The Couch Where It Happens by Anna Richland

Emma and Hank.
Emma Nakamura needs her best friend Hank Kahue. For seven years, they’ve held onto each other. Through the deaths of Emma’s grandparents. Through Hank’s progress up the college football coaching structure. Through trivia nights at the pub, yard work, movie marathons, and now through all the chores of remodeling the house she inherited from her grandparents.

Hank and Emma.
Hank can yell over college football players, but he can’t find a way to even whisper to Emma what he really wants, what he’s always wanted, although it’s painfully simple: he wants her. He wants to be way more than best friends and movie night buddies.

An Inconvenient Couch.
Moving a vintage couch leads to crossing boundaries that Emma fears will jeopardize their friendship. Finding herself unexpectedly alone with that problem-causing couch, she discovers a 1980s confession magazine stuck under the cushions and starts to read.

“Dear Editor, I need advice about whether I should try to find last night’s guy.”
Stories about other women’s secret desires make Emma ready to reveal her own: she wants Hank as more than a best friend. Does her grumpy giant want her, too? Or is she destined to always be the chatty sidekick, never the princess of the story?

The Couch Where It Happens is a low-angst, low-conflict romance between best friends who are huge fans of a certain green ogre movie. It is part of the “Dear Editor, I’ve Been Bad” contemporary romance series and absolutely can be enjoyed as a standalone. The first story, Service Included, shows how the vintage magazine ended up under the cushion for Emma to find, but has no other links to this story. Feel free to start reading here.