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“Just lab partners, then?” I say instead. I wait for her to tell me it’s none of my fucking business. Maybe I’m even hoping she will, rather than answer my chickenshit question.
Bailey rolls her head around to look at me. “All year,” she says. Just as my lungs start working again, she finishes the thought. “Until the week of finals.”
I can’t do this. It’s none of my business. I have absolutely no right to ask her for details, let alone to feel jealous over something that happened so long ago.
“He asked me out,” Bailey continues. “We went to celebrate after our final exam. One thing led to another.” She shrugs again, not meeting my eyes. “You know how it goes.”
I force my teeth to unclench.
“And then what?” I ask.
Bailey shrugs again, but this time there’s color in her cheeks. “Then nothing,” she says. “Summer break happened. I went home and that was the end of it.”
That was the same summer break I introduced Bailey to my brother Alan.
“You didn’t keep in touch?”
She looks uncomfortable. “I saw Coop around campus a few times,” she says, and there’s sincere regret in her voice. “But by then I was already with Alan. Didn’t seem fair to try to be friends, and I was too far gone over him by then to think much about anybody else anyway.”
The silence hangs between us, not as easy as it ought to be between two old friends talking about their college exploits.
“Well,” I say at last, polishing off my whiskey. “That certainly explains some of the hostility tonight.”
“Does it?” asks Bailey, her gaze going sharp. “Because Cooper wasn’t the only one who got hostile. Care to explain yourself?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Liar.
“I already mentioned the leg-lifting,” she says. “Don’t make me say it again.”
“You’re just mad because I kissed you,” I say. Immediately I know it’s the wrong thing to say. Not to mention kind of dumb, because she’s the one who kissed me. And because I hadn’t ever planned on talking about it. Ever.
“Is that what happened?” says Bailey, coming to her feet. “Because as I remember it, I kissed you. And you’re welcome, jackass. By the way.”
“What?”
“I saved your ass from Mila the bitch, that’s what,” she says. “You owe me. Big time.”
Kissing me was that big of a favor, was it? I choke it down, but goddamn, I’m tempted to shout it.
Because to me, kissing Bailey had felt like coming home. Like I was finally doing something right with my life. Like for once, every part of me was exactly where I needed to be doing exactly what I needed to be doing.
Say what you want about Cooper Lawson, but his level of fuck-it is something I could use right about now. If I had half his attitude, maybe I’d be kissing Bailey again instead of arguing with her.
Not that I need to be kissing my best friend. Not that I want to. Because we are friends, just friends. And if in some alternate universe we somehow ended up being more than friends, my family would freak right the fuck out because she almost married my brother once.
Alan would flip his shit.
Also I don’t want her like that. Obviously.
Apparently I’ve been stewing in my own head too long, because Bailey waves a hand at me.
“Whatever,” she says tiredly. “It didn’t mean anything. And you’re welcome. I’m exhausted. Crash on the couch if you want. More booze in the cabinet. I’m going to bed.”
Before I can decide what I’m supposed to say to that—it meant something to me, goddamn it— she’s gone, her bedroom door closing with a firm click.
6
Cooper
