The Carrero Heart - Beginning (Friends to Lovers)

I don’t know even how to react to that, and all I can feel are Natasha’s trusting eyes on us, as we both act like guilty kids whose mom just caught them dry humping on the couch. I grab it from him as we both catch it and click on any button my finger hits. Only it’s worse, and it is actual porn this time, with an up-close view of someone’s ass being violated by the world’s biggest penis. Arrick has one of those dumb TV’s with internet crap and buttons for crazy things. It would seem he has a direct link to porn on this damn demon-like contraption, which actually surprises me. He doesn’t seem like the porn type. I throw him a serious questioning, if a little accusatory, frown as he slaps a hand over my eyes, covering them.

“For the love of God.” Arrick groans and slides the thing from my fingers as I push his other off my face, to do some damage limitation. Flicking it off whatever crazy menu I have navigated onto and switching to Pulp Fiction instead, a movie favorite. I can literally feel my face flaming with shame. He just raises a brow my way and shrugs unapologetically as though to say ‘yeah, men like porn’.

Natasha looks wholly uncomfortable and probably traumatized, not that I blame her. She does look like she is a missionary position girl, who only has sex on Sundays. That guy’s dick had been abnormally huge, and that girl’s ass was so not equipped for that kind of torture. I’m not exactly a prude, but even I’m flustered by that little getup and have no idea how to react.

Arrick hands me wine, intent on pushing us into drinking to cover up whatever the hell just happened, and I take it gratefully, unable to meet his face, aware that he has shifted a foot away from me, and the heat erupting all over me has me feeling like some wanton whore who obviously has a porn curiosity.

“Interesting movie choices you have.” Natasha is still trying to make polite conversation on the most ridiculous of topics, and I have to double-take her face to see if she’s being serious. I spot her trying to curb a smile and impulsively smile too, then laugh like a crazed loon, because the tension inside of me breaking loose makes me feel like I have seriously just lost the plot. We both burst into giggles and I sense Arrick relax too. He chuckles, and then we stop, weird atmosphere abated, and return to the fact that this is the craziest scene of all time. There’s the return of awkward silence, and I have no clue what I’m even doing here anymore.

his expression. He looks completely deadpan like he hasn’t just stopped me from getting up, and then he smiles across the top of me, at her. I’m seriously confused by what he’s doing. I feel like one of those dumb kids in school who miss out on all the in-jokes the popular kids throw around and yet try to act like they know

to my stomach, confusion written all over me. Natasha is instantly wary like she thinks he is about to throw her out, and that tearful look she gets in her eye

front of me because Arrick has offered her a lifeline. I shove him back out of my way aggressively, curbing the urge to glare in his face and stand up, getting out from between them

“Shit.” I lay it on the table and make a grab for the towel that’s been sitting there all day for no apparent reason; pretty sure it was me who left it here and start dabbing it off my prized dress. Arrick’s on his feet and grabbing the towel to help me, almost in my face and I

moron of the century. I head straight for his

me startles me. She comes in and holds out her hand expectedly, like a bossy mother with a no-nonsense tone and the impulse to tell her where to go evades me. I pull off my dress by shimmying out of it expertly and handing it to her instead. Not at all shy about standing in my new Victoria secret two-piece, sexy lace lingerie, and definitely not caring if I’m standing here like a swimwear model. Watching her warily and wondering why the hell she followed me in here. Why tonight, she seems

suggest anything is out of the ordinary, other than my behavior. I stand in my underwear and

eye and she looks at me in the vanity reflection for a moment. I’m like a deer caught in the headlights and have

breath as my insides shift painfully. “I know he tells you everything.” She carries on as that tear rolls down her cheek painfully. I stand dumbfounded, looking around