Page 52 of Last Night Was Fun

“Before you do that, how about we think of all the reasons this is agoodidea instead?”

Emmy narrowed her eyes. “Name me one.”

“Well, aside from the fact he could still go to the wedding with you and solve your date problem, I can say with the utmost certainty in the decade of our friendship, I have never seen you this into someone before. Seems like a pretty good reason to me.”

“I’m notintohim,” she said on reflex.

Beth snorted a laugh. “Em,yesyou are. At least you were until about an hour ago when you found out who he really is. But that shouldn’t change anything, in my opinion. You were ready to fly to Mexico with Axe Murderer; why should Gabe Olson be any different?”

Emmy felt like she had been smacked with a heavy dose of reality, and she didn’t like it. Beth made good points. Emmy had been gung-ho about meeting Axe Murderer and taking him to the wedding. She’d been willing basically sight-unseen. Granted, when she saw the sight, she ran away screaming. But maybe Gabe was just the packaging around the real person she’d gotten to know. Maybe Beth was right. Maybe sheshouldgive it a chance.

She honestly couldn’t believe she was even considering it.

She picked at a thread on the throw pillow. “Well, there’s a very good chance he never wants to talk to me again, so that might make things difficult.”

“I doubt that’s the case,” Beth said astutely. “Who knows, maybe he’s getting a pep talk from his BFF right now, too.”

Emmy rolled her eyes with a blush. She swatted the pillow in angst. “How can I ever come back from this though? What’s the conversation starter after a cataclysmic revelation like that?Hey, I know you actually hate me now that you know it’s me, but still wanna be my date to the wedding?”

Beth took the pillow from her so she didn’t pull it to pieces. “He doesn’t hate you. And you said Axe Murderer is the easiest person to talk to you’ve ever met, so just talk to him like that! Pretend you’re texting!”

Emmy sighed and gazed back at Princess Leia on the bookshelf. If she was going to convince Gabe to be her date, she had one day to do it before she left for the wedding. It was either that or hire someone off Craigslist. Neither option was appealing, but she got the sense her sister would be less likely to murder her if she brought the hot first mate to her wedding than if she brought a total stranger who might himself possess homicidal tendencies.

“Fine. I’ll talk to him at work tomorrow. But, Beth,no onehears about this, okay? We are the only people who know Axe Murderer and Gabe Olson are the same person, and I want to keep it that way—especially from my sister. If I do anything to take the focus off her big day, she’ll lose it.”

Beth gave her a knowing grimace. “My lips are sealed.”

“Thank you. I should go. I have to start packing.”

Beth rose with her off the couch to walk her to the door. “Open mind, Em,” she said with an encouraging pat on the shoulder.

Emmy grumbled and headed into the hall. When she made it outside to walk the few blocks back to her place, the urge to text Axe Murderer hit her hard. Not because she now knew who he was—actually, the fact shedidknow was what stopped her—but because he had been her source of comfort for the past few weeks. He’d been who she turned to when she needed a laugh, a distraction, a bird-band pun. And right now, she could have used all three of those things.

Maybe Beth was right. Maybe therewassomething there. Maybe it was worth exploring, and maybe a few days in Mexico with Gabe Olson would give her a chance to.

That was, if he ever spoke to her again, let alone agreed to go with her.

When Emmy headed into work the next day, she assumed it would be a painful day of thousand-yard stares and avoidance. Gabe might have even called in sick just to dodge her. She already had a list of a million things to do before she left for five days, and finding time to squeeze in a desperate, humiliating-in-more-ways-than-one chat with Gabe made it all the more complicated. She braced herself for the onslaught when she walked into their office, but to her brief relief, she found it empty. She set down her bag and headed to the kitchen to load up on caffeine before fully starting her day.

It was there her relief evaporated, because there was Gabe standing at the counter in one of his cool shirts—minty green—stirring oat milk into a mug of coffee.

Emmy froze in her tracks. She’d worried about what she would feel upon seeing him again after the big reveal—a suffocating wave of embarrassment that would surely drown her on dry land—but instead, she felt... something else. A curious warmth pooled out low in her belly, in her chest, into her face.

Goddamn it.

“I thought you took your coffee black,” she said to distract herselffrom the confusing yet pleasant way her body was reacting to seeing him.

He turned at the sound of her voice and dropped his stirring spoon in surprise. It splashed into his mug and caused him to need to lick his finger. “Emmy!” he blurted when he pulled it out of his mouth. “I-I mean,Jameson. Good morning.”

His genuine fluster made her feel more flustered. And the flush in his cheeks only amplified the one burning hers. She glared at him out of reflex and self-preservation and headed to the coffee station to make her own drink. “Good morning,” she said with her customary terseness.

And then she remembered with a sigh she needed a favor from him and needed to rein in her reflexes—all of them.

As her K-Cup gurgled and squirted into her mug, she felt his eyes on her back. She was in her standard office garb: jeans, blouse, lanyard looped around her neck. A hot pang zipped through her when she remembered the way he’d looked at her in her dress last night, how his eyes had lingered on her bare legs when her skirt tumbled open around her knees.

Her coffee finished brewing, and she turned to see him still standing by the fridge with the oat milk on the counter. She had no choice but to venture into his orbit to use it.

“I thought you hated milk not from cows,” she said as she reached for the carton.