121- Trip back into memories

“Can you believe that we have finally done it?” I asked my best friend, Blaze. We stood in the middle of the moldy smelling living room and stared at the two-family home townhouse that now belonged to us.
“Yep, I do,” Blaze said. “Were those cracks there last week?” he asked wrinkling his nose at the peeling walls.
I closed the distance between us and placed my hands on his massive shoulders. I stared at Blaze fondly then wrapped my hands around his neck and hugged him. Having a house was my dream, not his, but he had agreed to partner with me in buying the dilapidated town home.
The clincher had been that after we finish renovating it, we would each have an apartment. Mine would be on the top floor and Blaze would take the ground floor one. With our combined savings and a gift of fifty thousand worth of bonds from my late grandmother, we had done it.
Now, all that remained was to start working on it.
“Thank you Blaze,” I mumbled into his shirt. He smelled so good. I didn’t want to break contact but I had to. I’d been fighting my physical attraction to Blaze for years. He was my best friend and my secret crush. One that I would never act upon. I reluctantly stepped away. “I can’t wait to get started,” I told him, rubbing my hands together in anticipated glee.
“Me too,” Blaze said.
“Let’s go sit on the backyard steps and have our lunch.”
We had bought takeout grilled chicken sandwiches and bottles of water to toast to our new home. I grabbed Blaze by the hand and tugged him through the kitchen to the back.

Turning the key, I pushed the door open. The backyard had been part of the reason why I had fallen in love with the town house. It was unkempt with overgrown grass and bushes but the potential was there. I could imagine Saturday afternoons spent outdoors sipping ice-cold wine and watching the day drift by. With Blaze in the downstairs apartment, it meant I would always have someone to hang out with.
This had a downside to it though. Blaze could decide to live with a girlfriend. Luckily, there was little risk of that happening. He changed girlfriends the way people changed clothes. Blaze was your textbook player, though he insisted he was a short-term one-woman man.
I’d come prepared and I had a small blanket in my handbag which I laid on the dirty steps and we sat down.
“Now, this, I can visualize the end result,” Blaze said as he reached for a sandwich and bit into it. His words excited me and made me feel less guilty about pushing him into buying a house with me.
“Yeah, a beautiful lawn with flower gardens at the edges and maybe a table and some chairs,” he said.
“That right there, is why you’re still my best friend,” I exclaimed.
Blaze and I had met in kindergarten. We rode the same school bus and I had always found him in the very back seat when I entered the bus in the morning. He had smiled at me the first day and then looked away.
On the way home, I’d gone to sit with him and we had chatted all the way to my stop, counting all the white cars we saw. Even then, I’d been drawn to him but all we had ever been was friends. Which was a good thing, I told myself firmly.
There were times when I’d allowed myself to imagine Blaze as my boyfriend. He was hot and all my friends had had a crush on him at one time or another. But even in my fantasies, the relationship ended badly. I loved Blaze too much to jeopardize what we had.
“I’m the luckiest guy in the whole world,” Blaze said.
“Why?” I asked as I watched the movements of his mouth. Blaze had to be the only guy I knew who made chewing look sexy.
“I get to have lunch with my best friend every day!” he said and smiled.
In addition to being best friends, Blaze and I worked for the same recruiting company. He was a head recruiter, in charge of five other recruiters and I was in the accounts department. We’d worked

together for two years now, and the worries I’d had when he suggested that I apply for the opening, had not materialized.
I’d worried that we’d bring over any conflict we had in our personal lives to work. I had worried for nothing. For one, Blaze and I rarely fought. And two, we were in different departments and company politics did not affect us.
We ate lunch together every day in the café next to our office and met for drinks after work sometimes. “I love you Blaze,” I said and leaned on his shoulder.
“I love you right back, Hot Sauce,” he said.
“I hate that stupid nickname,” I protested mildly. Blaze had been calling me the name for years and I had grown into it. It had started when we were both fifteen and my body had sprouted curves overnight.
Teenage pimpled boys had suddenly developed an interest in me and guess who they went through? Blaze of course and he’d started calling me hot sauce.
I thought again about the sacrifices he had made so my dream of being a home owner would come true. “If there’s anything that you ever want me to do for you, all you have to do is ask,” I said in an emotion filled voice.
“Yeah?” Blaze said, a playful tone in his voice.
It hit me then how open my offer was. Definitely not the kind of offer you wanted to make as a woman loving Blaze. Though I wasn’t his type. He loved his women with nothing between the ears. “I’m not giving you a blowjob Blaze.”
He feigned disappointment and then grew serious. “There is something you can do for me.” “Sure, what?” I asked.
“Go with me to Jack and Amelia’s wedding.”
“To Hawaii?” I shrieked, angling my body to face him.
Jack was Blaze’s younger brother. He and his fiancée were getting married in a month’s time, if I remembered the dates correctly. Because of how far the wedding was and the coordination involved, they had opted for a small wedding with family and their very close friends. “Why are you asking me? Why not one of your many conquests?”

