Page 22 of The Best Shot

“Thanks for cleaning up downstairs.”

“Oh. Right.” She took a sip. “Early riser, I guess.”

“Uh-huh.”

The silence that followed was brand new. We’d never had that kind of quiet before.

“Hale—” she started.

“Yasmine—” I said.

We both stopped. She bit her lip. I sighed.

“Don’t,” I said.

She looked at me then. “Don’t what?”

“Make this weird.”

“I wasn’t going to make it weird.”

“Good. Because it’s not weird.”

“Right. It’s not weird.”

“We’re adults.”

“We are.”

“Friends who…”

“Yep.”

“So.”

“So,” she agreed.

Annie’s voice carried from the living room, groggy and pissed. “So y’all just left me down here in the wild? Nice.”

Yasmine pressed her lips together, half amusement, half relief, and tipped her head toward the living room. “We should.”

“Yeah.”

Annie was sitting up, blanket pooled around her waist, her cap of curls mashed to one side of her head.

“Morning, sunshine,” I said.

She flipped me off.

“Here.” Yasmine handed over her coffee. “You need this more than I do.”

“My neck,” Annie groaned. “Ow. What the fuck.”

“You passed out and refused to move,” I said. “We tried.”

“I don’t remember that.” She drank half the coffee in one go. “Did I miss anything?”

Neither of us said anything for a beat too long.