivia grinned. “And then Penny started calling him Hot Butt because of that one pic where—”
“Yes, I know the one,” Brooke said, cutting her off. She’d tried to block out the memory of that one particular photo of Dylan lying facedown on a bed, completely butt-ass naked. She preferred to maintain a dichotomy between her feelings for her childhood friend Dylan and her feelings about the disturbingly hot man in his Instagram feed.
“Because he’s got such a hot butt,” Penny explained.
“Yeah, I figured it out,” Brooke said, wishing everyone would stop talking about Dylan’s butt.
“It’s all round and shiny.” Penny sighed dreamily. “Like two perfect, ripe apples.”
“That’s all Photoshop,” Brooke felt the need to point out. Dylan didn’t actually look like that in real life.
