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"So I can cut you with this card and that's fair?" I asked, holding a card to his neck.
"Aggressive much?" He countered, grabbing my hand and pushing it away from him.
We stared at each other for a few more seconds before bursting out into laughter.
This was a normal day for us. After being best friends for eight years and living together for nearly three, we'd gotten pretty comfortable being completely savage with each other, especially during game night.
I leaned into him as we laughed, holding onto his arm. Naturally, his free arm wrapped around my back, staying there for a second after I finally straightened up.
Our friends were all silent, meaning they obviously had no sense of humor. But when I looked at them, they exchanged glances and then looked back at me and Landon like we'd spontaneously become conjoined twins.
"What?" I asked, no longer thinking they were giving me weird looks because of my notoriously bad luck.
They all stayed silent for a few seconds, none daring to speak up. Finally, after looking at everyone else at the table for confirmation, Andrew opened his mouth.
And I wished he would have kept it closed.
"Are you two dating now?" He asked. My cheeks grew instantly hot.
I just stared back at him, mortified that he would ask such a thing. First of all, Landon and I had been living together for such a long time. If we were ever going to be together, it would have already happened. Second of all, he was my literal best friend, and I would never let anything ruin that.
Still, the question had my insides turning. I burst into laughter, attempting to emphasize how absurd the thought was.
"Of course not," Landon answered, pretty much reading my mind. "Why would we do that?"
Mandy let out a giggle, but quickly righted herself. "Because you two are so close. Just figured you finally got together."
"Finally?" I asked, quirking a brow at her and hoping my face wasn't as red as it felt.
"You know…since you two have been like this for years now." Mandy waved a hand at us as if that explained anything.
I looked at Landon, seeing the equally clueless expression on his face.
"This? We're just friends, guys. Always have been." Landon threw an arm around me, trying to emphasize the friend part.
"Always will be," I finished, realizing that I'd literally finished his sentence, which didn't help our argument.
"Whatever you say," Cooper smirked as if he'd caught us lying, but I just shrugged at his comment.
"You guys are crazy," I told them, motioning for Landon to make his move and get the game restarted. I was ready to be out of their scrutiny.
2
Landon
"We'dplayedfourgamessince the last round of Uno, and I still couldn't get her laugh out of my head. It was a nice laugh, and I'd always liked it, but today, I hated it. For some reason, the way she had laughed at the notion that the two of us could be dating rubbed me the wrong way. Not that I necessarily disagreed with her, but she just kept laughing about it. As if it was something laughable.
I understood where our friends were coming from. Isabella and I were close. And after years of tight friendship and living together, we were extremely comfortable around each other. It wasn't weird for her to lean into me or for me to put my arm around her. I pestered her pretty much any time she was around me because I loved getting a reaction out of her. I knew everything there was to know about Belle, and she knew everything about me. She was the one person in this world that I counted on through every phase of my life.
And it would always be that way. We'd even promised that our friendship wouldn't die when we got married; we would just have to become friends with each other's spouses because no one walked away from the type of friendship that we had.
And even though I knew that was how it would always be between us, even though I had ever considered the possibility of us dating—Okay, I totally had when I first met her in college and thought she was the hottest woman I'd ever seen, but quickly had moved on when I realized that she was already in a relationship—I still didn't like the way she just laughed at the idea of us being together.
"I'm getting more snacks," Belle declared, moving from the table and heading towards our kitchen. I stood too, following her.
"I'll help."
"We know you're just going in there to make out!" Cooper called after us, and I turned around to flip him the bird.
