She tilted her head.
“…unless he didn’t have any.In which case, I suppose I’ll have to give you the whole motion of the ocean speech again.”
Jordan sighed hard.
“And you know how tedious it is for me to have to lie—”
“It was Nash,” Cassie blurted.
“Nash?”Jordan repeated, blinking.“As in first-love Nash?As in cheated-on-you-with-your-best-friend Nash?As in—”
“Yes!”Cassie snapped.“That Nash—what other Nash would it be?”
Jordan didn’t respond right away, and the café noise briefly swelled behind her.Then, almost carefully, she continued, “You know, they say grief-fueled sex is extremely normal.Happens way more than you’d think.And it doesn’t have to mean anything—”
“I punched him,” Cassie cut in.
Jordan didn’t miss a beat.“Before the sex, or after…or—wait—during?”
“Never mind,” Cassie continued quickly.“That part’s not important.”
Jordan waved a hand.“So you slept with your ex and then you punched him.Honestly, Cas, that’s just—what?A Tuesday for half the women on the planet.”
Cassie barked a laugh that wasn’t really a laugh.
“I’m being serious,” Jordan added.“It’s not like you’re the first person to do something messy while grieving.Remember when Marta lost her mom and went off the deep end with—”
“Oh god,” Cassie groaned.“That podcaster from Jersey.The one with the face tattoos.”
Jordan mock-shuddered.“Yes.That.So give yourself some grace, because no matter how messy this was, at least it wasn’t podcaster-from-Jersey messy.And at least it was good-messy.”
Cassie muttered, “I never said it was good.”
“Oh, please.You look like you survived the F train at rush hour, and you’ve got a whole-ass constellation on your neck—I think we can safely rule out ‘terrible sex.’”
And just like that, the memory of Nash’s mouth at her neck—his hips between her thighs—had her breath stuttering and heat crawling up her throat.
Groaning, Cassie leaned back in her chair.“I don’t want to talk about the logistics.”
Jordan’s eyes gleamed.“Oh, I absolutely think you do.”
“No,” Cassie said, already shaking her head.“Because if I start, I’m not going to stop.And then I’ll hate myself even more than I already do.”
Her voice dropped, sharper now.“God, Jo.Why him?Why the fuck did it have to be him?”
Jordan was quiet for a moment.Then, “Okay.So maybe it’s not the sex you’re regretting.Maybe you’re regretting what it’s woken up.Because sleeping with your ex is never just sex—at least not this particular ex.”Jordan paused, letting the thought hang there, the silence stretching.
Cassie swallowed hard.“Yeah,” she whispered.“Something like that.”
“So why don’t we cut out all the dancing around, completely skip the logistics, and tell me the only thing that actually matters here—do you still have feelings for him?”
Do you still have feelings for him?
Cassie cursed as she shoved through Margie’s front door and kept cursing as she marched down the road, until it finally spit her out at the edge of the ridge, where the pavement broke to gravel and the gravel gave way to ruts the county hadn’t cared enough to fill in years.
She followed it until the hollow split, one road climbing toward the cemetery hill while the other sagged downhill into the trees.She took the lower road, winding deeper into the hollow, hemmed in by woods and trailers clinging crooked to the slope.
From a porch nearby, an old woman sat in a plastic chair, cats piled across her lap, humming off-key.She lifted a hand in a vague wave as Cassie passed.
