Page 2 of The Best Shot

My phone buzzed again. Then again.

Missed call from Ava (6:47 a.m.)

Ava: I know you’re reading these. Your read receipts are on.

Tabby: that woman you left with had a Tinkerbell tramp stamp, Hale. I need you to sit with that.

Ava: Tinkerbell? It was a skull with a blunt.

Annie: both worse somehow

Ava:

Annie: it was definitely a skull with a blunt. how’d you see Tinkerbell?

Tabby: margaritas. IDK

Annie: there was also fire. it was a skull with a blunt AND fire.

Ava: Sighs.

Those women didn’t miss shit, not a damn thing if they could help it.

I sighed, still baffled how I’d ended up in a group chat where my one-night stand’s butt art was the topic du jour.

Nico.

This was his doing.

He and I built our friendship the old way. Show up, shut up, buy the next round. Handle business when it got ugly. Feelings stayed in the trunk with the spare tire, and that system had worked just fine for more than a decade. Then he fell hard for Tabby, and Tabby came with both Ava and Annie welded to her hip. I can still remember the night I looked up mid-conversation and realized I was the only man at the table, three women deep into opinions about my life, and that I’d somehow agreed to all of it.

Yasmine used to balance the scales. But she was gone more than she was here, off somewhere chasing grizzlies in Montana, or eagles in Alaska, or whatever northern light was performing over whatever frozen tundra she’d decided she needed to be standing on. When she was around, though, the chat ran cooler. Like she absorbed some of the chaos just by existing in it.

I scrolled up without meaning to.

Her last message was three months old.

Yasmine: Leaving cell service tomorrow. If y’all burn down the town while I’m gone, at least film it.

Flame emojis from Ava. A heart from Tabby. No promises from Annie.

A thumbs-up from me. Because what do you send to a woman who’s always halfway out the door before you’ve figured out what you want to say?

The phone buzzed in my hand.

Ava.

I stared at the screen for a second before answering.

“Hey.”

“Morning, Hale.”

“What’s up?”

“You alone?”

I looked at the indent in the pillow beside me. “No.”