The Aiden & Fiona Collection: Lo-Fi Love Stories Collections, #1

By Erika Dusk

Here's my confession: I'm secretly in love with my guy best friend.

This completed set contains all three of Aiden & Fiona's shorts from the Lo-Fi Love Stories collection. Enjoy Aiden & Fiona's Happy Ever After in one read!

From the description for Tell Me (Aiden & Fiona Part 1):

It's that gut twisting, heart pounding, pretend-it-doesn't-exist kind of love, and Aiden has no idea. I'm too scared to tell him.

But tonight, Aiden catches me listening to a spicy audio in my bed, and our usual Friday night hangout doesn't seem so innocent anymore. In fact, our routine of vintage video games and instant ramen has never felt so sexy.

I think I'm about to do something I can't take back …

Lo-Fi Love Stories are sweet and spicy romance shorts perfect for neon nights, chill playlists, and cozy aesthetics. They contain adult language and adult situations.

Reading Length: 2-3 hours

Pairing: Female/Male

Spice level: Low-Mid-High-Highest

POV: First person, present tense

Tropes: Friends to Lovers with shades of Boy Next Door and Workplace Romance

Ending: Happy Ever After

• Language: English
• Publisher: Erika Dusk
• Release date: May 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9781738912711

Book preview

Tell Me (Aiden & Fiona Part 1)

One

Touch me, he says, voice husky in my ear.

He sighs, then follows that up with, Yes, baby.

And: "Oh God, your mouth is so …"

Yes. Yes. I’m there, I’m almost there, and …

My right earbud pops out of my ear, falling off my bed and clattering across the scratched hardwood of my apartment.

I let out a held breath. The audio track pauses, leaving the empty, underwatery fuzz of off-brand noise cancellation in my left ear.

Shit.

Rising from my bed, I feel around for my earbud with the toe of my fuzzy sock. What are the chances it got sucked into the underworld beneath my vintage Craigslist couch, taking Manly Midnight’s thigh-shaking audio porn voice and the rest of his sentence away forever?

Guess I’ll have to wait to find out what my mouth is so.

I should really invest in better-fitting earphones.

I’m down on my hands and knees, sweeping an arm around in the underworld beneath my couch, contemplating whether Hades lives down there with my earbud and a three-headed dust bunny, when there’s a soft knock at my door.

My head shoots up. My apartment’s a studio, so the door is only a few steps beyond the couch. It’s illuminated around the edges from the light in the hallway beyond. There’s a big floor mirror leaning on the wall next to the TV; I can see my forehead popping up from behind the couch like a startled, brunette meerkat.

Open up, Fiona. It’s raining like hell out there. Another knock. Actually, it’s cold and icy, so it might be sleet. Sleeting. Sletting?

Aiden.

Wait—is it eight o’clock already?

One moment!

I jump from the floor in a panic, plucking my other earbud from my ear and fumbling it into its case. The light in my apartment is barely-there by the blueish glow of the LED lights I strung up—hey, a girl can set the mood, okay?—and I bang my shin loudly on my low coffee table while rearranging my skirt.

I heard that.

Be there in a sec!

Believe you when I see you. I’m soaking. Like drip-all-over-your-doormat soaking.

That makes two of us. Fucking hell. I lunge for my wardrobe and grab the first pair of panties I find in the dark, shimmying out of the grandma pair I wore to work today beneath my favorite knee-length, pleated skirt. The new, dry panties I slip on feel lacy, and judging by the way they lodge up my butt, they’re a thong.

Great. Wearing a full-coverage pair of panties under my skirt had me feeling like a schoolmarm all day at my office job. Wearing a lacy black thong with that same skirt totally changes the game. I’m like a receptionist at a porn studio. A less-than-feminist stereotype trying to seduce her boss. One sweater vest away from Manly Midnight’s personal assistant that he also fucks. Or something.

Fiona? You okay in there?

I kick my grandma panties under the couch—sorry, Hades—run my fingers through the ends of my hair, and unlatch the door.

Hey, I say.

Aiden looks me up and down from his spot at six-foot-two. He’s got a reusable grocery bag tucked under one arm and a cat-sized pet carrier in the other. He wasn’t lying about the rain; his blue button down is dark with water, his dirty blond hair plastered to his forehead.

Looking at him, my disgusting, pornified brain takes two milliseconds to memorize how his wet shirt defines the lines of his arms, shoulders, and chest. Maybe he went to the gym at lunch.

Okay, what’s wrong with you? he asks, brows furrowed.

I shake my head, lifting my eyes to his. Was I staring? I hope not.

"You got this wet just running across the street?"

I told you, he says, shouldering past me and into my dim, hopefully not steam-filled apartment. "Sleeting, sletting. Anyway. Slippers is not happy about it … I can almost see him blinking in the darkness behind me as I close the door. Why does your place look like the set of an 80s music video?"

I flick on the light, illuminating vintage couch, hand-me-down coffee table, and tiny kitchen. My ancient phone and earphone case are strewn like crime scene evidence on the rumpled sheets of my bed. Oops. I like the ambiance.

