Chapter 4
Reese
Two weeks before Thanksgiving, I cornered Morgan in front of her apartment.
I knew her well enough to know what time she got home from work, and I left the house early enough to catch her before I had to head to work myself.
When she saw me leaning against the front of her building, she startled, grabbing the strap of her purse like she’d seen a pickpocket and not her best friend.
“Hey, bestie,” I greeted, arms folded over my chest.
“Hey, Reese.” She gave me a tight smile. “What’s up?”
“I don’t know, dude. You tell me.”
She approached me with wary eyes and something that felt a lot like dread pooled in my stomach. I followed her inside and up to her apartment, not bothering to take off my shoes because I didn’t have time to stay long.
“Don’t you work tonight?” she asked.
“I do, but I feel like you’ve been avoiding me, and I don’t like it.”
“I’m not avoiding you, Reese.” She shoved her hair back out of her face, but it fell right back anyway. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a hair tie, which she took with a hard swallow and an evasive glance.
Morgan always lost her hair ties, so I’d taken to carrying them for her out of habit.
“Are you having issues with Cory living here now?” I asked.
She tied up her hair and exhaled, shoulders sagging under whatever was really going on between us.
I looked over her shoulder at everything in her apartment.
It had been a really long time since I’d been there.
The two of us used to be very near inseparable, and Cory coming into the picture had definitely changed that, but Morgan hadn’t expressed any concern about it to me… ever.
“I think Cory is the best thing that’s ever happened to you,” she said, throwing herself down onto her couch.
“You like him too,” I reminded her. “As a friend.”
“I like him a lot, Reese.”
I couldn’t even ask if she was sleeping with him. The idea was preposterous, but it did live in a very dark and angry corner of my mind that couldn’t come to any other conclusion about why my best friend and my boyfriend had both suddenly started acting like they had something to hide from me.
“Are you—”
She cut me off with a deathly sharp glare. “Don’t.”
“Seeing anyone?” I finished, hoping she didn’t catch the way I changed course instead of asking if she was fucking my boyfriend.
Morgan worked her jaw back and forth, her nerves shifting to a different vibration and somehow…finally, telling on her.
“Morgan.”
“What?”
“Whose tank top is that?” I pointed at a yellow lace tank top on the arm of her couch that looked a lot more like lingerie than it did outerwear.
Her eyes went wide, and she snatched it, balling it up and shoving it between her and the side of the couch. “What tank top?”
“Yellow has never been your color,” I reminded her.
Made her look like a scarecrow, she used to say, too pale and too blonde to pull off the color of sunshine on top of it all.
“It’s nobody,” she said. “Just a girl.”
“Just a girl.” I rolled my eyes at her. “How long has she been just a girl for?”
“Not long.” She shrugged. “After Halloween.”
That tracked with the timeline of her weirdness, but it wasn’t like Morgan to hide the details of her relationships from me.
We’d always been open and very frank with each other about our escapades.
Hell, I’d even had that plug in me around her, so for her to hide a girl from me was very out of character.
“Why didn’t you say anything about her?” I asked.
“It’s just new,” she said.
“What else, Morg?”
My phone buzzed in my pocket, an alarm letting me know it was time to leave for work.
I scratched the side of my chin, hoping that she would be honest with me and not continue to be an awkward liar.
Just because Cory had moved to LA and just because we lived together didn’t mean the need for my best friend was suddenly gone.
In fact, it was because of those things that I really needed her more than ever.
There were a lot of changes, a lot of adjustment, and Cory was always easy to talk to, but he wasn’t Morgan.
“I just don’t want to interfere in your time with Cory,” she said, and it almost sounded like the truth.
“I see him more now than I did before. We’ll survive if I take some time to spend with you.”
She arched a brow.
“He will,” I assured her.
Morgan made a dismissive sound in the back of her throat and checked her phone. Her cheeks went dark, and I wondered if it was a message from whatever mystery girl she was suddenly and secretly involved with.
“I don’t want you to be late to work,” she said.
“I won’t be.” I hesitated before leaving. “Will you bring this girl to Thanksgiving?”
“It’s new,” she repeated, more of a whisper.
“Cory was new once,” I said.
Morgan sighed. “I’ll think about it.”
“Will you come have a drink later and tell me about her?” I asked. “You know Thursdays can be slow.”
She snorted, shaking her head. “Bar therapy? It’s been years since I’ve needed that.”
“If you want it…” I shrugged and shoved my hands into my pockets. “I’ve got to head out, though, and I…”
I trailed off, eyes shifting from my best friend to my shoes and back again.
She looked the same as she always had, but there was still a secret in her expression that I couldn’t make sense of.
“I miss you,” I told her.
“I miss you.” She squinted a little, scrunched her nose. “This is just a phase, Reese. I promise everything will be normal again soon. Better than normal.”
“Is that so?”
She smiled at me, and it was the first sincere emotion she’d shown since unlocking her door.
“That’s most definitely so.”