“Oh.”
Shit.
If I saidno, would he think I’d brought them with me? But then what if I got found out later, somehow? What if someone needed an emergency condom and I was supposed to have them?
“Uh, yeah, probably.” I scratched the back of my neck. “I dunno what Morgan packed,” I added, trying to save face and not sure I’d succeeded.
“Better safe than sorry,” Chris said, grinning. “Marshmallows, then supplies.”
And just like that, all the awkwardness was over. We were on the same page. We both planned on screwing our respective boyfriends as often as we could possibly manage between practice and competition heats.
I wasabsolutelycertain that was Chris' plan, anyway. He and Alex were doing the long-distance thing, they were bound to be all over each other.
“He is hot, by the way,” Chris said. “Morgan, I mean. Nice catch.”
“I didn’t think he was your type,” I said absently, looking at a bag of giant marshmallows.
That was Morgan. A giant marshmallow.
I reached out to grab the bag without a second thought, smiling to myself.
“I wouldn’t wanna restrict myself to atype. I mean, you haven’t got anything to worry about, just… I approve.”
“Your approval means the world to me,” I said, and I meant for it to sound teasing, but it came out a little more sincere than I thought it would. Chris’ approvaldidmean something to me. He was a good guy, I liked him, and I wanted to keep being friends.
“C’mon,” he said, throwing another couple of bags of marshmallows in his basket. “Let’s go buy up all the flavored lube.”
9
Morgan
“DidBrad interrogate you when Chris took me away?” Devin asked as he climbed into the passenger seat of the van, watching me carefully. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think, and you were helping Julie.”
“It was fine. He mostly talked about himself.” I shrugged.
I got the feeling Brad was the kind of person who mostly talked about himself in general.
“He’s not to everyone’s taste,” Devin responded, buckling in as I started the van.
“What I don’t get is how he was toyourtaste.”
I didn’t want to insult the guy too harshly until I understood exactly what had gone on between him and Devin, because I didn’t want to hurt Devin’s feelings.
But I could honestly say I didn’t like him, million-dollar smile or not.
I could see whypeopledid, why they’d be taken in by the charm and not notice the rest of it until much later—if at all—but Devin had clearly seen past the surface charm already. On the other hand, he was defending the guy.
I didn’tgetit.
“We met on a mystery kayaking tour. I won the chance to go through work, and he works at one of the other stores, and honestly? He was awesome. I felt like such an outsider, like I didn’t know anyone there—I was from the smallest store in the smallest town, I’m not the most outgoing person in the world, and he threw an arm around me and introduced me to everyone and just… took care of me the entire trip.”
I didn’twantto be jealous, I hated the feeling, but it welled up in the pit of my stomach anyway, making the hairs on the back of my neck bristle.
Someone who wasn’t such an ass could’ve taken care of Devin.
Icould’ve taken care of Devin. Even if I had no idea how to handle a kayak.
“I fractured my wrist on the second day,” Devin added. “And this was thething—he sat out with me. Instead of going back with the others, he sat with me back at the big shared cabin we were all staying in and played cards with me and didn’t even complain about missing out on all the fun.”
