Page 83 of Vegas with my Ex’s Best Friends

Andrew puts his feet on the coffee table.

Ethan reaches over without looking up and moves them.

A few seconds pass.

Andrew puts them back.

Ethan moves them again.

I watch this happen three more times before I say anything.

“Why do you keep engaging?” I say to Ethan.

“If I stop, he'll put them on the cushions.”

Andrew, not opening his eyes, “He's right.”

“So you're just going to keep doing this.”

“Active deterrence.” Ethan turns a page. “It's working.”

“You're doing it right now,” I point out.

“Still working.”

Andrew's foot goes back on the table. Ethan's hand comes out. I give up and drop my head back against the cushion.

The penthouse feels like a separate thing from the chaos of Vegas below. Suspended above the noise.

For a second, everything feels steady.

Too steady.

Like the quiet before something breaks.

Liam is scrolling something. Ethan reads. Andrew has gone still beside me.

Then his hand comes down, open, between us on the cushion.

I put my hand in his.

He folds his fingers around mine, and his thumb starts moving slow across my knuckles.

That's all.

But the room reorganizes around it. Liam glances over, catches it, looks back at his phone. Ethan doesn't look up, but the corner of his mouth moves.

Nobody makes it a thing. That's the part that undoes me.

Since I was sixteen, I've known exactly what happens when you let people close. It's easier to need nothing, to build a life small enough that losing pieces of it doesn't wreck you. I got very good at it.

These three just keep not doing that.

Liam tips his head back and closes his eyes.

Ethan sets his book on his knee and looks over at me, and for a second it's just that—his eyes on mine, steady, no agenda. Then he glances at where Andrew's hand covers mine and then back up, and something in his expression changes.

“Come sit over here,” he says. Easy.