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What? Shit.
“I only kind of even know what that means. I’ve only seen that app once before tonight, and I have zero need to see it again.”
Carly chortles, her laugh almost turning into a snort. “Well, the horses might already be out of the barn on that one, buddy. Stella’s got two hundred thousand followers. That post with you might even go viral.”
My eyebrows shoot up my forehead, and my voice comes out much higher than intended. “I’m sorry, what? Two hundred fucking thousand?”
She nods and bites her lip.
Fuck. Me.
“Okay,” Carly announces suddenly, standing up and moving behind my chair to help me pull it out. “In the name of protecting Ryan from any further PTSD, I will now force him to help me clean up the kitchen.”
“Buzzkill.” Carly’s mom sticks out her tongue before turning back to my dad, who’s holding up his hand in the universal sign for “hang loose.”
I look back at Carly as I stand and try to make sense of it all. “What is happening? Why do I feel like everyone has gone insane?”
“Because they have,” Carly answers simply, grinning at me. “Just trust me, the sooner we get out of here, the better.”
Her warm, tiny hand clamped around mine, she drags me out of the dining room and into the kitchen and deposits me in a spot against the counter with two steadying hands. “Here. Stand here,” she orders, and I hitch a hip against the counter.
“Oh, Ryan! There’re already over a hundred comments asking about you!” Stella yells from the dining room. I run two hands through my hair and groan. By God, this is like my worst nightmare.
“I already regret that so much.”
“Don’t worry, that’s completely normal,” Carly replies with a laugh. “I feel like that a lot with my mom.”
“Why aren’t I angrier, though? With my dad, I always feel angry,” I hedge, the complexity of my affection for Stella warring with all of the embarrassment and hard feelings inside.
“It’s her talent.” Carly shrugs. “Always the life of the party, even at seventy, that woman is wild and can talk just about anyone into doing anything.”
“Yeah, but I can understand getting talked into stuff. It’s impulse. It’s the lack of ill will afterward that’s perplexing me.”
Carly snorts. “It’s just her. She’s likable. Almost infallibly so. Hell, even I like her when I don’t, and we’re so alike, we’re practically designed to butt heads.”
I grin. “My dad and I are opposites.”
Carly nods. “Yeah, he’s a smooth-talking rule-breaker, isn’t he? I can see it.”
“Yep,” I agree. “His heart’s pretty much always in the right place, though.”
Carly wrings a dishtowel in her hands, and I glance back toward the dining room. “Should we actually clean things? Or are we planning on just hiding out for a little while?”
Red hair flies around her as Carly leans forward and puts her hands to her bare knees and groans. “Ugh. I really wasn’t thinking of the implications of using dish duty as my escape tactic.”
I laugh, and she whips her head back the other direction to stand straight again, her cutoff-shorts-covered ass bumping into the cabinet behind her. “Do we really have to go back in there? Do you think they’ll notice if we don’t actually clean up any food?”
“Come on,” I say encouragingly. “We’ll do it together. In and out quick, like a couple special forces soldiers. Grab the dirty dishes from the table and get the fuck out. Stella and Sal will never even know we’re there.”
“Ugh, fine,” she grumbles cutely, whipping the towel down on the counter and shoving away to bump me in the shoulder.
My cheeks lift up with my smile, and I bump her back, wrapping an arm around her waist and putting pressure on her opposite hip when the impact turns out to be a little too hard.
Her blue eyes are wild when she glances up at me at the touch.
God, she’s fucking pretty.
As a consequence, I’m distracted as we make our way back down the hall to the dining room, but when we get to the doorway and find the over-table light fixture off, the room cloaked in absolute darkness as a result, I jerk a thumb over my shoulder and widen my eyes, whispering, “See! He even turns out the lights at your house!”
Carly giggles and steps forward to flip the switch, illuminating the room and the table and, much to both of our surprise, our parents, in the tightest clinch of the century.
My eyes bulge, and Carly slaps a shocked hand over her mouth and screeches, “Oh my God!”
Two heads jerk apart as our parents break the seal of their mouths, but the damage is already done, and the damn cat can’t be put back inside the bag.
Stella’s blond hair looks like it’s been through a tornado, and Sal’s mouth and face—and sweet Jesus, I don’t want to be thinking about any of this—are smeared to reddened bits with Stella’s lipstick.
