When we landed, Ruby and Hollis took a cab back to Starlight Palms while Eli and I drove home in his car, which he’d parked at the airport. The moment the doors sealed us shut inside, I flung myself against the passenger seat and sighed.
Eli squeezed my thigh before reversing out of the parking space. “You survived being in a flying can in the sky with Ruby. Congratulations.”
“I deserve a reward,” I said with a pout.
“How about a slumber party?” he asked.
“Can we do face masks?”
“Only if we can get into a sexy pillow fight first.”
“Deal,” I said.
As we drove home, Eli kept his hand on my upper thigh, straying only when he needed two hands on the wheel.
The higher his fingers inched, the more restless I became. The momenthe parked the car in front of our apartment, I nearly threw my body over the console at him until he said, “Is someone at our door?”
I leaned forward, squinting at the tall, slim figure with a blunt shoulder-length bob. “Oh my god...”
Eli was saying something, but I was already out of the car and running for the door. “Tess! What are you doing here?”
My best friend spun around, her eyes puffy and her cheeks red. The moment she saw me, she started sobbing for what was definitely not the first time today.
Before I asked a single question, includingWho the fuck made you cry?I enveloped her in a hug. The one and only time I’d ever seen Tess cry was when we sawThe Notebookin theaters after chugging a bottle of Yellow Tail in the parking lot, so this felt monumental.
Speaking of intoxication... “Tess, you smell like a bottle of scotch. Did you drive all the way out here before or after the scotch?”
She sniffled and shook her head. “I took an Uber. It was four hundred dollars.” She half hiccupped, half sobbed. “Before tip. He let me drink in the back seat and he stopped at In-N-Out.”
“I hope you gave him a great rating.”
She nodded. “He even let me listen to”—she sniffed—“the Fleetwood Mac ‘Silver Springs’ live recording from nineteen ninety-seveeeeeeeeen on repeat.”
I cupped her face in my hands. “Okay, okay, you’re all right. Let’s get you inside.”
Behind me, Eli cleared his throat. “Hey, Tess.”
She frowned at him. “Ugh. You’re even hotter than you used to be.” And then she turned to me, stabbing a finger at Eli. “That’s not fair.”
Eli blushed a little, running a hand up the back of his neck.
“I know,” I said, and then gave him a meaningful look that I hoped he understood to mean:Please don’t get handsy in front of my distraught best friend before I have the chance to tell her that we sort of hooked up... several times in the last forty-eight hours.
Eli nodded once and then stepped around us to unlock the door.
Tess stumbled inside and announced, “I need to pee.”
I pointed her to the bathroom and then took my bag from Eli.
“I guess our slumber party is going to be postponed,” he said, his hand ghosting down my backside.
“Consider it a rain delay.”
Once Tess returned from the bathroom, I sat her on the couch with a huge glass of water while Eli got to work on making her an egg and cheese sandwich, which was about the current sum of the refrigerator’s contents.
“Okay, now tell me what happened.”
Tess laid her head in my lap and guided my hand to play with her hair. “The shower fixtures I picked out are on back order.”
