“I figured out who Mr. Snuffleupagus is,” he says.
“That was a gimme, and there’s nothing you can say that would embarrass him.” I shut my tailgate, then finger-wave at him. “Toodles! See you tomorrow!”
He doesn’t stop me or talk me out of my clothes, though he does smirk-smile in a way that makes my vagina clench, and I decide it’s in my best interest to not even consider if he has regrets about Friday or if he wants to try to talk me out of my clothes again.
Preferably in a location without leftover containers of powdered cheese from Chandler’s idiotic we’ll add cheddar popcorn to the menu idea.
No.
No.
There is no wishing Grey will talk me out of my clothes again. I am not being rewarded with more orgasms.
And yes, I did almost come just by dry-humping him.
Which I am done thinking about.
Officially.
For real.
The drive to Laney’s house is easy and her roads and sidewalks are clear after Friday’s snow.
I make myself imagine this neighborhood snowed in to distract myself.
But when I spot Emma’s car in her driveway, I almost want to head back to my house, knock on the wall that I share with Grey, and see if maybe we can hide in a blanket fort together.
Not because I don’t want to see Emma.
More because I’m afraid she’ll tell me she still doesn’t want to see me, and it’s easier to contemplate Grey rejecting me than it is to contemplate Emma rejecting me.
“You’ve got this,” I tell my reflection in the mirror. “You’ve got this.”
We’ve been friends forever.
I know she knows I didn’t mean to hurt her.
Well, I hope she knows.
And the other thing that everyone has been telling me lately is that she knew who Chandler was. It wasn’t my job to tell her every bad thing he ever did.
My phone dings, and I glance at the readout.
It’s Laney.
I see you sitting in my driveway. COME INSIDE NOW. I’d send Theo out to drag you in, but he’s preoccupied with getting his ass handed to him.
When I don’t move right away, my phone dings again.
I’ll call my mother to come get you if you don’t come inside, and you know she’ll be here before you can back out of the driveway since she’s still upset that I broke my leg.
I almost smile.
And then I brace myself and head inside.
And immediately wish I hadn’t.
“What in the world were you thinking?” Emma shrieks somewhere deeper in the house.
My gut clenches, but Laney’s stifling a smile as she waves me to join her. She’s propping her leg cast up on the couch with two of her kittens on her lap, and she’s stroking both of them.
“Is Em okay?” I whisper while I sink onto the couch, almost sitting on a third kitten that was hiding under a throw pillow. “Is Theo okay? Wait. Back up. How are you? How’s your leg? Do you need anything?”
“I’m good, thank you, and Emma’s working on his taxes,” Laney whispers back.
She’s almost gleeful.
I give her the why the hell is that funny? eyebrows while I shrug out of my coat and rescue kitten number three, who’s quaking a little. Probably because of the yelling.
Which is not like Emma at all.
“He said you already know, so I’m not gossiping to you when I tell you he threw all of his money into that screw-the-hedge-fund-managers thing off Reddit last year and made a hella ton more with it. But he didn’t tell Emma, and she’s freaking out about him underpaying estimated taxes.”
“This isn’t about Chandler and jail?” I whisper.
She shakes her head. “It is not.”
“Is she still mad at me? At any of us?”
The thing I love about Laney is that she can fix anything. If there’s a problem in a four-mile radius, Laney will sniff it out and solve it before most people are aware it even exists. Second-most, I love that she doesn’t blow smoke up my ass, even if she sometimes will paint the truth in the prettiest light she can.
But when she purses her lips and has to think about it, I hate that I love those two things about her.
“I don’t think she’s mad at any of us, necessarily,” she finally says, “but I do think she has a lot of feelings to work through still. And who can blame her? She spent seven years waiting for him to marry her, and then the whole thing not only fell apart at the last minute, but the entire world saw it. Nice job the other night on calling Addison out for being such an asshole and posting the video, by the way.”