I couldn’t imagine anything worse than going with Blaze to a Hawaiian wedding. It would be more temptation than I could handle. More than our friendship could handle.
More than once, when we’d both had a little too much to drink, attraction had sizzled between us but we’d ignored it and our friendship had survived. Blaze was family to me and no matter how attracted I was to him; it wasn’t something I would ever act upon.
But it didn’t mean I would allow myself to be tempted beyond my endurance. I could just imagine being in Hawaii. White, sandy beaches and the waves lapping at the shore. A sigh escaped my lips.
“You know how women are,” Blaze said.
Something sharp pierced at my chest. Blaze never considered me a woman. To him, I was one of the guys. I felt stupid to feel bad that I was one of the guys to him. It meant our friendship was safe.
“They’ll misconstrue the invitation and make it out to be more than it is. Then of course, there’s my family. They’ll pester me with questions that I don’t want to answer.”
Everything he said made sense.
“Everything’s paid for Brooke. The flights, the beach condo. All you have to do is show up.” He turned to face me and then treated me to one of his jaw dropping, panty melting dimpled smiles.
Having Blaze as my best friend was like being treated to a toothpaste ad, intermingled with an underwear ad, every day. “I can’t take a week off work,” I said lamely. “I already took my vacation days.”
“You have ten days remaining,” Blaze said. “I checked.”
I shouldn’t have been surprised by that. As a head recruiter, Blaze was very thorough in his work and always did his homework. Being prepared all the time.
That excuse had been my last line of defense.
Guilt flooded me. I had refused to accompany Blaze to Hawaii when just a few minutes ago, I’d said how willing I was to do anything for him. I meant it too. But going to Hawaii would be a mistake. The end of our friendship. And knowing Blaze, if anything did happen between us, it would only ever be sex.
That was just how he rolled. He loved women and he loved sex. He hated commitment. I really, really didn’t want to go. Besides, we had just bought a house. I was itching to get started on fixing it.
“I hope this house is not what is stopping you from saying yes. It’s only a week, Brooke. Work can continue while we are away.”

He did sound convincing but I was determined. “I’ll make a deal with you,” I said, suddenly inspired by an idea. Something Blaze could not manage to do. “If you can go a month without sex, I’ll go with you.”
He laughed. “Easy. Start packing your bags, Hot Sauce.”
I was sure his confidence was fake. Blaze needed sex the way the rest of us needed oxygen to live. “Deal,” I said and we shook hands on it.
We finished our lunch, locked up the house and took an uber back to the office. “A penny for your thoughts?” Blaze asked me in the uber. “You’re very quiet.”
I smiled at him and said nothing. I felt pretty sure my thoughts would not only shock him, they would disgust him. I kept picturing him in a speedo with his package on display. Madness.

Back into Blaze memories***

“Home at last!” Brooke said and let herself fall on the unmade bed.
My eyes roamed over her body, taking in the swell of her incredible breasts and the curve of her hips. She wore a short black skirt and my eyes seemed glued to the view of her creamy thighs. I managed to tear my eyes away but it was too late. I’d gotten hard, so I walked to the window and pretended to look at the view. It had been three weeks since that ridiculous bet with Brook. She’d actually thought I couldn’t survive a month without sex.
Brooke was my best friend but she knew very little of my private life. Sure, I’d dated many women, but none had ever held my interest for long. I’d even gone out with women for more than two months and not slept with them. Unlike what Brooke believed, I didn’t jump into bed with every woman I dated. There had to be chemistry and some kind of connection. If it wasn’t there, I never bothered to go for the homerun