Page 133 of Triplet Babies for my Ex's Best Friend

I press my free hand to my forehead. “We’re trying to be professional.”

She bursts out laughing. “That bad, huh?”

“No, it’s…” I stop because, unfortunately, there are not enough words in the English language for what Ethan is like up close all the time. “It’s complicated.”

“Complicated how?”

I stare into my glass. “He’s… not what I thought.”

Luci props her chin in her hand. “Meaning?”

I exhale. “Meaning he’s not just hot and arrogant and annoyingly controlled. He’s good with Oliver. He notices everything. He trusts me in ways I don’t understand. And then sometimes he says something really direct, and I forget how to have a skeleton.”

Luci’s eyes go wide. “Oh, you’ve got it bad.”

I throw a pillow at her. She catches it with a cackle.

“I’m serious,” I say, laughing despite myself. “It’s not just that I want him, which is already inconvenient enough. It’s that when he’s just… there, at home, being all quietly competent and dry and unexpectedly kind, it’s worse.”

“Worse?”

“Yes. Because then he feels real.”

“That’s the dangerous part,” Luci says quietly.

“Exactly.”

I flop backward against the pillows. “And we made rules.”

“Oh, incredible. Nothing says doomed sexual tension like rules.”

“Thank you for your support.”

“You’re welcome.”

I laugh so hard my stomach hurts. Or maybe that’s the weird nausea thing again. I sit up too quickly, and the room sways for a brief, unpleasant second.

Luci catches it instantly. “Whoa. You okay?”

“Yeah.” I wave her off. “Just moved too fast.”

She narrows her eyes. “You’ve done that twice.”

“You're so annoying.”

“And yet correct.”

After a while, the weird floaty feeling passes again, leaving only the warm, loose exhaustion of too much week and not enough emotional stability.

By the time we finally give up and try to sleep, the city outside the window has gone dark and glittering, Chicago spread below us in light and steel and restless motion.

Luci curls up under the blanket beside me like we’re kids again for half a second before announcing that if I kick her, she will expose all my teenage crimes to Oliver in the morning.

“Sleep,” I mutter.

“Yes, mother.”

I smile into the dark.