I sighed and pressed my head back against the car window. “I wish we could just not hide this. Any of it.”
“Be careful what you wish for.” He leaned across the car and pushed some loose strands of hair away from my face. “Did I ever tell you how much I like the bangs on you?”
“No.” My lip curled up in a smile. “You didn’t.”
He mirrored my smile and then kissed me. It was gentle and slow, always the opposite of what I would expect from him. Warmth spread through my body, and my whole body felt like it was tingling. Would this happen every time that I kissed him? I hoped so.
Charlie pulled away suddenly.
“What?” I asked. “Is something wrong?”
“I—” I jumped in surprise as someone knocked on my car window. “That.”
I cleared my throat and sat to face forward before I dared to check who it was. I slowly rolled down the window, unsurprised to see Matthew staring back at me.
“Can I help you?” I asked.
“What are you doing?” he demanded.
“Driving home from work?”
“Why are you still in his car then?”
“We were just talking about Courtney,” Charlie said. He rested his arm along his steering wheel, somehow going from cute lover boy to bored guy driving home his best friend’s little sister in five seconds flat. “She’s driving me insane.”
Matt snorted. “I told you not to go out with her.”
“Yeah, well, hindsight is twenty-twenty,” Charlie said.
“Well, maybe you should start listening to my advice about who to date,” Matt said. His eyes flicked towards me. “Both of you.”
The words were heavily loaded, and we all knew it. I just hoped it was still about Charlie driving me home and not what he may have just seen.
“Come in,” Matthew said to Charlie. “Pat’s in the hot tub.”
Charlie grabbed my bag from the back and handed it to me, then jumped out. I frowned but followed suit. The second I closed the car door, he locked it and followed Matthew inside—without glancing at me or bothering to say goodbye, which hurt more than it probably should have.
I refused to mope around because Charlie was hanging out with Matthew while I was all alone, so I called Violet to come over.
“It is way too hot outside,” Violet complained when she arrived.
“Never fear, air conditioning is here,” I said, pulling her inside. “Did you walk here?”
“No, my sister drove me, but the A/C in our car is broken, so it was almost worse than walking.”
I laughed. “Well, don’t worry. I’ll make you something to eat and you’ll feel better in no time.”
I started pulling things out of the fridge. As I pulled out some frozen fruit, Violet seemed to quickly guess what I was going for as she immediately pulled out a blender. Smoothies were a summer classic for us since they were pretty much the first thing either of us learned to make, and we both loved them.
The backdoor slid open just as I finished making the smoothies, and I almost dropped the blender in concern as I imagined having to see Charlie so soon when I hadn’t told Violet anything about what happened. But luckily, when I looked over my shoulder to see who was there, it was just Matthew stepping inside. He had clearly just gotten out of the hot tub since he was soaking wet from the chest down and dripping water all over the floor. I curled my lip in disgust as I saw the trail he left behind him as he walked into the kitchen.
“Seriously, Matthew? You couldn’t have dried off before you came inside?”
“You sound like Mom,” he said. He reached over to ruffle my hair, and I ducked away with a scowl. “You gotta chill out a little, Mads.”
“Don’t call me Mads,” I snapped.
Matthew—the annoying guy that he was—just laughed. He dipped his finger in the blender and scooped out some smoothie to try. I elbowed him in the chest to move away, but I wasn’t fast enough to stop him. “Mm, this is good. Have any extra?”
