I glance sideways and catch Ryan smirking.
“Oh no,” I mutter, slapping his arm. “You have officially lost your mind.”
“Maybe,” he says easily. “But you’re not saying no.”
I stare at him. “You do realize,” I say slowly, “this would be… really weird.”
Ryan shrugs. “Yeah. Obviously.”
“No, like—” I gesture vaguely between us. “Weird-weird. We’ve known each other for years.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Exactly.”
“That makes it worse,” I say immediately. “You get how that makes it worse, right?”
“Maddy, it’s not like we’d have to go all out. We won't have to get married or have a steamy make out session in the hallway.”
I narrow my eyes at him. My heart’s beating fast, because it’s ridiculous. But it also—even though I hate to admit it—makes sense. “Okay. Hypothetically.”
Ryan turns toward me. “Hypothetically?”
“If—bigif—we did this…” I wave my hands, “What about Noah?”
Ryan goes quiet for a second. Then he exhales through his nose. “Yeah,” he says. “That could go one of two ways.”
I brace myself. “...Which are?”
“He’s fine with it,” Ryan says. “Or he kills me.”
“He would not kill you.”
“He absolutely would consider it.”
I roll my eyes. “Okay, yes, he’d be weirded out. Very weirded out. But… he knows us. He knows you’re not, like, secretly evil.”
Ryan is quiet for a moment.
“We could tell him,” I say.
“No,” he says immediately. “That would only make things messy.”
“Yeah, that’s true,” I agree. “And telling the others wouldn’t be a great idea either.”
Ryan lets out a short laugh at that. “Liam would accidentally tell someone within, like, twelve minutes.”
I grin. “Maximum.”
We both laugh, and for a moment the whole conversation settles into silence again, like the decision has somehow been made without either of us actually saying it out loud.
“So,” I say, quieter now, “we wouldn’t tell anyone.”
“No,” he agrees. “We just keep it simple.”
“And we just stop when it’s done doing what it’s supposed to do?”
“Exactly,” he says.
I stare out at the ocean for a second, trying to get my senses to convince me to not do this. My brain starts listing reasons this is a terrible idea—Noah, awkwardness, the fact that this could go so wrong—but then, unhelpfully, my brain supplies a very vivid image of Jacob’s face if he sees me with someone else. The confusion first. Then the jealousy. Then the realization.
