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Scottie peeks his head out of the kitchen. “I would come in early to hang out with your awesomeness.” When he sees I’m holding a bin of plates, he skirts around Rose, giving her his best smirky smile, and takes them from me.
“That’s because you’re a walking hormone, and I flirt with you all the time. This conversation isn’t for your ears, so go back to making sandwiches,” she says.
“There’s nothing wrong with dating a younger man,” Scottie says. “Look at Maverick Waters and his girlfriend. He’s like, what? Early twenties? And she’s thirty.”
I frown. “I thought Maverick was mid-twenties and she was late.”
Rose shakes her head. “Nope. Mav turns twenty-two in the fall, and Clover is either almost thirty or already thirty. She was his professor last year.”
“What? How did I not know this?” I never would have guessed there was that much of an age difference between them. Maverick has always seemed so together, but I guess I’ve only known him for a couple of months, and I mostly see him when he’s coaching boys’ hockey.
“I don’t know, but we can come back to it later since it has nothing to do with why you’re in a mood this morning.” She arches a manicured brow. “Lovey has messaged three times to ask if you’re okay, but she won’t tell me why she’s asking, so that right there tells me something happened. Might as well spill the beans. It’s going to come out eventually. We’re too tight-knit a group, and you’re a member of our weird little family now, where everyone knows everyone else’s business. Lucky you.”
I sigh. She’s not wrong, and I need a point of view that isn’t mine, Lovey’s, or BJ’s on this really fucking weird situation. “Lovey slept in BJ’s bed last night.”
“And BJ slept in yours with you?”
“No.”
Rose frowns. “Can you expand on this, so I understand?”
I explain what happened, glossing over our conversation in the kitchen and what we had planned to do when we went back upstairs, and fast-forwarding to the part where I found Lovey asleep in his bed. “What am I supposed to think? He was about to bring me back up to his room for fun times, and Lovey had just spent the night there.” I drop my voice to a whisper. “And we had sex for the first time the night before. Tell me it’s not fucked up.”
“Yeah, it’s fucked up.” She sighs. “I didn’t realize they were still doing this.”
“Still doing what?” I hate the way my stomach twists.
“Talking each other to sleep.”
“This is a regular thing for them?” I lean against the counter. I don’t know how to deal.
“Keep in mind that I’m a few years younger than most of the crew, and I’ve only been around in the summers because I went to school out of state until I got kicked out—not that that detail is important or anything. But for as long as I can remember, they’ve been super tight. Sometimes they’d disappear down to the dock or wherever when we were having a campfire, or up to one of their rooms if it was a movie or hang-out night. I guess everyone assumed they were fooling around, but when we’d go to surprise them, they’d either be talking or they’d have fallen asleep—but not in any kind of compromising position. They’d just be lying there next to each other.”
“So what? This is just something they do?”
Rose gives me a sympathetic smile. “They’ve always been really close. But as far as I know, they’ve never been more than friends.”
“They told me they’d kissed twice. Both during a game of spin the bottle when they were teenagers.”
“I can’t believe they brought that up. It was supposed to be in the vault forever.”
“You know about it?”
“Yeah. I was there. Laughlin came up with the idea, and I don’t know why everyone jumped on board. He probably goaded them into it. It’s totally something he would do. I must have been eleven or twelve maybe?” She thinks a moment. “It was awkward since so many of them are related. The Buttersons and Waters are cousins, and then the Waters and Ballistics are cousins or half-cousins—whatever. Blood is involved. People were tapping out left, right, and center. Lovey had to spin the bottle three times before it landed on someone who wasn’t a direct relative, and obviously that was BJ. They both looked so freaked out afterward. We all agreed that it was a bad idea and we wouldn’t talk about it again. And we haven’t, until now anyway.”
“So they really have no chemistry?”
She shakes her head. “I think there was good and bad in it for BJ and Lovey, because they didn’t have to wonder if there was more to their friendship anymore. And we’ve all been exposed to it for years, so to us, it’s just BJ and Lovey being BJ and Lovey. I think it ramped up a lot at the end of high school when all that shit went down with BJ’s previous pairs partner.”
“What shit is that?”
Rose chews on the inside of her lip. “Has he ever mentioned Caroline before?”
“In passing. This is the first time I’ve heard her name. When I asked what happened, he said it was a story for another day. And I got the sense it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows.”
“It wasn’t.” Rose blows out a breath. “I think you should ask BJ what happened with Caroline. There’s a reason his relationship with Adele is what it is. They only spend time together on the ice. Even if they meet to talk about their routine, it’s always at the arena, and most of the time Lily is there, which makes sense because she’s their coach, but BJ needs those boundaries.” She taps on the edge of the counter. “Sometimes I wonder if BJ and Lovey are so close because it means he doesn’t have to bother with anyone else. Except you came along and turned that all upside down.”
“We’re not a couple or anything.”
