“Who said anything about babysitting?” I crouch down and sling her duffel bag up on my shoulder. “We’re kidnapping you, sweetheart.”
She squints past me at Vince, who’s slowly making his way off the floor. “You agree with this kidnapping?”
He gives a slight shrug. “It’s more fun this way,” he says.
“Kidnapping’s illegal, you know,” she retorts.
“Only if we get caught.”
A ghost of a smile touches her lips. “You’re both insane.”
“Takes one to know one,” Vince says, his own tension easing. He reaches out and ruffles her already disastrous hair.
She turns her head to the floor, then looks at both of us in turn. “You really want me to come?”
“Yes,” Vince and I say at the same time, a single, unplanned beat of unity.
Her gaze lingers on my face, searching. I don’t look away. I let her see whatever she needs to see.
She sighs, a long, shuddering sound that seems to come from the depths of her soul. She looks from Vince’s worried face to my hopeful one, and finally, she nods. Just once. A small, defeated surrender.
This is happening. We’re really doing this. A week in the woods with my boyfriend and the woman who somehow, without ever trying, makes my world feel both infinitely larger and terrifyingly small.
Maybe if I play into this being a rescue mission, I don’t have to think too hard about who’s actually being rescued.
TWO
OLLIE
It turns out, being in a relationship did, in fact, curb my cravings for my best friend's girlfriend. Similarly, not being in a relationship brings it all bubbling up until I’m left choking on every regret that led to Vince asking Kat out first.
I’m happy for him. I am. Vince deserves someone who looks at him the way Kat does–like he’s the sun and she’s the moon, basking in his warmth–but that doesn’t stop the way my stomach somersaults when her thigh rubs against mine as we're basically snuggling in the hammock on the deck of Vince’s newly inherited cabin.
Breathing around Kat Newton has always been difficult, but right now, with her strawberry blonde curls spilling over my shoulder, I’m hyperaware of every inch of her body pressing against mine, and it’s fucking suffocating.
Every point of contact between us is torture.
I know I should get up. I should put some space between us. But I don’t. I can’t.
From the moment we got to the cabin, Kat has been bouncing around, snapping pictures of everything, including me. I should hate it. God, I try to. But the more she laughs, the harder it is to keep myself in check around her. As Vince’s best friend, I need to maintain enough distance to keep myself from exploding and my morality intact.
As a bisexual woman with a pansexual best friend, I’m proud that this has never been an issue in our friendship, and I’m desperate to keep it that way. I refuse to come between my best friend and the girl of his dreams, even if she’s also the girl of my dreams. Though with her body crowding mine, so close, so natural, it already feels like I have.
Fuck. I should’ve stayed home. I should have put up more of a fight. Now, I’m sitting here, in this too-perfect cabin, with too-perfect Kat stretched out beside me in a slinky black dress that barely covers her thighs. The deep V neckline plunges recklessly, framing the smooth skin of her cleavage. She smells like strawberry and vanilla, a fucking lethal combination that wraps around me tighter than any blanket.
“Are you sure you don’t want to come with us?” Kat asks, her head finding a comfortable spot on my shoulder.
Fuuuck, this feels nice.
“Yeah, I’m sure,” I manage to rasp out, my voice tighter than I’d like.
I stare at the canopy of pine trees above, trying to anchor myself to anything but the weight of her body.
Behind us, the screen door slams on its hinges, and Vince appears next to us on the deck. He’s dressed in a pair of dark blue slacks and an almost sheer cream-colored button-up, the faint outlines of the tattoos covering most of his body peek ever so slightly through the linen fabric. The top two buttons are left undone, showcasing his honeycomb neck tattoo that leads down to his chest. It took four sessions of him squirming like a little bitch under my needle, but he did it, and it looks incredible.
“Our reservation is in an hour,” he says, utterly oblivious to the war zone inside my head. “Are you sure you don’t want to come with us?”
“Jesus, do you guys coordinate attacks, or are you both just dead set on me ruining your dinner?”
