AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Come on.” He put a frappe in my hand and wrapped an arm around my shoulders, corralling me out of the alcove. “I know where we need to go.”
“Ho ho ho, bitches!”
Mortified yet unsurprised, I hissed, “You cannot say that every time you hit the spin button, Cody. There are children here. And it’s October.” We’d had this exact conversation last December, and apparently it hadn’t stuck.
Cody smirked across from me, the neon tube lights from the arcade game—the Cyclone, which kind of resembled a giant snow globe—illuminating his face as he restarted the game and hit the button again, thankfully missing this time.
He glared at the lights and then smoothed his expression, meeting my gaze. “Okay, I think I’m warmed up. How about you? Feeling better?”
I considered his question, studying my Fortuna-branded bucket that was bursting with tickets. I didn’t feel good, but I did feel more removed, and that would have to be enough. “Yeah, definitely warmed up.”
“Good, because it’s time.”
“For what?”
“For our fight. We’re going to sit on the fake snow mobiles, play the Arctic Thunder game, and you’re going to whoop my ass for however many races it takes for us to talk through our drama and trauma. You’re going to tell me about Ace the Asshole, and I’ll tell you whatever you want to know too.”
I snorted even as dread pooled in my stomach. Ace the Asshole. We would never call AJ by his “big boy” name. I swallowed thickly, remembering my last interaction with him.
“I should’ve known you’d take it the wrong way.”
“You’ve always been a bit too eager.”
And then my face warmed as I remembered this morning. My hurt—and worse, Vinh seeing my hurt—and his obvious scramble to soothe my feelings.
Maybe I was too eager.
Cody made a disgruntled sound, and my gaze refocused on the arcade around me. I looked at him reluctantly and found him leaned against the Cyclone game, his arms crossed over his chest and his head tilted to the side, his expression filled with compassion.
“Do you know what’s going to happen when we’re done fighting?”
I swallowed the impulse to respond with some kind of stupid joke, shaking my head instead. I didn’t think I’d ever been in a fight.
His eyes softened, his next words flowing with such gentleness that I wanted to burst into tears from that alone.
“You will still be the best friend I ever had or will ever have. There is no feeling you or I could experience in the next thirty minutes and no words exchanged between us—however painful or however real—that would change that fact. Nothing that happens here today, or on any day, will change the forever truth that I love you. As you were, as you are, as you will be.”
My throat constricted painfully as I rapidly blinked back tears.
“And you know what else?”
“What?” I croaked, my voice breaking.
“It will all work out.”
I succumbed to the tears and responded, “Because it has to.”
Cody pulled me into his arms, his voice thick as he repeated, “Because it has to.”
33
BREE
Vinh tried calling during one of mine and Cody’s Arctic Thunder races, but I ignored my phone in favor of giving my best friend my full attention.
And I gave the texts he sent while Cody and I stuffed our faces at Dawn’s post-fight the same treatment.
Apparently feeling emotions suppressed our appetites, but expressing them, talking about them, made us ravenous. We were on our second bowl of communal Caesar salad—a Dawn’s Diner staple—when my phone vibrated across the table again.