"Ambiance? It’s like Total Eclipse of the Heart in here."

I ease the grocery bag from under his arm, giving him a fond smile. Acting totally normal. The last thing I want is for him to guess that Manly Midnight was breathing obscenities in my ear moments ago.

You look … Aiden’s eyes roam my face, puzzled. My cheeks are still flushed, I can feel it, and he has this way of looking at me—like he can’t look anywhere else, like he’s trying to tell me something. I stare back, gulping. His eyes are a lot for my brain to handle right now.

Eventually, he clears his throat, breaking our eye contact.

Whew.

I forgot it was Friday, I lie, going to unpack the grocery bag while he sets down the pet case and pulls off his shoes. In the bag, there’s our usuals: licorice, those little gas station mochi, instant ramen, flavored sparkling water (for him), and orange soda (for me). You forgot, too, by the looks of it.

He gasps in mock outrage. "How dare you. I’m an innocent man."

An innocent man still in his eSoar clothes.

It’s probably my pornified brain again, but I find myself sneaking glances at him as he chuckles and releases Slippers, his beloved feline hellion, from her carrier. Slippers shoots out like an orange comet and takes her place of honor at the edge of the couch, licking rainwater from her tail.

Aiden closes the carrier again. His shirt is rolled up to the elbows, showing off tan forearms. I could never forget, he says earnestly.

God. Those work clothes. I left a two-year stint at eSoar, the world’s Leading Travel Agency™, to get away from those clothes. Luckily, Aiden and I’s Friday night hangouts only started happening after I quit, and he usually changes into jeans and a t-shirt before walking over to my building.

Not that he looks any less hot in jeans and a t-shirt. He’s still Aiden. But in normal person clothes, he’s just my attractive friend that I play Dream Party 3 with on Friday nights, not the super-sweet, majorly smart, deep voiced (we’re talking Manly levels here, people) co-worker I started having … feelings for a couple months into my position at eSoar.

It never came to anything, of course. He only ever saw me as a friend. I know that on account of I overheard him turning down another female co-worker, citing the fact that he has a very particular type. Whenever someone says that, their type never means me.

There’s an eSoar/eye sore joke in there somewhere. Whatever.

Remember when Ron made us stay late to organize his desktop files, Aiden says, and we ended up being there until three in the morning? He switches on the TV and changes the HDMI input to my oldest game console.

I pour water into the kettle for the ramen. Yeah. That night, Aiden and I spent hours wrangling our boss, Ron’s, disaster of a documents folder. Afterward, Aiden insisted on walking me home, and that’s how we found out we live across the street from each other.

Well, tonight was like that. Except this time, it was his pictures.

Yikes. Tell me. See anything you can’t unsee?

Aiden laughs, flopping on the couch next to Slippers. He gives her a scratch between the ears, which she merely tolerates. Nah, just regular boss stuff. Family vacations. Travel conferences. Nipple clamps.

Oh. Minutes ago, I was one audio porn whisper away from a mind-shattering orgasm. Now, the sound of Aiden’s super-low, male voice saying nipple sends a little shiver through me—not that I’m into nipple clamps. Or Aiden, anymore.

You poor soul, I say, sitting next to him and offering him a mochi.

Don’t feel too bad. He winks at me, immaculate. "I’m about to whip your ass at Speed Pump."

Two

Two hours later, my coffee table is strewn with empty ramen bowls, overturned soda cans, and Slippers, who decided to stretch out and nap right in my sightline. I’d like it on the record that her interference is the only reason Aiden is, in fact, whipping my ass.

Fuck, I say under my breath, pressing A like my life depends on it.

Anyone who still has a Dream Party 3 habit as a grown adult knows: collecting gems and traversing the game board is fun, but the minigames are what it’s all about. Some Fridays, Aiden and I forego Party Mode entirely and go straight for Minigame Mode. We’re known to play minigames against each other until the small hours of the morning, so fierce and fiery is our competition.

Well, usually. Tonight is different. My head isn’t exactly in the right space—and as Aiden so sagely predicted, the inflatable race car minigame Speed Pump doesn’t go in my favor.

(Also on the record: it has nothing to do with Dream Party 3’s accidentally suggestive minigame names, or how close Aiden and I are sitting on the couch, or the fact that my pussy is mad at me and my earbuds and Aiden for interrupting her fun earlier.)

Way Down doesn’t go my way, either. Or Smack It. Or Burning Question. Or Screw-Up.

Fiona, you’re very bad at this, Aiden says, cheerful, around a mouthful of licorice.

I shush him, catching the beginning of his slow smile in the mirror by the TV. His teasing is throwing me off more than usual tonight.

It’s probably the work clothes. They highlight his beautiful face.

Let’s take five, I say, setting down my controller and rubbing my fingers into my eyes.

Sure. He sits back into the couch, sighing contentedly. But I’m still going to win the night. There’s a pause while he chews his licorice. Watches me. Careful with that eye rubbing, loser. You’ll get keratoconus.

I lower my hands. "Kerato-what?"

He’s looking at me with his teasing grin, his eyes—green, very green, like the lime on his can of sparkling water—shining in the