I looked at her, hoping she could see all the conflicting feelings on my face that I wasn’t ready to say out loud.
Her expression sobered and she nodded. “Okay, how about some pizza, ice cream, and an action adventure movie.”
I let out a sigh of relief. “As long as it’s not300again. You’re legit obsessed with that movie.”
“How are younot? Have you seen their abs? Like, fuck me sideways, please and thank you.”
I laughed and felt some of the weight sitting on my shoulders ease up.
That was the thing about having a best friend who actually paid attention. She knew when to push and when to wait.
And right now, I wasn’t ready to be pushed.
Because how was I supposed to explain the mess I’d made of my summer? How was I supposed to articulate that I’d spent three months having the best sex of my life withmy brother’s best friend, caught feelings I was never supposed to catch, and now existed in some undefined purgatory where we were definitely still sleeping together but absolutely not talking about what any of it meant?
Harper and Drew had gotten back together and were back to being disgustingly in love.
But neither Liam nor I had brought up talking to Drew about us again. Which made me think I was right that he’d changed his mind.
But now school was starting back up again. I was going to have to tell Sydney if Liam and I were still going to hook up because there was no way in hell I’d be having sex with him at the hockey house.
Everything felt blurry now. Like living in limbo and not knowing what came next.
There were still a few items on my bucket list we hadn’t checked off. But what happened when we did?
We’d stopped having sex simply to fulfill the list—in fact, for the last month of summer, the list never came up once. And the few “rules” we’d agreed to at the beginning were nonexistent.
And Liam, who was supposed to be the king of one-night stands, was acting like anything but a one and done guy. Sometimes he’d hold me afterward for longer than necessary, his fingers tracing patterns on my skin like he was memorizing me. Sometimes he’d look at me with an expression I couldn’t quite read before his walls would slam back into place and he’d become the Liam I recognized again.
I hated that I noticed. Hated that I cataloged every deviation from our original agreement like evidence in a case I was building. A case for what, I didn’t know. Hope? Delusion? Some desperate belief that maybe everything would work out in the end and we’d actually be together?
That was the most pointless thing to hope for, and every day that went by without us telling Drew made me feel like it was never going to happen.
At some point soon we’d complete my bucket list and that would be the end.
I just hated that the end meant losing him.
Part of me wanted to drag this out forever—find excuses, create delays, or manufacture reasons why we couldn’t possibly finish yet. If we never completed the list, we never had to have the conversation about what came next.
But the other part of me—the part that had spent years being the easy, accommodating, don’t-make-waves twin—wanted it over. That part wanted the clean break. To rip off the bandage before Liam had the chance to do it for me.
Because he would. Eventually. He’d wake up one day and remember that he didn’t do relationships, or commitment, or forever. And I’d rather we were finished with my list before I had to see him flirting with someone else.
Better to control the ending than to have it happen to me.
My phone buzzed.
Liam
You busy tonight?
I stared at the message for a moment, my thumb hovering over the keyboard.
Me
Depends. What did you have in mind?
The three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again.
