Total pages in book: 244
Estimated words: 236705 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1184(@200wpm)___ 947(@250wpm)___ 789(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 236705 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1184(@200wpm)___ 947(@250wpm)___ 789(@300wpm)
“Fabulous. Happy to help. Be sure to take pics of you and your man at the bar. I’m dying to see them.”
“And be sure to take pics of . . . wait, no. Don’t send me pics of your weekend. I hope your weekend is not for public viewing.”
“Grant, hun,” I say with a sigh, leveling with my buddy, “I so appreciate the Cupid in you. Truly, I do. But you understand the point of the pact, right?”
“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.