“Yes?”
“You’d better scrub my shower to within an inch of your life when you’re done with your body, do you hear me? If I come in here and find self-tanner staining even a speck of tile, I’m putting you out on the street.”
He shoots a freaking finger gun at me. “I got you, girl.”
I head out of the bathroom, through the bedroom and back toward the kitchen to grab my phone, but before I’m even throughthe living room, Ace is calling my name again. I sigh, turn around, and head back to help him through the door. My best friend is doing what my best friend does—adding the spice to life with self-tanner.
He’s so unpredictable it makes me smile.
Drew’s message can wait a little while longer.
“I’m sorry,” Ace apologizes again from his side of the pillow wall I put between us before we tucked in to go to sleep tonight. The bedroom’s been quiet for thirty minutes, and I thought he’d fallen asleep, but I guess I’m wide awake too, so I can’t throw stones.
“For what?” I ask.
“For the tanner. And the kitchen towel I stained. And…for the best-friend kiss at the lake. I assume that’s why you have the pillow fort between us tonight.”
I sigh. “It’s fine, Ace. All of it is fine. And the pillow fort is just because… Well, because I know we’ve done it before, but don’t you think it’s a little weird of us to sleep and cuddle? We’re not dating, we’re friends.”
He rolls over to face me, smashing down the pillow between us to get a better view of me, so I roll over too. His eyes shine with innocence in the moonlight. “I don’t think anything we do is weird, Lia. I just think it’s us. Is Drew giving you crap about it?”
I shake my head. “He…doesn’t know you’re staying here.”
“He doesn’t? Why not?”
“I don’t know. Because we’re not officially a couple, so I don’t really owe it to him to tell him, and I don’t know… He’s jealous. Thinks you like me, like me.”
“And so what if I do?”
“Ace,” I whisper.
“No,” he says, grabbing the pillow and tossing it on the floor behind himself to clear the space between us. “I mean it. What’s he care if I like you or not? Shouldn’t he just be focused on his own shit? Treating you right, showing up when you need him, makinghimself memorable. He doesn’t need to be worrying about me if he’s not worrying about himself, right?”
“Oh, come on,” I reason. “You can’t tell me if all your little girlfriends knew we were in bed together right now, they wouldn’t be jealous.”
“I don’t have any little girlfriends.”
I roll my eyes. “You know what I mean. Your fan club.”
He shrugs. “Conveniently for me, I don’t give a fuck what anyone thinks.”
“Yeah,” I agree with a laugh. “You usually don’t.”
“What’s that mean?”
“I just mean…you’re not serious about dating and relationships like I am. And that’s okay, it’s you. But it means you’re not going to understand where I’m coming from.”
“I can be serious, Julia.”
I shake my head, the overwhelming urge to tell him to prove it to me clamming me up tighter than a vise. “Let’s just drop it, okay? I’m tired.”
I roll over and face the window again, tucking my hands under my cheek and willing myself to be realistic. This is Ace. My best friend. My best bud. My comfort.
Five long seconds pass in silence before he wraps an arm around me from behind and pulls me tight into his front, and I let out a million pounds of air I didn’t even know I was holding in.
It’s peace. It’s familiarity and friendship and, maybe, I don’t know, a little more than that. I relax.
Within a minute, I’m asleep, Drew, once again, forgotten.
