5. “Hell of a run, though.”
“HELL OF A RUN, THOUGH.”
HALE
The problem with having female friends is sometimes you sleep with one of them and everything goes to shit.
I woke to the mattress dipping, then lifting again—the bed frame giving one soft creak that dragged me out of what little sleep I’d managed.
Déjà vu hit hard enough to wake me all the way up.
I kept my breathing even and listened as she found her clothes in the dark, every small sound too careful.
She paused in the doorway. Looking back? Second-guessing? Debating whether to say something?
The door clicked shut, and I opened my eyes.
The sheets were still warm on her side, the pillow still smelled like her skin, and the sky outside was caught somewhere between night and morning. I lay there long enough for the quiet to turn mean, then sat up, scrubbed both hands over my face, and grabbed my phone off the nightstand.
6:47 a.m. Maybe two hours of sleep, tops. Too early for this level of reflection, and too late to pretend last night hadn’t happened.
I got up, found my jeans on the floor and pulled them on.
My shirt was somewhere downstairs, living room probably, which meant we’d left evidence scattered across two floors of Ava’s house.
I took a chance on the guest room dresser and came up with a T-shirt folded in the top drawer, Cubs logo across the chest. Not ideal, but better than walking into a full kitchen bare-chested at seven in the morning.
Halfway down the stairs I ran into Nico coming up, coffee mug in hand. He slowed when he saw me, took in the logo without a word about it, and lifted a brow.
“So you finally folded.”
I stopped where I was. “Folded?”
“To group pressure.” He leaned against the banister, nowhere to be, apparently. “You let them pick a woman for you and everything.”
I blinked.
“Sophie,” he clarified, but the glint in his eye said he was absolutely fucking with me.
“Right.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “No harm in humoring them.”
“Just playing along then?”
“Uh-huh.”
Nico smiled like he could smell the bullshit from three miles away. “Hell of a run, though. Whatever you want to call it.”
“I blame you for this.”
“What’d I do?”
“You let them unionize.”
Nico grinned. “Nobody made you answer that group chat.”
“I’m Southern, not godless,” I said. “I send thank-you cards, I don’t wear my hat indoors, and I answer my phone.”
“I’m Southern too,” Nico said mildly. He stepped past me on the stairs. “Coffee’s fresh. Good luck.”
Apparently the conversation was over. I watched him go, then finished the walk down.
Annie was still asleep on the couch, blanket tucked around her, snoring, completely undisturbed. The bottles were gone from the floor. The rug looked fine. My shirt was folded on the armchair.
Yasmine had gotten up before me, cleaned Ava’s living room, folded my shirt, and disappeared. All before seven in the morning.
I traded the Cubs shirt for my own, left the borrowed one over the arm of the chair, and went to the kitchen.
Poured a cup of coffee and tried to find the version of myself that knew how to act normal.
That guy had clocked out sometime around two a.m. and I needed him back before the rest of the house woke up.
Truth was, and I was trying to be honest with myself, which is never easy at damn near seven, I’d known exactly what I was doing last night.
I’d seen how complicated it could get. But I’d told myself a nice little story—two friends, no big deal, keep it light.
I’d believed that story right up until she breathed my name and I realized I was in some amount of trouble.
I’d always liked the shape of my name in her mouth. Noticed it the first time she ever said it, years ago, and quietly filed it away where I put most things about Yasmine, under Things That Felt Too Good.
Footsteps on the stairs, and then she was in the doorway, fully dressed, her hair set in two thick ropes. She looked like she’d slept eight hours, but I knew better.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey.”
“Coffee smells good.”
“Just made it.”
“I saw.” She crossed to the pot, poured a cup, added cream and sugar without looking at me.
“Thanks for cleaning up downstairs.”
“Oh. Right.” She took a sip. “Early riser, I guess.”
“Uh-huh.”
The silence that followed was brand new. We’d never had that kind of quiet before.
“Hale—” she started.
“Yasmine—” I said.
We both stopped. She bit her lip. I sighed.
“Don’t,” I said.
She looked at me then. “Don’t what?”
“Make this weird.”
“I wasn’t going to make it weird.”
“Good. Because it’s not weird.”
“Right. It’s not weird.”
“We’re adults.”
“We are.”
“Friends who…”
“Yep.”
“So.”
“So,” she agreed.
Annie’s voice carried from the living room, groggy and pissed. “So y’all just left me down here in the wild? Nice.”
Yasmine pressed her lips together, half amusement, half relief, and tipped her head toward the living room. “We should.”
“Yeah.”
Annie was sitting up, blanket pooled around her waist, her cap of curls mashed to one side of her head.
“Morning, sunshine,” I said.
She flipped me off.
“Here.” Yasmine handed over her coffee. “You need this more than I do.”
“My neck,” Annie groaned. “Ow. What the fuck.”
“You passed out and refused to move,” I said. “We tried.”
“I don’t remember that.” She drank half the coffee in one go. “Did I miss anything?”
Neither of us said anything for a beat too long.
“Just your snoring,” I said.
“I don’t snore.”
“Girl,” Yasmine said, settling into the armchair. “You could wake the dead.”
Annie’s middle finger went up again, and just like that, we were back to ourselves. Or close enough to fake it.
Annie demanded breakfast. Ava came downstairs looking unreasonably well-rested, and Grant topped off the pot and took up his usual spot by the counter, a man whose world made sense as long as the coffee was hot, the dog was alive, and Ava was within reach.
Tabby and Nico came down last, looking exactly like two people who’d had a good night and had no reason to pretend otherwise. Yasmine and me, though? We were over here having a completely normal, totally fine morning.
Ava caught my eye across the kitchen and raised her mug in a little toast. To a successful evening. I raised mine back.
The conversation moved on to breakfast, who was making what, whether anybody wanted to go out, and I sat there with my coffee and participated in all of it like nothing had changed.
Except I kept looking at her.
Little things I’d noticed for years without ever letting myself dwell on them. She laughed at Annie’s nonsense, tucked one leg under herself in that big chair, held her coffee cup with both hands like she was trying to warm herself from the inside out.
She caught me once, and I looked away first.
The coffee was strong and bitter and didn’t help. Every time I closed my eyes, I could still feel her lips on my skin.
The girl from Ricochet had snorted and said Nah, I’m good, and it had bothered me. Yasmine had folded my shirt and started the coffee and walked into the kitchen like nothing happened, and that bothered me in a way that was entirely different and a hell of a lot harder to ignore.
Male friends had the decency to let you stay stupid. Case in point, Nico on the stairs.
The problem was I wasn’t stupid. I just had very good—really bad—habits.
And standing in Ava’s kitchen on a Friday morning, watching Yasmine’s smile while I tried to remember what my face was supposed to look like, I was starting to realize I’d run clean out of places to file her.