“What do you mean?”
“Things between you two,” Eve said, like I needed translation.
“What’s between us? You wanna hear how many times we fucked or how he made me come in my office because I was too stressed to think straight?”
Evangeline exploded with laughter, nearly choking on her drink. She slapped a hand over her mouth and bolted for the kitchen sink.
“Christ, Ruby,” Rio said, half-gasping, half-laughing.
“What?” I said, grinning now too.
“Oh my god,” Eve wheezed, still catching her breath. “Sometimes I forget how blunt you are.”
“What, you think Rio and Owen just sit around knitting together?”
“No,” Rio jumped in, still laughing. “But I’d never describe us like that.”
“That’s because you two make love, and we fuck. What can I say?”
I was chuckling, and the words came out flippant but with an aftertaste of snappy. Because something in my chest tightened. Like I had to defend what Sebastian and I had. Or like I knew I wasn’t being totally honest, highlighting just the fucking and skipping the help, the support, the shoulder I metaphorically cried and leaned on. The warmth that wasn’t just physical.
But I didn’t want to unpack all that.
Because the only F-word I allowed wasfucking. Notfeeling.
He was a friend.
That was all.
Rio raised both brows, laughing even harder, while Evangeline coughed into the sink.
“You could have warned us it was truth o’clock,” Rio said, stumbling a bit on the ‘o’ and reaching for her can. “I would have braced myself.”
“Okay, beep,” I said, miming a rewind button with my hand. “Let’s pretend I didn’t say any of that.”
“Burned into my brain now,” Rio said, grinning. “Can’t un-hear it.”
“Sorry, Eve,” I added, wincing a little.
My friends never took my bluntness the wrong way—they always understood, even loved it. But the worry that maybe I pushed too hard or too far never quite left me.
When I was in eighth grade, my dad left home, and my mom said it was all our fault. Because I made home unbearable. “He couldn’t stand the fighting. You two never listen,” she berated me and my brother. “You especially—with your big mouth.” She pointed her finger at me in our kitchen. “No wonder he couldn’t stand to be here.Ican hardly stand to be here.” She stepped closer. “You always have to answer back, always have to be smart, get the last word. You’d think that kind of confidence had something to back it up, but it doesn’t.” She waved a hand at my face and hair—my flaws, where I was lacking. They were her proof that I’d overestimated my right to talk back. That all of it, stacked together, was what made my father walk away. His disappointment in us, in me. I didn’t bring anything beautiful, just noise and attitude. And somehow, over the years, with all the extra evidence I collected at school, I started to believe she was right.
When he remarried a year later and had another kid, it only proved her point. We weren’t enough. Not to make him stay, not even to make him look back.
He moved hours away, paid child support on time, but visited rarely—and never with his wife and kid, never inviting us to them. My mom said we shouldn’t “pester” him. “Don’t you start,” she’d warn. “You want him to stop coming altogether?”
So I learned that I was too loud, too stubborn, just too much. But also not enough. And that I made people leave.
Eve waved a hand, cheeks flushed but smiling. “Honestly? Good for you.” Her smile turned naughty when she added, “It was just ... more than I could swallow.”
Rio blinked once, then grinned. “That’s whatshesaid,” she quoted Michael from The Office.
Eve burst out laughing, this time without choking, and so did I.
A moment later, I was relaxed again. I leaned back in my chair and stretched out my legs, wine glass dangling from my fingers.
But then Rio spoke again, as if she couldsmellfeelings. “So ... friends with benefits still working for ya?”
