Georgie wrenched it from my hands the second the door was locked, shuffling back to her living room like a gremlin. I scratched Easton behind the ears until he was satisfied and pulled my boots off. She’d already torn into the bag, hunched over the coffee table, when my socks sunk into her new shag rug.
I’d desperately tried to dissuade her from the purchase, but she said the clementine color reminded her of her grandmother, and she was thrilled to finally have some profits to spend.
“If this is your apology,” she said, mouth half-full with chicken pot pie, “Then I accept.”
I laughed and plucked my shake from the bag before she could get her ravenous paws on it. “Didn’t Rhett teach you how to cook?”
Georgie shrugged. “I mean, technically. But just because Icandoesn’t mean Iwantto.”
I sighed and dropped onto the couch. Easton grunted and shifted until his head was in my lap.
One of the movies from her rom-com collection played on the screen—something sappy that probably involved weepy love confessions and an overly dramatic chase-to-the-airport scene. I rolled my eyes and took a swig of my shake.
Georgie, positioned on the other end of Easton, sniffled and wiped her cheeks with her sweater sleeves.
She turned to me and said, “This part always gets me.”
“Right,” I mumbled, studying how she managed to simultaneously cry and shovel food.
“You know, I recall a time when youlovedthese movies.”
“Yeah, well,” I replied, “Things change.”
More accurately, people change. I could barely rememberthatMargot anymore.
Georgie wiggled a fry at me. “I wouldn’t be too sure. Someone looked more than a little flustered to have ol’ Teddy back home.”
I bit down on my straw and stared at the carpet fibers glowing neon in the television light.
“Wow. I knew it.” She kicked her feet up on the coffee table and sank back into the couch. “After all these years, you’re still in lo—”
“I amnot,” I snapped.
Georgie raised an eyebrow at me. I wrapped a throw blanket around my shoulders and propped myself against the back cushion, absentmindedly dragging a hand across Easton’s fur. He yawned and stretched, only to fall right back to sleep.
I’d learned the hard way that Georgie was relentless. If I didn’t give her a plausible excusenow, she’d never let it go.
“Okay, admittedly, it was weird.”
She leaned in. I cleared my throat.
So far, I thought I was doing a pretty good job selling it.
“It’s been seven years since Teddy and I last spoke, Georgie. Remember how weird it was whenwestarted hanging out again? Now multiply that by about twenty.”
She squinted at me. “But it wasn’t seven years. You saw each other at my grandmother’s funeral four years ago.”
Oh, yes—the painfully awkward trip that I’d wanted to block out of my memory for the foreseeable future. Seeing Wes and Serena, the duo that completed our childhood group of friends, was nothing compared to sitting next to Teddy for an hour and pretending like I wasn’t dying a little inside.
Even worse, he brought his girlfriend.
“That was a haze,” I lied.
I failed as Georgie’s friend that day. It still kept me up some nights.
She emptied her milkshake and set it on the table with a hollow tap. “Still—I mean, it’s justTeddy. You guys didn’t even date for that long, right?”
My chest tightened. “Just a few months.”
