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“This is getting awkward,” Mae says.
“Let’s go, Dom.” Carm stands and brushes the sand off his delectable ass.
“You should go too. Brother bonding,” Annie whispers.
Enzo rolls off her with a groan.
After the guys leave, all of the girls’ heads turn to look at me.
“Can I have a stick?” I ask, but no one hands me one.
Evie picks up a metal stick and puts a marshmallow on it for me. I hold my hand out for it, but she purposely keeps it away.
“Talk,” she says.
“What?”
“Tell us why you and Carm are doing the horizontal mambo but still trying to act like you hate each other.” Leave it to Evie to call me out on my shit.
“We’re not. No. What are you guys smoking?” I stretch my arm past Mae to Evie, but she holds the stick farther from my grasp.
“Come on. We’re all on your side,” Evie continues to pry.
“I get it. I wasn’t a huge Enzo fan at first either, but these Mancini boys are hard to resist.” Annie smiles like the lovesick woman she is. “Carm is a good guy underneath the multiple layers of ego.”
I stop trying to get the metal stick thing and wrap my arms around my legs, staring into the fire. Evie, I can trust. Annie and Mae seem cool, but I don’t know for sure. Evie’s been spending a lot of time with Mae. If she can trust Mae, I should be able to too, I guess.
“Fine. We’re sleeping together.” I sigh, waiting for the onslaught of questions I know are coming.
“Fuck buddies?” Mae asks, no judgment in her tone.
“Not really. We’re not classifying it.”
All of their perfectly arched eyebrows rise.
“So you’re pretending there’s nothing going on, but sleeping together behind closed doors? And you don’t go out at all together?” Of course Evie has to overanalyze it. She’s nursed me through heartaches before.
But I’m not her, sleeping with the Brit on the weekend and someone else during the week. She makes no apology and she shouldn’t; it’s her business. But we’re different. She could handle Carm, while I’m still unsure if I can. She probably knows that.
I shrug. “He took me to dinner last week.”
“Where?” Annie asks, preparing a new s’more.
“Eleven Madison Park.” I bite my lip.
They all “ohhh” and “ahhh”, looking at one another.
“I need to up my fuck buddies. The most I’ve gotten was Thai takeout on a guy’s couch.” Evie’s gaze shifts to the girls, clearly wanting them to agree with her.
“I just told him that I didn’t want to be fuck buddies and we’re exclusive. No other partners while we’re together.”
Evie laughs, her marshmallow falling into the fire. The one she put on the stick for me. “Only you.”
Mae’s hand lands on my thigh. “I get it. Keep that wall half up.”
“I’m not. It’s not…” Then I realize deep down it is. It’s a relationship without putting a label on it. “He’s free to do what he wants if he finds someone else. He just has to tell me first.”
Annie studies her marshmallow, purposely dodging eye contact. Mae smiles politely but she’s calling bullshit, and Evie… well, Evie is staring at me, waiting for me to clue in.
