You, Again(65)

There’s that glint of hurt in her eyes again.

“No.” She sighs like this is her last task on a ten-page to-do list and heats a cast-iron skillet over one of the burners. “Ari holds things in until they explode.”

“Not with me.” Josh says it with a little shrug that probably comes off as a touch too self-righteous. Cocky. He can’t help it—it’s been too long since he’s felt that twinge of earned satisfaction.

Josh passes Radhya his batch of dough.

“Don’t. Push.” She pokes her index finger in it three times and adds a splash of water. “She thinks you’re her life raft or some shit. If you’re going to be her friend, be her friend. But it’s not a shortcut into something more.”

“I’m not pushing.”

Okay, yes, that phrase sounds like a telltale sign that the speaker is, in fact, pushing. But that’s not the case! She kissed him. It happened. And Radhya can’t manipulate him into thinking otherwise.

“Ari needs time.” She shapes a knob of dough into an almost perfect circle. “I happen to know something about this.”

Timing has already fucked them over twice.



* * *





“I TRULY THINK arms are the new thighs,” Briar proclaims, running her hand over Gabe’s biceps. “I mean, traps? Scaps? Forearms? We’re gonna see more rowing gyms and, like, rooms full of pull-up machines.” She’s managed to tuck her legs beneath her on a small wooden chair and look perfectly comfortable.

“Yes!” Gabe cries, slapping his open palm on the wobbly table, making the beer slosh out of Ari’s glass. “I just tweeted about how I think monkey bars are the next big thing in gym equipment and the runner-up from The Bachelorette retweeted me. He’s starting a weekly running club in Central Park.”

“Ryan?” Briar exclaims. “The fitness influencer? I can’t believe he’s not the next Bachelor.”

They stopped including Ari in the conversation thirty minutes ago, except to ask her to take photos on each of their phones. She looks back toward the kitchen occasionally, waiting for yelling or for someone to storm out.

But when Josh finally emerges from the back there’s a contemplative look on his face, like he’s trying to crack G?del’s incompleteness theorems. He takes his seat without saying anything.

“Your boyfriend’s back,” Gabe announces in a singsong voice.

“He’s not my—”

“—I’m not her boyfriend,” Josh insists. Loudly.

Really loudly.

They glance at each other for a moment before looking away. Ari begins stacking the empty dishes in a desperate bid to occupy her hands. She feels Josh’s knee bouncing next to her.

“Methinks the lady doth protest too much,” Gabe tells Briar. Ari shoots him a vicious warning glance, causing him to put up his hands in surrender and declare, “Okay, I’ll stop.”

Ari has sat across from drunk Gabe at enough tables to know he probably won’t.

“How’d it go in the kitchen?” Briar asks, sitting up a bit straighter from the intimate little huddle she’d had with Gabe.

“It was…” Josh twists his mouth, like he’s choosing his words carefully. “Interesting.”

“You and Radhya should do a collab!”

“And I think that you and Ari should just”—Gabe makes some gesture with his index fingers that could be interpreted in several ways—“get it out of your systems. You already kissed. It’s not going to get less awkward now.”

So much for Gabe’s promise to stop.

“Oh my God.” Briar’s jaw drops. “You kissed? Is that why you keep blowing off my Raya picks?” Briar reaches across the wood table, knocking over an empty glass, and grabs Josh’s and Ari’s wrists. “Guys, I ship it.” She looks pointedly at Josh. “When did this happen? Why didn’t you tell me? How was it?”

Gabe dings his beer glass with a fork like he’s egging on a newly married couple at a wedding reception.

Ari feels like she’s been buckled into the passenger seat of a car that’s careening out of control. She wrenches her hand out of Briar’s grip. Why are people so eager to bury a genuine friendship under the weight of a romantic relationship?

“It was nothing!” It comes out as a shout. A group sitting at the next table pauses their conversation to stare. “People kiss on New Year’s!” Ari glances at Josh for confirmation, to show a united front, but he’s staring at her like she just shivved him between the ribs. “It’s a tradition.” Shut up. “That’s all it was. No big deal.” Stop. STOP. “So just drop it.”

No one at the table says anything. In fact, everyone in the vicinity seems to take a momentary break from speaking. Ari’s heart thuds against her chest.

A little voice pings in her mind: Something’s wrong, something’s wrong, something’s wrong. Josh looks at her with a wild mix of confusion and…something else. Shit. Shit.

Gabe clears his throat. Briar says something that Ari can’t quite hear. Josh’s phone buzzes and he spends a long time looking at what seems to be a short message.

She blinks against the sting of tears, watching Briar and Gabe resume their drunken half-cuddle like it’s the simplest thing in the world.