“Hey, Angel,” Ian said as he gripped the chair back behind me and leaned down to give me a kiss. His lips were chilled and cold rolled off him even as he tugged off his coat. It had been frosty outside when I’d ducked into our favorite coffee place to warm up while I waited for him to get out of class. We hadn’t had as much snow this year as in the last three, but the cold had been pretty brittle.
“Hey,” I greeted him. “I ordered your coffee.” I didn’t have any classes today, so I’d timed it to get here only a few minutes before him.
“This,” he said as he wrapped his hands around the cup, “is one of the reasons you’re the best.”
“I’d ask for a list, but I’m pretty confident in how much you love me,” I teased him and his deep blue eyes filled with laughter. “You’ve even written songs about me.”
“Oh, just a few.” He stretched his legs out, hooking one ankle around the leg of my chair. It pressed his calf against mine. “How are you doing, Angel?”
“Pretty damn good,” I told him without any hesitation. “I mean—I thought the new year would be hard. But it wasn’t. I know Archie was worried, but he did okay too. He and Eddie both.” We’d had Eddie over to spend New Year’s with us. The guys introduced him to a series of video games. It was a lot of fun.
“I’m glad,” Ian said. “Really glad. Rachel was worried too. I think between us, we had a dozen messages from her checking on you.”
I groaned. “I talked to her yesterday, and she wants me to come out for spring break.”
“You should do it,” he said, and I blinked. “Seriously, go to Paris. Spend a week with your bestie. You can wedding dress shop while you’re there if you feel like you need a reason. But you’ll be happier knowing you get to see her and check on her for real. Then come back to us.”
“What are you guys going to do while I’m gone?”
“Survive,” Ian said with more than a bit of drama. “It’ll be tough, especially if Jeremy takes a cruise or something with Ann. Or they go for a long week in the Adirondacks. But I think we can manage. I’ll even make sure Jake and Archie shower in between work binges on the new engine.”
I giggled but sobered. “Coop is gonna be applying to his master’s programs, and I don’t know how long they take to get back.”
“You can call him and flirt with him in French. That instantly takes his mind off of everything.” His indulgent smile suggested he had an answer for everything.
“You trying to get rid of me?”
“That’s three right there, Angel,” he said with just enough seductive promise that I tightened up all over. “And no, I’m not. Although, you’re worried about Rachel. You mentioned her three times last week, and you couldn’t get her on the phone. Then when she texted you back, you said—”
“Cryptic,” I grunted. Rachel had been playing it very close to the vest the last couple of months, since just before Thanksgiving. I’d been distracted with wedding plans, school, and Jake’s parents' ceremony. Not so distracted that I didn’t notice how her texts had grown fewer and further between. She said she was busy with school and her apprenticeship with a photographer. She might be. “Maybe I’m just butting in where she doesn’t want me. They say friendships sometimes grow apart.”
“One, Rachel adores you way too much. She could be busy, that’s not unreasonable. But someone who is growing apart doesn’t text your boyfriends repeatedly just to make sure you aren’t too sad or upset over a holiday linked to what could be a bad memory.”
It wasn’t enough to make me sad. Not really. I mean, it had sucked, and it was a long few days, but I was all right.
“Two, best friends are precious. They aren’t based on the number of messages you exchange or how often you see each other. You two think about each other all the time, and you even take notes on things so you remember to message her about them.”
I did that. He was right.
“Three, Rachel’s cagey, but she knows you love her. Go see her. You’ll feel better. She’ll feel better. We’ll be right here when you get back with all the reunion sex you could want.”
Laughter bubbled through me. “Reunion sex sounds amazing.”
“Now, if you don’t want to go, that's different. If you want one of us or all of us to go with—”
“I do want to go, and I always want you guys to come with me. But I don’t know how forthcoming she’ll be with all of you there.”
“Then make your plans, Angel. We’ll run it past the guys, and you can go spend spring break in Paris with Rachel. She can brag and take a lot of beautiful pictures of you.”
“Thank you,” I said. Sometimes I forgot how well he saw what I needed even before I did. “You know, we haven’t talked about recording that new album yet. You finished the last of the songs, right?”
“Most of them. We have one more that we were working on, but I haven’t been able to get the bridge where I want it. If you have some time on the weekend, we can drive out to Long Island and work in the studio there.”
“Oh, that sounds like a good excuse to have some rest for all of us.” I propped my chin on my hand as I studied him. “Unless you just want to steal me away for the weekend, in which case, I’m all in.”
“Now who is reading whose mind?” He held out a hand and I gripped it. “I like it when we make time for each other. You’re always shifting your schedule to come to meet me for coffee in the middle of the day—even when you don’t have classes. You go to Jake’s games and his practices. I know you’ve been out to the shop in Brooklyn at least twice in the last two weeks to check on them. Coop’s leaning on you pretty hard right now too.”
“I don’t mind,” I said, and I really didn’t. “It’s not an effort, at all. I used to worry about not having enough hours in the day or getting too caught up in my own stuff. But I don’t anymore.”
“No?”
“Nope. You guys tell me what you need more often than not. You hear me when I say what I need. Sometimes, what you need is me, and sometimes it’s each other.”
“Sometimes it’s all of the above.”
“Exactly. So, if you want a weekend away with me, Mr. Rhys, I will clear my calendar and we can go out to Long Island, make music, get naked, and just hang out.”
He traced his thumb over my knuckles and then down to my rings. “Promise me if anything ever gets to be too much…”
“I’ll tell you,” I said, crossing my heart with my free hand. “I will. I’m ready to do a new album, though. I’m still not keen on a long tour away from home. But I think we can make it work, we just have to balance around Coop’s degree and then work and stuff.”
“You’re going to take Eddie’s offer?” He studied me.
“I haven’t formally decided,” I admitted. Over Christmas, Eddie offered me a junior management lead at Standish. It would be with the foundation first. I could set my hours and I’d report directly to him. But it was a smaller organization under the umbrella of Standish Enterprises, and it would let me work with funding charities and putting Standish resources to work in various communities.