Tia smiles warmly at me, looking like she might feel a bit sorry for me. Sloan pointedly ignores me, even though Tia took the only other open chair, beside Jay, and now she has to sit next to me.
Talon glances back and forth between us, eyes pinched and smile strained, while Sloan grabs the edges of her chair and tries to shift it further away from me.
He waits, like he’s expecting one of us to give in, turn and drop to our knees and declare our still undying love for each other.
My love is undying, but judging by the way she’s trying to get every single millimetre of distance from me she can, I’d say hers is well and dead.
I press my fingers to my temple and try to pretend I’m not bleeding out in the dining room on a fucking Mediterranean cruise.
“Well.” Talon clears his throat, clapping once before raising his glass of scotch. “A toast to me and my retirement then. I’d say it was a pretty successful career.”
Sloan raises her glass, arm twisted at an awkward angle to avoid brushing her skin against mine.
It’s for the best. I don’t know what I’d do if we touched.
I still love her, and she looks like that.
Our glasses meet, the clink barely audible over the noise of the dining room, and Sloan breaks away quicker than anyone else, snatching her drink back to her chest like she’s risking contamination by it being so close to mine.
Tia cringes, nose wrinkling. Jay looks anywhere but at us, and Talon carries on like nothing’s wrong.
“You know,” Talon starts, leaning forward, waving his glass around. “I only have one regret. No cup.”
Jay’s eyes finally snap back to the table. “That’s on you, Talon. You’re the one who got the great idea to go play in Sweden after college. You had interest. And now I have two cup rings, Bohdan has one, and you have none.”
“Where do you keep your cup ring?” Talon angles his scotch glass towards my hand, like I’d be wearing it right now, splayed against the table—the only place it’s safe from acting on my shitty impulse control and trying to play with the hem of Sloan’s dress under the table.
“Lost it.” I shrug a shoulder and try to pretend I don’t care.
I couldn’t find it after I left Seattle, and it felt like a fitting punishment, so I tried my best to forget that I lost the only relic of my prematurely ended career that mattered.
Jay pulls his head back. “How’d you lose your fucking cup ring? I don’t even let anyone touch mine. They’re in my trophy room.”
“Jay’s got a shrine to himself.” Talon grins. “That tracks.”
I’m about to make up an excuse—something that doesn’t have to do with me leaving the love of my life behind with my failed dreams in a post-concussion-induced mental breakdown and not really being able to keep track of my own mind, let alone my personal belongings—when yellow silk flashes in my periphery.
Angling my head, I watch Sloan shift in her seat, tugging at the hem of her dress before rolling her shoulders back and sitting up straighter than necessary.
I almost laugh, but I tip my chin towards her. “You have it.”
Sloan pulls her head back, giving it a shake and rolling her eyes before reaching for her wine. “No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do, you little shit.” I shift in my seat to face her, and I press my fist to my mouth before a smile splits across my face. I feel a bit torn, sort of like throttling her for being so stubborn and petulant; but the girl I’ve loved since I was twenty sits beside me, acting just like she used to before she hated me, looking like something that walked right out of the recesses of my imagination.
The yellow silk dress wrapped around her, just enough skin on display to drive me insane: the lines of her shoulders, the jut of her collarbone, legs stretching out underneath the table. The tiny constellation of freckles under her eye on her left cheek more vibrant from the sun.
One shoulder rises, the thin strap of her dress brushing against her skin. “A baseless assumption.”
“No. Not baseless.” I raise my eyebrows, point at her. “You’re shifting in your seat. You’ve blinked a few too many times.”
“You don’t know anything about my body language.” Sloan scoffs, taking a sip of wine, but I catch the way her lips pause against the glass, the way her cheeks start to heat.
“Oh really?” I do grin now, leaning forward and closer to her than I probably should, but it’s always been like this. She’s the sun, and I’ll be in her orbit forever. I lower my voice, and I don’tmean for it to be, but it’s rough. “I think I do. I know everything about you, Sloan. I know what you look like when you’re mad. When you’re sad. When you’re frustrated. When you’re happy. When you’re lying. When you’re coming—”
“That’s indecent.” Sloan inhales, nostrils flaring, and her eyes go wide.
“This feels like a private conversation.” Jay gestures between us, mouth tugging to the side behind his wineglass.
