“I didn’t chase you.” Why did everyone say I chased girls? “I was interested in you, but I didn’t follow you around like a lovesick fool. And besides, maybe Navy had a crush on me, but I don’t believe it’s what’s caused this unspoken rift between you. That was years ago.”
“Then maybe she still likes you, bozo.” She took my spoon from me and set them both in the sink before loading the cake in the fridge. “She was never mean or anything, but anytime I came around you she looked at me like someone—a.k.a. this bitch—had just kicked her puppy.”
“Hey, that’s enough.” I adjusted the collar of my t-shirt. “She’s not here to defend herself, and she’s my friend. Don’t talk about her like that.”
“Whoa, look at you. Being a man about this.” She turned around, bracing herself against the counter as she considered. “Okay, you’re right.”
“And like I said, this was years ago. She doesn’t like me like that anymore.” Flashes of her skin, her eyes half-closed and her lips panting quick breaths flashed through my head. My brain was a traitor.
“If you say so.” She crossed her legs at her ankles and her arms across her chest. “But she’s still not friendly with me.”
“Tonight will change that. I’m sure of it. Navy is a good person.”
“So I hear,” Tori said, like I was a parent giving her a lecture she’d heard a billion times.
“No. When I say she’s a good person, I mean good person. The kind that’ll drop everything for you, will give you her last dollar, will open her arms and her home to you if you need it.” She was the best person I knew. “She’s not selfish, and she’s not petty, and she’s not heartless, okay?”
“What’s with the third degree, Keane?”
Tori had cat-like instincts in the sense that once she saw a flicker of information she wasn’t meant to see, she pounced on it. She was clever and cunning and too damn intuitive for her own good. Which is why I wasn’t surprised when she followed it up with, “What’s going on between you and Navy?”
And since my reply: “Nothing,” was quick and short, she knew I was absolutely bullshitting her.
“Mmhmm. Okay. Something is going on between you. I can’t figure out if you’re fighting or if it’s something else…” She stared at me, even as I turned away from her to mess with the thermostat that didn’t need me to mess with it. “Or maybe I’m going at this from the wrong angle. Did you kiss her? Did you do more than kissing? Do you have feelings for her?” I rolled my eyes at her and she pounced toward me, practically caging me in as her eyes lit up in delight. “Oh, shit, all of the above?” Her voice was screeching now.
“We aren’t going to talk about this,” I said. But I did want to talk about this, with someone. Adam was on the road and Asa would only forget and ask me about Megan again. Until Tori had pushed me on the issue, I hadn’t realized just how much I’d missed having someone to talk my baggage with.
“But you want to, at least a little bit.” Her eyes narrowed as she read me like a fucking book. “Come on, Keane. Tell me your woes. I can help. I’m pretty smart.”
“Yeah. Too fucking smart.” I moved around her so I could sit on the couch. Unsurprisingly, she joined me seconds later. “I really can’t talk about this with you.” Don’t get me wrong, Tori was a friend now. But still, it didn’t feel natural talking with her about my love troubles because of our own shared romantic history.
“That’s just dumb. You can tell me. So, you kissed. And did more. Let’s talk about the more.” Shit, she looked like I was about to offer her a fucking cookie.
I groaned, dropping my head to the back of the sofa. “Isn’t this a little weird for you?”
“Why would it be weird?”
“Because you and I have…” I gestured a hand between us that was supposed to illustrate that we’d had sex more than a handful of times, but she just blinked at me. “Because we’ve been together. This is weird.”
“Just because I’ve seen your penis doesn’t mean you can’t talk to me about what’s going on in your other head.”
“Jesus, Tori.” I rubbed a hand over my face. “I can’t talk to you about this shit, you’re too cynical and practical.” On second thought, what the hell. Tori wasn’t going to go blabbing to anyone else, what was the harm in telling her? “Okay, fine. Jesus, you’re like a dog with a bone.”
“I love dogs.” She folded her legs under her, getting comfortable. “So, tell me. What happened?”
I cringed. Should I tell her the whole thing? It felt like I was keeping a secret from Navy by telling Tori—especially when Navy still couldn’t talk about it with me. But maybe Tori would give me some insight. What were the guidelines of discussing sex with a best friend to another friend? “We had some drinks—too many drinks. Woke up naked next to each other and things have been kind of weird since. Weird for us,” I clarified. “We normally talk all the time. Spend most of our days together, even doing the dumb stuff like grocery shopping or paying bills or whatever errands.”
“Wow, so it’s like you guys are married. Except you still like each other.”
“See—you’re cynical.”
“And Navy isn’t. Yes, we’ve established this. She is a perfect celestial being and I’m a greasy troll.” I knew she wasn’t fishing for compliments, just being sarcastic. “So? What’s the problem? You wrapped up that bad boy, right?” She pointed between my legs.
My lips made a flat line. “Yes. That’s not the problem. The problem is that we sort of agreed not to make it weird except that’s all it is. It’s fucking weird.”
“Like… the sex was weird? What’d she do, ask you to milk her like she was a cow?”
I face palmed myself. This was a mistake. Holy shit.
“Did you eat hot wings before you went down on her? Because that shit stings and you deserve her acting weird if you lit her vagina on fire.”
“Christ, Tori. No. The sex wasn’t weird. It was… good. Natural. We laughed.” I smiled to myself, thinking of it. But feeling her eyes on me, I remembered where I was. And who I was talking to. “I don’t know. I’m not going to talk about the sex with you. The sex wasn’t the problem.” At all. Which was the problem, really. The sex was great. My memories were still sort of fuzzy, but what I remembered felt easy, like we’d fallen together that way so many times. “When she woke up in my bed, she went weird and nonchalant, like it was totally a normal thing to wake up naked in my bed.”
“Like, ‘Whoops, Keane, you accidentally cleaned up my cobwebs with your womb broom, LOL, our bad’?”
“The shit that comes out of your mouth sometimes, Tori. I swear.” I shook my head. “But yeah, basically. Not the cobwebs part.”
“So, did you follow her lead and act like it was just an accident?”
“Sort of?” I scratched my head. It was hard to remember how I’d acted. She’d been in such a rush to get the hell out of my room; I hadn’t had time to really analyze what had gone on.