ONE
KAT
One text is all it takes to throw our day into chaos.
Not that I’m surprised. Things tend to be chaotic when it comes to Ollie“I once licked a parking cone because my best friend said I wouldn’t”Ashburn, my boyfriend Vince’s best friend.
Today was supposed to be an easy-going day of packing the van, gathering road trip snacks like we’re a bunch of ten-year-olds let loose in a convenience store, arguing over who gets to pick the music, and three hours of open road on our way to escape the city to the cabin Vince recently inherited from his late grandmother.
Just us, Ollie, and Ollie’s boyfriend Justin. However, instead of the open road, we’re standing on the marble stoop of Ollie’s Baltimore City rowhouse, hearts and fists pounding.
“Come on, Ollie, let us in,” Vince yells, rapping at his best friend’s front door with the side of his fist.
It’s been less than twenty minutes since her text came through in a new group chat with just the three of us—Justin excluded.
OLLIE POP: Not going. Got dumped. Have fun.
Have fun? Does she really believe we would leave her to wallow in self-pity and still be able to have fun? Who the fuck does she think we are?
“Ollie, open the damn door!” Vince bellows, his expression a mix of concern and frustration.
Ninety percent of Vincent Garrett is a calm and passionate cuddle monster that wears his heart on his sleeve,literally. Mixed into a patchwork sleeve of flash tattoos, most of them done by Ollie, on his right arm is an atomically correct heart, inked right into his skin, shaded with pinks, yellows, and blues, just like the heart that beats in his chest.
The other ten percent is a quiet violence for the people he loves. A sleeper cell of bloodlust that is only activated when one of us is hurt, and Ollie is definitely hurting.
Vince is the poster child of predictability and structure, whereas Ollie is usually the scatterbrain full of grit and dynamite.
I knew from the moment we met that they were a package deal.
Vince approached me with a smile plastered to his stupidly handsome face as he hit me with cringy pick-up lines, just to see me smile, but it was Ollie’s laugh—loud and full of life—that I remember the most from that day. Her eyes held a wildness that crashed into me like a tidal wave, pushing me under until Vince pulled me to the surface with a wink and a smile, and I have been dangerously hooked on their energy ever since.
Vince beats on the door a few more times before I pocket my phone and shoulder him aside to add my own—louder, faster, more desperate. The thought of going to the cabin without Ollie feels like betrayal. So much of Vince is intertwined with Ollie that we’re rarely without her, and when we are without her, I wish that we weren’t. I mean, every good girlfriend should make an effort to get along with her boyfriend’s best friend, right?
So what if his best friend is a gorgeous, badass tattoo artist covered in tattoos? Who cares if she makes my stomach do a little flip whenever she smiles at me? That’s totally normal. Nothing to be alarmist about. Just…girl things.
Just girl things.
A few moments pass, and there are still no signs of life from inside her house.
“Maybe she’s asleep,” I suggest, but Vince immediately shakes his head.
“No way. She’s awake,” he mutters with confidence. “She’s just hiding from us. Like a opossum.”
“Don’t opossums play dead?”
“Exactly,” is all he says as he moves over to the small window to the right of the door. He cups his hands around his eyes, leaning against the frosted glass, peeping inside. “Ollie, open the door, or I’m throwing rocks through your window.”
Despite the stress of the situation, a smile creeps onto my face at his desperate attempt to lure her out of the house with the cringe of a long-dead meme.
A floorboard creaks from inside before the lock clicks and the door swings open.
“Holy shit!” I say. “I cannot believe that worked.
“Yeah, well, you throw rocks, I throw hands,” Ollie groans, standing in the doorway wearing a hoodie the size of a small country, hair in disarray. Her usually vibrant eyes are empty, hitting me right in the gut.
“I’m going to fucking kill him,” Vince growls beside me.
Ollie sighs, and my heart drops straight out of my chest watching her shoulders slump.
