Page 25 of The Snuggle Is Real

“It’s straw, not hay.”

“I hate you, you know-it-all.” But she says it with great affection.

She leans her head against my shoulder. It's easy. It's familiar. Fifteen years of her head on my shoulder in dorm rooms and airports and the backs of various reception halls.

It is not the same.

I don't know when it stopped being the same. Maybe this morning. Maybe last night. Maybe a long time ago and I was just too busy running the numbers to notice.

But it’s not just me who relies on our friendship. Emily does too.

"New pact," she says against my sleeve.

"We're pact people now?"

"We've always been pact people. It's how we cope." She holds out her hand, palm up. "Phone."

"Emily." I know what she’s thinking.

"Phone, Lennox. For the rest of the weekend. No work. No emails, no budgets, no crying brides. You hold mine, I hold yours."

That makes sense logistically. But… ”What if you get a dick pic?”

Emily snorts. “If I get a dick pic, I’m calling the cops. I’m not on dating apps. I don’t get random texts from random men.”

Thank God.

“Do you get nudes?” she asked. She doesn’t sound jealous. Just curious.

“No.” I hand her my phone.

She gives me hers. Her lock screen is a photo of the two of us at a wedding in Savannah two years ago, both of us laughing at something off-camera. I didn't know she had it. I didn't know she'd kept it.

I put her phone in my jacket pocket, and I don't comment on the photo.

"Rest of the weekend," I say.

"Rest of the weekend," she agrees. "We're just two people at a festival."

"Two people who are dating."

"Fake dating," she corrects, but she doesn't lift her head off my shoulder.

Out of the corner of my eye I see a flash of hot pink hair. Lucy McIntyre is strolling past the cornhole court, sipping a cider with an air of perfect innocence.

She's holding Spice.

I look down. Emily's lap is empty. Spice must have tumbled onto the sidewalk and was promptly lifted by sticky fingers McIntyre.

"Lucy," I call.

"Just borrowing him, sugar!" she calls back, not breaking stride. "He needs a little sparkle! You'll have him back by the wedding!"

Emily starts laughing so hard she has to grab my arm to stay upright on the straw bale. And I start laughing too, the real kind. The kind where you don’t have a care in the fucking world.

And I realize, with the same cold certainty I feel when a spreadsheet finally balances, that I'm in serious trouble.

Because none of this is fake to me.