"Uh-huh." Riley sets the bagels on my counter and starts unpacking them. "And the fact that you've checked your phone every four minutes for the past three weeks has nothing to do with that fine-ass silver fox from Miami?"
My face burns. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"'Don,'" Sasha says, making air quotes with her fingers. "Mysterious businessman who 'probably isn't even his real name' according to your drunk texts at two AM last Saturday."
"I was not drunk—"
"You sent me eleven consecutive messages analyzing what kind of businessmen could afford penthouses in the Rialto suite in Miami,’” Riley says, pulling up her phone to read directly from the evidence. “And thenyou spiraled over whether or not those types of businessman are likely to be married. I have the receipts here.”
She shakes the phone, and I lunge for it.
Holding it out of reach, she hangs it over my head, managing to remind me of all the times she’d done just this since we were freshmen roommates.
"That was a moment of weakness," I mutter.
"You've had a lot of those lately," Sasha’s brows waggle. "Almost like you're hung up on someone."
"I'm not hung up. I'm just..." I trail off, searching for a word that isn't "obsessed" or "pathetic.”
"Processing?" Riley offers.
"Overthinking?" Sasha suggests.
"Delusional?" I conclude. "Because that's what this is. Delusion. I spent one night with a guy whose last name I don't even know, and I'm acting like it was some great romance when really it was just..."
“Just what?” Sash prompts.
“I don’t know—Biology? Or pheromones. A rebound hookup that was supposed to be a palate cleanser.”
They both stare at me.
"Wow," Riley says finally. "That was the most weirdly clinical description of great sex I've ever heard."
"It wasn't—" I stop. "Okay, yes, the sex was great.”
Riley bites into a bagel. “I believe the word you used was ‘mind-blowing’.”
“Still, that changes nothing. People have one night stands all the time.” I swallow. “Okay, I don’t. But even I know that once they’re over, people move on with their lives without turning into obsessive weirdos who google 'Miami penthouse hotels' at three AM."
Sasha grins wide. “Well, of course you were Googling that delicious hunk of Business Daddy meat. When a man ‘cleanses your palate’ like that, who could blame you?”
Riley offers me a bagel, and I take it, ripping into itwith my teeth.
“Okay, I love you both,” I say, pointing the carb-loaded circle in their direction, “but I will literally scream if we don’t change the subject.”
“Agreed. But first…” Riley sits next to me, bumping my shoulder with hers. “Here's the thing. Even if Don was great—even if he was the best sex and conversation and whatever else you had—you're never going to see him again. So you need to decide: are you going to spend the next six months wondering what if, or are you going to accept that you had one perfect night and move forward?"
"Option B," I say immediately. "Definitely option B. I'm done letting men derail my life. Josh took four years from me. Don gets one night. That's it. I'm focusing on my career now, and no man—no matter how great the sex was—is going to make me lose sight of what I've worked for."
But even as I say it, my chest squeezes.
I attribute the feeling to the carbs, and take another chunk out of my bagel.
"Good." Sasha stands, all business now. “Now, let’s focus on the fact that you're about to move to New York City and start working for one of the most innovative tech companies in the country."
"Titan Industries," I say, and just the name puts a butterfly in my stomach. "I still can't believe I got the job."
"You got the job because you're brilliant and you crushed that interview," Riley says resolutely. "Not because of connections or luck or anything else. You earned this on your own merit. Nobody handed it to you."
