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“Yeah, we all know exactly how stupid she gets when she hasn’t had sex in a while,” Grace said.

“Hey,” Avery protested.

“Did you or did you not try to convince us it was a good idea to drive all the way to fucking Duluth two summers ago so we could, and I quote, maybe find some dudes?”

Avery laughed, rising up onto her toes to press a kiss to his cheek. “Good thing I’m taken, yeah,” she said, flicking her eyes up toward him.

It was a lie, but it felt like the truth.

Chapter Nineteen

Avery

Avery had the shivers, but not because of the cold. That would have been better, less stressful. Because having the shivers because your best-friend-slash-fake-boyfriend almost kissed you was maybe the worst thing possible.

Avery was no stranger to the horny shivers. As she and Theo had discussed back in the diner—which felt like years ago at this point—she was rather prone to following her libido wherever it led. It was a major factor in how long she stayed with Cameron, and she had to admit she was slightly relieved when he dumped her back in September, as humiliating as that was, as it meant she could start getting laid again. However, Hilleboe College didn’t exactly have much of a hookup scene, unless she was willing to brave the frats. She had been getting desperate, but not that desperate.

But now she had something—someone, rather—making her feel the horny shivers, she knew he was good at kissing, and they had the perfect excuse to be flirty and touchy in front of their friends. Except that was all they could be, because Theo had been very clear during their boundaries conversation that he didn’t want things to get out of hand, so she could touch him, but he was out of reach at the same exact time.

It was the worst of both worlds, honestly. Enough to get her jittery, but not enough to take the edge off. Avery took her turn going down the hill with Harper, and the difference between sitting between Harper’s legs and Theo’s was palpable. Harper was warm and familiar, just like Theo, but sitting between her legs didn’t set Avery’s blood singing, or her nerves tingling, and she didn’t have even the slightest urge to grab Harper by the jacket and kiss her.

Meanwhile, Theo was standing ten feet away from her, and yet it felt like he was right next to her. Every time she caught his eye, a wave of nearly overwhelming longing would swamp her. She couldn’t stop thinking about kissing him, and about the moment in his bedroom when they had nearly kissed for real, not for show or for practice. There had been a look in his eyes that made it hard to breathe, and every so often she would remember it and it would happen all over again.

If it were anyone else, she would probably suggest just going for it, complications be damned, but the stakes with Theo were too high for that. She knew that if things got fucked up between them she wouldn’t be able to come back from that, and losing his friendship would be harder than losing—well, anyone else’s. Tommy, Harper, and Grace might argue with her, but they’d never really get mad at her. And Avery knew she could talk her way through it with them, because whichever one she was upset with, they would have the pressure of the others to keep them all together. Theo, on the other hand, wasn’t as deeply embedded into the group as the rest of them. Sure, they were all friends, but it wasn’t quite the same. He could walk away from her and the others would be sad, but it wouldn’t be easy to pressure him into talking to her. She had had a handful of fights with the others over the years, but in each case the other two forced them to work it out.

No, she had to be careful with Theo, because if she blew up that friendship, that was it. Or maybe it was that her friendship with Theo had always felt a little different from her friendships with the others. That, coupled with Theo’s dislike of Itasca and the possibility that he might one day just stop coming back if he thought he could get away with it, made her anxious. Things with him were both more precarious and more precious than they were with the others, which meant her sudden, wild desire to kiss him senseless was incredibly dangerous.

In fact, Avery had started to think that maybe she shouldn’t have suggested their ruse in the first place. Theo had assured her he didn’t think it was a mistake, but she wasn’t so sure. She had always had some doubts about their friendship, although it wasn’t anything he’d ever done. It was more a cold, logical observation: They were very different in a lot of ways, and if she messed things up with him, they might never find their way back to each other. She wondered if maybe she had ulterior motives for offering, although what, she couldn’t say exactly. At the time, it had seemed perfectly altruistic, a way to keep him from having to unnecessarily hurt Izzy. But now it felt less cut-and-dried, messier, more complicated.

“You okay?” Grace asked, standing next to her. Grace’s nose was red, her cheeks flushed from the wind, and her eyes were concerned.

“Yeah, definitely,” Avery said in a breezy, forced way. “Just, you know, cold.”

“Same. We should probably go in in a bit,” Grace said, but she didn’t look convinced by Avery’s denials. She looked over at Theo, frowning. “Are you avoiding him because we were teasing you guys? Because we were just messing around, that’s all. We’re all really happy you guys are together.”

Avery could tell that Grace meant well, but it just made her stomach feel like it was full of eels. Lying to their friends about this had seemed harmless, but now she felt crappy about it. Most of her fights with them over the past couple of years, few as they were, had happened because Avery tended to overreact when she had been lied to. And now she was lying to them, maybe for a harmless reason—what did any of them care if she and Theo were really together, especially if their “breakup” that would happen soon would be amicable—but it still sat uneasily on her shoulders. Grace would probably be the first to call her out on her hypocrisy, and the others would be just as hurt, if a little quieter about it.

“Oh, I know,” Avery said. “Like I said, I’m just cold. That’s all, I promise. My turn,” she said, probably overly enthusiastically to Tommy. She took the sled and pretended everything was fine as she flew down the hill, but she wasn’t sure anyone bought it, least of all herself.

Chapter Twenty

Theo

Avery was uncharacteristically quiet as Theo drove her home. He started second-guessing himself, wondering if he had misread things. Maybe he shouldn’t be touching her as much as he had been, or maybe he was wrong and Tommy had said something to her.

“I’m sorry if you feel like I’ve crossed some lines.”

Avery snorted. “Stop apologizing, okay? I was just . . . thinking.”

“Uh oh.”

“Shut up,” she snapped, but when they drove under the next streetlight it illuminated the wry smile on her face. “I was just thinking about what Grace said. About, how, you know.”

“You get stupid when you’re horny?”

“Yeah, that,” she said. “Because—wait, you can’t get mad,” she prefaced.

“Actually, I probably can,” he said.