“You know—”
“She’s my teammate’s sister and she was stranded on the side of the highway in the dead of night. What was I supposed to do, keep driving?”
I froze mid–box fold.
Shit.
Diaz blinked once, twice. Then a shit-eating grin spread across his face.
“I was just going to say that if you want, you can leave some stuff behind until the next M&M night.”
“I— That’s not—”
“But please, go on,” he encouraged, nodding sagely. “Tell me more about how you’re definitely not into Bella Pink.”
I pulled my flannel off the back of a chair and folded it, a little more aggressively than necessary. “You can forget about keeping the air fryer, you smug asshole.”
“You’re missing my point,Benito.You care.A lot.And that makes poor little Diaz extremely concerned you are about to develop main-character feelings.”
I scoffed. “My anxiety would never allow it.”
“I’m being serious.”
“So am I.”
He squinted, like he was trying to figure out whether I was lying to him or to myself.
“She’s Pink’s sister,” I insisted, evening out my tone. “I’m not going there.”
“Because of him or you?”
“Both.”
He nodded, like he respected that even if he didn’t like it. “Do you really think he’d freak out?”
“It’s hard to predict anything Jared Pink says and does.”
The couch gave a familiar squeak when Diaz lowered himself onto the cushions and pulled out his phone. “What about you?”
I busied myself folding a towel that didn’t need folding. “What about me?”
“You like rules, boundaries.” He wielded his phone like a sword, thrusting it in my direction. “And ‘don’t fuck your teammate’s sister’ has got to be in the top five unwritten rules of the friendship manual.”
“I don’t like rules,” I mumbled under my breath.
“Please, you’re the only twenty-nine-year-old dude I know who organizes his closet by color and shirt length.”
“Organization is not the same as loving rules.”
“Same vibe,” he countered. “The point is you’re scared.”
He wasn’t wrong. I was scared.
Of crossing a line I couldn’t uncross, of upsetting my teammate beyond repair. Of losing the fragile, careful equilibrium I’d built over the last two years—the one that kept my anxiety at a dull hum instead of a scream and my hearing fatigue manageable instead of flattening.
Rose City was meant to be a reset button, not a new problem.
“I just want quiet,” I said finally. “That’s all.”
