Page 1 of The Best Shot

1

“NAH, I’M GOOD.”

HALE

The great thing about having female friends is that they give a damn and aren’t afraid to show it.

They’ll appear with soup when you’re dying, remember exactly how you take your coffee, and never once side-eye you for knowing every word to Jazmine Sullivan’s “Girl Like Me.”

The downside?

They give a damn about you and aren’t afraid to show it. Which means they’ve got opinions. Loud ones. And they will drag your ass in the group chat about them.

Case in point, the messages that blew up my phone the second I left Ricochet with a woman I’d met an hour earlier.

Spice Cabinet — Main chat

Annie: not one to slut shame but that’s three this week, king

Hale: I’m single. They’re single. We’re all grown and consenting. Relax.

Ava: Babe, seriously?

Tabby: please hydrate and get tested

Hale:

Annie: lmao. she’s 100% going to rob you.

Hale: It’s not that deep. Chill.

Ava: Ok friend.

I was thinking about that while pretending to be asleep and listening to the woman in my bed try to ghost me before sunrise.

She was smooth with it, I’ll give her that. Slow, practiced movements in the dark. The kind that said she’d done this dance plenty of times.

I kept my breathing steady, heard a zipper, then a rustle of fabric. Her phone screen flared briefly, then went dark. The mattress dipped as she reached for her shoe, and cool air hit the side of the bed where her body heat had been warming the sheets.

When she bent down, the tattoo at the base of her spine caught the thin morning light. It was a skull with a blunt in its mouth, smoke curling up alongside actual flames licking at the edges, the whole situation rendered in ink about two inches north of her ass crack.

Classy.

I made a show of stretching. “No need to rush off, sugar. Let me buy you breakfast.”

She snorted, still bent over her shoe. “Nah, I’m good.”

“You sure?” I said. “I was just getting attached.”

“Maybe next time.”

The door opened and closed with a soft click, and just like that Natalie of the skull-and-flames tattoo left my life.

Morning light came through the hotel blinds in strips. I lay there longer than I needed to, staring at the ceiling fan. Not hurt, exactly. It was more the low-grade embarrassment of reaching for something in the dark and realizing it was never there to begin with.

She’d been bright and loud and alive. Threw darts like she meant it and laughed with her whole mouth. When I asked if she wanted to leave, she’d said yes without making me work for it.

From the outside, it probably looked like winning.