Page 44 of Meant to be Mine

Hollis and I nodded, no strangers to hard work ourselves.

“So how’d your thing go last night?” Hollis asked. “I would have gone, but I didn’t want to.”

I snorted a laugh. “Thank you for being honest at least. And it went great. The cousins showed up and people loved the new designs on the models. But there was one little wrinkle at the end of the night.” I turned my glass in my hands. “I crossed a line with Kensey last night.”

Neither of them said anything immediately. Micah’s brow furrowed. Hollis smirked.

“Define crossed a line,” Micah said carefully.

“We kissed. In the limo on the way back from the event.” I paused. “And then she came back to my place.”

“Where she came again?” Hollis asked, eyes twinkling with humor.

“Let’s just say things went further than they should have. Not all the way. But far enough.” I exhaled through my nose. “And then she left. This morning she texted me that she wasn’t coming in.”

“She’s avoiding you,” Micah said.

“No shit.”

Micah shook his head and sighed. “Sounds like you suck in bed, bro.”

“Or she’s processing everything,” Hollis said.

I nodded. “She said something like that.”

“Okay,” Micah said. “So you finally did the thing you’ve been not doing for the last decade. It’s about damn time.”

“We’re friends,” I said. “It wasn’t supposed to happen.”

“Nobody plans it. That’s kind of the whole point.” Micah leaned forward. “How do you feel about it?”

“Good,” I said. “Which is the problem. I feel good about it and I feel like I might have just detonated the most important friendship in my life, and both of those things are happening at the same time and they don’t cancel each other out.”

“She’s thinking,” Hollis said. “Just let her take a moment.”

“I’m not great at letting things sit,” I said. “Especially with her. When I have a problem, I talk to her.”

“Or us,” Micah said.

I gave him a look. “But I want to talk to her.”

“Here’s the thing,” Hollis said. “You’ve been telling yourself for years that you don’t go there with her because you’re afraid of what happens if it goes wrong. But the part you keep skipping over is what happens if it goes right.”

“I don’t have a great track record with going right.”

“You’ve never been with someone you actually give a damn about,” Hollis said. “That’s a different situation. You can’t compare it.”

I didn’t argue with that. He wasn’t wrong. “She goes back to New Jersey at the end of the summer,” I said. “Even if I wanted to try, she has a whole life out there. A job. An apartment. She didn’t come back here to start something. She came back because her mom broke her arm and she missed her parents.”

“People move,” Micah said. “It’s not like she lives on Mars.”

“She doesn’t want to move back here,” I said, shaking my head.

“She could change her mind.” Hollis punched me in the shoulder. “You could convince her.”

“I know Kensey,” I said. “This is going to ruin everything. I fucked up.”

“You’re lonely,” Micah said. “That’s why things got that far.”