Carter and Felix both laughed.
“Does that answer your question?” Felix asked, gripping his plate firmly. He’d taken one look around the room—which included Mr. K and his fiancé this time—and figured out the deal.
“I’m going on a really long hike tomorrow,” I said. “Clear my lungs, listen to nothing but the crunch of leaves under my feet. Bliss.”
“Anyone ever tell you there’s something wrong with you?” Carter teased, looking between me and Felix.
I’d almost forgotten that he knew.
No one else did—they just thought I’d gone away for the weekend to hang out with a friend—but Carterknew.
Maybe we should’ve stayed until Monday after all.
“Felix!” Devin enthused from across the room, approaching him with a broad grin and an unopened beer in his hand. “They’re making me play Scrabble and I’m claiming you for my team before someone else does.”
Felix raised an eyebrow.
“What?” Devin said. “You’re a writer. You logically know lots of words.”
“He can’t spell,” I pointed out.
Aiden couldn’t spell either, though—he had an excuse, but that wasn’t the point.
“I can spell some words,” Felix defended. “Mostwords, even.”
“Just not Mississippi?” I teased.
Felix stuck his tongue out at me in a display of incredible maturity.
“I’m going to play Scrabble with Devin,” he said, nose turned up. “And eat all of Carter’s food. Just because of that.”
Devin stuck his tongue out, too, and led Felix away by the arm to where Morgan was setting up the board.
Not only would he have been better off with Morgan on his team, Morgan had probably been angling for that when he’d suggested a game he was great at.
I loved Devin, but he was kind of a dumbass.
“So,” Carter said the second they were out of earshot, finally passing me a plate as well. “Wanna talk about it?”
“I was kinda hoping to have food in my mouth the entire time so I wouldn’t have to,” I said, but I didn’tmeanit. Carter had been through this.Recently.
If he had tips, I was all ears.
“It’s weird though, right?” Carter asked.
“Weird?”
“Yeah, like… realizing after all this time that this thing you were so afraid of that you never even thought about it is actually… fine. No big deal. Pretty nice, actually.”
Oh.
Yeah, that… was definitely weird.
I hadn’tlet myselfthink about this since the first time I’d desperately wanted to kiss Felix at fourteen—there was too much heartbreak, too much fear and uncertainty swirling around it.
And then there’d been Carter, but he wasn’t like Felix. No spark. I loved him with my entire heart, but I had no desire to sleep with him at all.
So yeah. This was a little weird.
