His Naughty Lessons-Chapter 196: Big Investment

** Harper **

Davenshire was a world away. Both in the physical sense and in how different everything felt as soon as the plane landed.

Harper watched the harbor slowly gliding out of view from the airport runway. The northern sea looked so different from the tropical ocean, darker and rougher, circled busily by squealing seagulls that were nowhere to be found in Hawaii. Even the trees were no longer the same, and her eyes had gotten so used to palms and plumerias that she was already starting to miss the sight of them.

Well, what she missed the most was Eli’s constant presence by her side, of course.

She wondered if his plane had also landed. Before their departure, he had offered to change her flight so that they could fly together, but she opted for the original travel plan, including the airport pickup that Chelsea had generously agreed to two weeks ago. Not that she was intentionally trying to create absence to make the heart grow fonder ... but she didn’t want to repeat her mistake last month and become one of those people who kept ditching their best friends for relationships. Especially not when Chelsea was always being exceptionally supportive and helpful.

On that note, the exceptionally supportive and helpful Chelsea proved herself yet again by having arrived quite early at the airport, waiting right at the security exit when Harper made her way through.

"Oh my, look at that amazing tan you got!" The girl turned their greeting hug into a wide-eyed beauty assessment, in an utterly Chelsea’s-signature way. "It looks so good on you!"

Harper was surprised by the comment. "Really?" She hadn’t noticed any changes herself, either because she was too used to looking at her own image every day or because she was too distracted by looking at someone else’s image. "That’s rare, I always tend to get sunburns before tans. Guess the Hawaiian sun must really suit me somehow!"

"Or being in love really suits you. Makes you glow from the inside and naturally look like a bronze goddess without a sunburn."

Harper laughed. Now, this comment was no surprise. She had been sharing every major step of her new relationship with her guru friend during the trip, and it was only expected that the girl wouldn’t miss the earliest opportunity to bring up the topic. "I think you’re right," she agreed. "And a huge part of it is thanks to you. Here, I brought you a little gift as a token of thanks."

She handed over the shopping bag she had packed in her limited time alone in Hawaii: chocolate covered macadamias, local pineapple rum, and a pair of shell earrings.

"Wait, is this the real sunrise shell that only exists in Hawaii?" Chelsea’s eagle sharp eyes recognized the earring ornament immediately. "Holy shit! You must really be madly in love if you think you need to thank me with something this nice." Then the look on her face quickly changed to the relationship-guru-mode-activated version. "So let’s hear it then, what kind of juicy bonus stories do I get today as my driver’s tip?"

Harper gave her friend a half shy, half overly smitten smile, before the chatter box opened.

~ ~

"Seriously?" Chelsea slammed hard on the brake halfway through the drive.

"We don’t have much luck with green today, do we?" Harper sighed at the traffic lights that just turned red right in front of them.

"No, I’m not talking about the traffic lights!" Chelsea grunted. "I was getting so invested in your love story. The more you tell me, the more I think I’m really starting to ship you guys! But now you’re saying your brother is showing up in less than a week, and he still doesn’t know a thing about this?"

"... Yes?" Harper took her eyes off of the red light. Her story had just moved on from the PDA in front of coworkers to the preparations of the camping trip, but how come Chelsea’s reaction to Tyler’s arrival was exactly the same as Eli’s, even though she had never met the supposedly meddlesome brother?

"Eli doesn’t like the idea either," Harper added to clarify, "although they’ve been best friends for over a decade and I don’t see much of a problem with breaking the news."

"You’ve got to be kidding me! It doesn’t matter if they were friends — heck, maybe they won’t be anymore after this!" Chelsea scoffed. "In case you really don’t know this, my dear innocent friend, dating someone’s sister is like, the number one breaker of the bro code. Well, maybe ranked lower than dating his mom but let’s not go there ... and I can’t believe you guys kept him in the dark this whole time! Your brother is going to be murderous if you just straight up tell him what he’s missed out on."

Once again, the same expectations coming from both her date and her best friend made Harper start to question her own assessment of the situation. Could it really be that bad? "But Eli seems to have decided that it’s best to share the whole story after all," she pointed out. Although it did take him a long while to make that decision.

"Only if he’s willing to take a good beating or break a leg for you. Which I bet he is, if he’s as smitten with you as you are with him." Chelsea shook her head. "Oh dear, my newest and shiniest ship is already facing such rough waters on its maiden voyage! It’s going to need all the luck it can get, for sure."

Harper chewed her lips. There was certainly an air of serious warning in those words. Though at the same time, she also heard a hidden hint. "... And all the help it can get, too?" she ventured.

A grin slowly appeared on her friend’s face.

"Well, since you asked ..." Chelsea glanced at the shopping bag in the back seat and winked. "Maybe I can give it a thought. Can’t let all your big investment in it go to waste, right?"