I sighed. “Put that down. I can at least bring your stuff, can’t I?”
“Oh.” She dropped the things before looking back at me. At least there was finally a hint of guilt in her expression. “Yeah, I guess that would make sense. Thank you.” She backed away, waving awkwardly. “Bye.”
“See ya,” I said, cocking my head and giving her a look that I hoped said “We will definitely be discussing your bizarre behavior later.”
Frankie let out a nervous laugh before gulping and scurrying out my front door.
Yeah, no. We woulddefinitelybe figuring this out later.
“And then shesays we should sleep in different tents.” I said that last part like even the idea repulsed me, which to be fair, it did.
“Separate tents? Why? That seems so random.” Lila leaned forward from the back seat, hanging on my every word.
Harrison, meanwhile, let out a grunt of disapproval and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Maybe we shouldn’t be discussing this. She clearly didn’t want us to know you two were together,” he said.
I scoffed and Lila snorted. “What? Like I’m not going to tell my best friend about the girl I’m seeing?”
Lila squealed. “Oh, so you’reseeing hernow?”
“As if that isn’t the vaguest fucking term ever,” Harrison grumbled.
“It’s more than he’s ever said before.” Lila reached outand tugged on his bun, which got his lips to quirk up as he turned to look at her. My tenseness softened a little at the sweet gesture. Harrison and I had been best friends for basically our entire lives and he’d never let anyone in the way he’d let Lila in. It still caught me by surprise seeing how comfortable the two of them were together. An added bonus was that Lila was basically the female version of me. We’d already been friends before she and Harrison got together. She was peppy and always down for something new. She got Harrison ever so slightly out of his shell, which was a huge bonus for me. I’d been trying to get the guy to loosen up since high school to no avail.
“I like her,” I admitted, tightening my grip on the steering wheel as we took another hairpin turn up the side of the mountain. “I mean, obviously we can’t be anything serious, but…”
My words trailed off—because butwhat?Butmaybe we could stay friends?Butshe’d had some profound effect on me and changed me forever? I was probably playing with fire here, but fuck it. I was ready to get burned.
Harrison shot me a disapproving look. “Shouldn’t we respect what she asked and not talk about this? She didn’t want to sleep in the same tent so you wouldn’t have to explain your relationship status, and here you are, spilling every detail ten seconds into this drive.”
I made eye contact with Lila in the rearview mirror, and we both smirked at each other.
“She’s just getting her first lesson in Ollie one-oh-one. That being that he can absolutely not keep his mouth shut,” she said.
Harrison sighed. “Fair.”
“Hey, I can keep my mouth shut when it matters.”
“Can you?” Harrison challenged.
“Definitely,” I insisted, although I hoped he didn’t come through with a plethora of examples proving me wrong.
Finally, after a beat of silence, he said, “I’m glad you met someone.”
My eyebrows shot up, shocked to hear quite possibly the most sentimental thing that had ever come out of my best friend. “As you can see, it’s not exactly straightforward,” I said.
He shrugged. “Still. You care. That’s a start.”
The words of the person who knew me better than anyone twisted inside my chest. If he could tell this was real, then there was no doubt that it was. Or at least it was real onmyend. But fuck, what did that even mean? Likely nothing good, considering we were on a countdown toward ending and she was already pulling away from me.
If there was one thing about me, though, it was that I was going to take life by the balls and savor every moment. So if my gut was right and shewastrying to pull away, I wasn’t about to let her do that without a fight.
“Okay, okay. Enough obsessing about me and my situationship. How are you two?” I asked.
Harrison turned and glanced back toward Lila, whose eyes lit up.
“We’re good,” she said.
“Fucking fantastic,” Harrison added, flashing a rare smile.
