“Yes, so you’re not tempted.”
“No, I am tempted. Very tempted. That’s the trouble,” I admit, since I kinda need to get that out. It’s been weighing on me.
“So, you’re into him,” Grant says, matter-of-factly.
“Yes, no, whatever. It doesn’t matter.”
“It kind of does, River. Feelings, shockingly, do matter.”
“We’re not talking about feelings. We’re talking about attraction, but whether I find him attractive is neither here nor there. The pact has a purpose. Like a rubber band on the wrist, and I am snapping it right now,” I say, miming tugging a band. “It’s so I don’t act on temptation. If sex enters the equation, it’ll complicate everything. As sex does,” I say, making my point. “Already, romance and me are like a pair of cows walking a tightrope. It just doesn’t work out, so it’s best to keep friendships separate.”
“I get everything you’re saying. But I wish you could see the two of you flirt. You’d see what I see.”
I dismiss his observations quickly, since there’s no room to consider them. “I flirt with everyone. It’s my nature. Like talking. I am a shameless, chatty flirt.”
“No, you flirt with him more than you do with other people,” he mutters.
Scoff, scoff, and more scoff. “Have you met me? I am not just a social butterfly. I am a social beast and if I don’t have my friends in my life, I will die. Literally die. So, as you can see, this is a life-and-death matter.”
“Dramatic much?” he deadpans.
“Grant,” I say, sighing. He might have a point about the flirting, but that doesn’t change the facts. “I appreciate you wanting to smush us together. But I won’t take the risk.”
He’s quiet for a beat. “All, right. I hear ya, man. I’ll lay off it. You just have fun like you always do.”
“Thank you,” I say, then we hang up, and I drive to Hayes Valley.
He’s not entirely wrong. But there are risks you take and risks you don’t take.
I already took the biggest risk of all with Hayden seven years ago. At the age of twenty-two, I left my family here, my friends, and my job tending bar.
I followed a man to Arizona, thinking it was going to last.
What a fool I was.
Ansel had nothing on the Hayden heartbreak. That was the real deal. The stab-a-serrated-knife-in-my-chest-and-dig-it-around variety of real.
But I started over, made my own way in a new place, leaned on friends like Owen and his support to get me through the dark days. And I promised myself I wouldn’t uproot my life for a guy ever again.
Wouldn’t trade the things I needed—work, family, a home, a circle of friends—for a man.
I won’t walk that cow-on-a-tightrope path simply because I thought of Owen while in the shower.
Besides, it was only for a minute.
Fine. It was longer.
3
Owen
TJ doubts me, even after I tell him nothing will happen in Tahoe.
As I fill a big bowl of water for Goldilocks, my friend pulls a you’re so full of shit face over our video chat.
“Nothing, Owen? Nothing? Are you sure?”
“Positive. There’s no way something will happen at Nisha and Hailey’s Airbnb, and you know it. You’re going. Nisha’s cousin too. And there will be three other couples in attendance,” I say breezily, stealing a glance at the time, since I’m meeting River downstairs in ten minutes. I set the bowl on the kitchen counter.
TJ points at me, a terribly satisfied grin on his chiseled face. “You said it. Couples. You think of you and River as a couple.”
Busted.
But I make light of the slip of the tongue. “You know what I mean. Some of them are couples. Or they’re swinging single studs, like me and you.”
With his free hand, TJ draws air quotes. “Friends they want to benefit with.”
Time to dodge and dart some more. “Ah, but if only my life were like one of your romance novels. Hmmm. Which one would I want it to be? I’m going with The Size Principle,” I say as I open the cupboard and grab the dry food Goldilocks deigns to eat. My sister’s kid named the cat, since this orange goddess refuses to eat anything but tuna and duck pate.
“Not a bad choice. But in your case, maybe try Mister Benefits. That might give you some tips for your . . . situation.”
I shoot him a steely stare. “You’re not helpful . . . King TJ,” I tease, using the nickname his legions of social media fans have given him.
“Oh, I’m very helpful. I included lots of helpful pointers in Mister Benefits.”
“There will be no benefiting,” I insist, as I shake some nuggets into a bowl, enough for two days, since this solitary creature is surely looking forward to forty-eight hours solo. “Especially since we’re all going to be in a house full of other people. Many of them are straight.”
“Ohhhhhh,” he says, drawn out, as he drops his voice to a stage whisper on the streets of Tahoe. He lives in New York but he’s here on the West Coast for our Friendsgiving event. “Because straight people don’t have sex?”
“That’s not the point and you know it,” I say to TJ, relenting a bit.
“I think your woke straight friends know what gay sex is,” he says. “Bet some of the ladies watch man-on-man porn too. Do you know that one-third of women who identify as straight watch gay porn?”
I press a palm to my cheek, let my mouth fall open. “Wow. I had no idea. Literally, no clue. I’ve never had any of my straight female friends whisper that little confession in my ear like they couldn’t wait to finally tell me two dicks in a scene turns them on.”
“I’m just saying . . . they probably all know how it works.”
“They probably do. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to entertain them that way aurally. I’m not going to have sex in a guest room in a house full of people,” I say, frustration bubbling up inside me. But it’s not frustration over TJ. It’s over all this . . . stuff I need to think about.
Or not think about.
TJ cracks up, scrubbing a hand over his bearded jaw as he walks past a ski shop. “That’s your rule? No sex when other people are in the house?”
“Yes. Also, River and I aren’t sharing a room at Nisha’s, as you know,” I add as I open the cooler on the counter and drop in the farm veggies I picked up this morning—carrots and Brussels sprouts.
“Well, then you’re definitely not having sex at the house. Because sex only occurs when you’re in the same room. As long as there are separate rooms, all dicks stay in pants.”
This is not the state of mind I need to be in when I slide into the car for a four-and-a-half-hour drive with River. Goldilocks jumps onto the kitchen counter and sniffs the bowl of food. I pet her head for the allowed three seconds before she snarls. Cats. What can you do? “Why are we talking about sex?” I ask as I head to my bedroom to grab another shirt. I might want to wear something that shows more . . . muscles. That’s one of the reasons I go to the gym so much—muscles don’t make themselves.