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I gave him a shove. “No touchy boys, I cannot reapply the magic here.”
“Ha!” Coop snorted. “You don’t need anything to look fantastic. But…” He held up his hands. “This is me backing off. You’ll notice I wasn’t the one to smudge the lipstick.”
“Hey.” Jake popped him in the arm lightly, but both were laughing. Beyond their antics, Ian stared at all of us with a kind of hungry intensity that made me blink. When his gaze snagged on mine, he looked away, and I sighed.
With a shrill whistle, Archie cut through all of the antics. “Car is here in forty minutes. Who wants to get ready first?”
Everyone looked at me, and I motioned to myself. “All I have to do is put on my dress. Why don’t you boys get ready and I’ll clean this up and feed the cats.”
“I’m going to borrow your shower,” Archie said as he stood. “I hope you have a lint roller ready after I’m in my suit.” His words and wink reignited the fire they’d lit earlier with their sex party comments.
Laughter burst out of me. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Yay.”
“Do I want to know?” Coop asked, playful suspicion in every syllable.
“You do,” Archie called as he walked away. “But you’re not going to.”
I laughed again and reached for the pizza box on the table. Ian closed his hand on mine as we both grabbed for the same one. Frozen, I met his gaze, and he yanked his hand back. “Sorry.”
“It’s fine.” Not like I was trying to take his hand. That little tendril of disappointment needed to just die. We were friends. “I’m just gonna get rid of the empties.”
“I can do that.” He was gathering the others and grabbed the one from my hand. “Want me to just consolidate all the leftovers into one box?”
“Um, sure, it’s not like anyone here cares if their food touches the others.”
“This is painful,” Jake commented. “I’m gonna change, baby girl.” He rose and pressed a hand to my lower back. “You good?”
“I’m fine.”
Coop just shook his head. “I’ll take care of the cats.” Then both left me in the living room with Ian, who took care with setting the pizza together and carefully not looking at me.
Folding my arms, I shifted my weight from one foot to the other. Then I snagged the last box with pizza and added it into the one he’d been compiling. He glanced at me.
“You really okay with me going tonight?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” Eyebrows raised, I dared him to challenge me. “We just hung out for the last hour, and we were fine.”
“Yeah but…”
“Friends, Ian.”
“Angel…”
I shook my head. “No. Frankie. Angel was sweet when we were dating, but we’re not.”
“And if I want to again?”
Was he serious right now? I stared at him.
“If I screwed this up, then you’d have every right to tell me to…”
“Stop.”
He grimaced.
“We’re not doing this.” Breaking up with him had been hella hard. Having him here right now and trying to be friends was hard. “You said you couldn’t do it, and that you just wanted to be friends. Well, that’s what I’m doing. Don’t…don’t make this a thing.”
