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She laughed. “It’s a promise. Under one condition.”
I whirled on her, my jaw dropping. “Oh my god. You’re blackmailing me? When I look this good?”
“Yeah.”
“Dammit. Well, I respect the brazen audacity. Fine, what’s your condition?”
She grinned. “Talk more about it. I’ll come hang at your place tomorrow, and you can spill what’s on your mind?”
I wrinkled my nose. “Ew. I’d rather get stabbed to death with a rusty garden rake used to till manure into damp soil filled with grasshoppers on a hot summer day.”
“That’s concerningly specific…”
Kay was way too much like me in a lot of ways, and unfortunately, I probably wasn’t shaking her. Woe be upon me. I hung my head. “Ugh, fine. Just bring better food than gouda. Anything but gouda.”
“Sure thing,” she laughed, strolling on ahead again, a big smile on her face. “I’ll look forward to it.”
I help a damsel in distress out of a shift, and this was what I got in return?
Well, whatever. She was bringing food.
Chapter 3
Harper
Priscilla managed to tear her eyes off Annabel long enough to nudge me in the side with a knowing smile, gesturing towards the park entrance, where Kay and Paisley walked in side-by-side. “There’s your girl,” she said, and I shot her a withering look.
“You really think I’m out to steal Gwen’s girlfriend?”
Priscilla just rolled her eyes with a tired smile, and I felt—like I always did when it was her involved—like she’d just laid me bare and obvious for all the world to see. I hoped I wasn’t blushing. It was a bad habit I had when I got called out.
She was the youngest of our friend group, still in university, and she’d somehow maintained the freshman sense of dressing well even into her upper years, wearing a white sundress with a sunhat and her ash-blonde hair pulled back into a loose, effortlessly classy plait, a green ribbon tied into it. I needed to not hang out with her, Aria, and Emberlynn in the same space. They gave me inferiority complexes. I just wore jeans and t-shirts.
But more than that, Priscilla had a strange talent for knowing exactly what a person was hiding by just looking at them, and she’d rendered me completely undone last year when she watched me fumble the littlest bit too much in front of Paisley and immediately pinpointed how I felt. And she didn’t relent until I’d admitted to it.
We’d managed not to talk about it—Priscilla had spent the winter cuffing up so much with Annabel, ever since they went official back in December, that the topic had drifted away. But maybe it was that I’d been thinking about it earlier today, with Anders and all the talk about falling in love, and just that Priscilla, as she always did, figured me out in a blink.
“Somehow,” Priscilla said, finally, “I wasn’t actually referring to the one who’s taken.”
I rolled my eyes, shoving my hands in my pockets, and I found I couldn’t look directly at her. “Paisley’s essentially also taken. She’s in love with herself.”
“You know, I think she likes you, too. You should go for it.”
I rubbed my forehead. “It’s complicated… and it’s not even relevant.”
“Because of that thing you’re hiding?”
I shot her a wild-eyed look, my heart jumping into my mouth, but I didn’t get a chance to say anything before Paisley came streaking through the small crowd of people who had gathered around the picnic tables, made a beeline for me, and then I swear to fucking god she sat down on my lap,facing me.Every muscle in my body strained to the breaking point all at once, but she just gave me her signature big Paisley grin.
“Yo,” she said.
“Pais, what the fuck are you doing?” I tried not to register Priscilla raising her eyebrows high next to me. Paisley gave me a mischievous grin.
“Close your eyes.”
If she kissed me like this, I’d fucking die. Only after I killed her, though. I tried to pretend my heart wasn’t pounding. Pray to god Paisley wasn’t close enough to tell. “You’re going to snap my neck if I do.”
She grinned wider. “Just do it.”
