1
RILEY
Acabinet door closed and Katy sighed forlorned. There was no helping her once she became disillusioned with the offerings in my home. I adjusted a couch cushion and leaned back, finding the remote shoved between two pillows.
Katy opened the fridge door with a heavy sigh—this one of annoyance.
“Don’t you have food at the mansion where you live?” I called from my spot on the couch. No way was I leaving the comforts of my living room to help her satisfy a snack craving.
“It’s healthy stuff,” she said, leaning to the side and peeking at me from in front of the fridge. “And I don’t live there.”
I flipped on the television and quickly changed the channel so Katy didn’t see the last thing I watched. She’d never let me live past my obsession with Rachel Ray’s cooking show.
“Could have fooled me,” I mumbled while using the guide to find a manly program, maybe something with cars or knives or a World War II documentary.
She leaned into the space between my kitchen and living room. “Do you want me to leave?” Katy’s bottom lip stuck out in her signature pout. It was the one move she still had on me after our years of friendship.
That and she normally brought me cookies from the bakery.
“No. I don’t care if you hang here. I just don’t want Scrooge McDuck to come after me.” Pierce spent months practically pissing all over Katy. No way did I want to step into that puddle.
Katy snorted. “He knows you’re my bff.” She slammed the fridge, causing the glass condiment jars in the door to rattle.
I cringed. Just like when we were kids, she’d be here to make the mess but never stick around to clean up the aftermath. She walked into the living room carrying my brand-new jar of nacho cheese and an unopened bag of blue corn chips. I’d been saving them for poker night with my brothers.
“We won’t be best buddies forever if you keep stealing my snacks.”
Katy dropped to the couch and handed me the nacho cheese to open. Like a dope I did. “Dude, my other friends are women.”
“So?”
She leaned over, putting herself between me and the television. Her expression calling me a moron. “They don’t keep buckets of nacho cheese in their refrigerators.”
Sucked to be them. The poor men who lived with Katy’s friends had to be starving. Ridge’s group weren’t ones to kiss and tell, but they definitely weren’t mentioning the lack of nacho cheese in the weight room during our weekly workouts.
I propped to my side to see the TV again and waited for Katy to resume her position. “How are you doing with losing your grandma?”
It’d been almost a year since Katy’s grandma died, and she’d begun talking about her again. Well, without choking up when she did.
She grabbed her phone. Classic Katy deflection move. “Okay, actually. I miss her obviously, but Pierce brought flowers to her grave site with me on Memorial Day. I think Nana liked that.”
Doubtful.
Katy seriously didn’t remember how much her grandmother hated the Kensington family. She had Pierce totally whipped.
“He wants me to move in and rent my place to someone new, but I’m not ready.”
That was news. “Not ready to live with Pierce or to say goodbye to the house?”
Katy was more of an easy-going girl, so the fact she even mentioned Pierce’s wishes meant she was considering them more than she’d admit.
“The house mostly. I need a bachelorette pad so I can throw mad parties.” And there came the typical Katy.
The only people throwing mad parties in Pelican Bay were the high school kids who thought we were too stupid to know which corn field they’d set up their bonfires in, and occasionally we were fairly sure Pearl threw a rager. I only hoped they weren’t swinging parties with the older Pelican Bay population.
In the background, a fire roared high on the television, and Katy’s mouth dropped open, but not at the wicked knives they were forging on the screen. “What?”
“Holy shit, Riley,” she said, not taking her eyes from her phone.
