“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.
Why can’t it be that easy anymore?
Josh doesn’t say anything when his phone buzzes again. He deposits his deeply creased napkin onto the empty plate in front of him, pushes his chair back, and stands up, towering over everyone at the table.
“I have somewhere to be,” he announces.
17
JOSH HAS NOWHERE TO BE.
He hasn’t had anywhere to be in approximately eight months.
He just can’t sit at that table with Ari.
The moment Josh shrugs his arms into his parka—the one he’d lent her a few weeks ago—Ari jumps up from the table, too.
“Wait,” she says. “I have…a thing. I’ll walk out with you.”