I slip my phone into my pocket, tip the beer back, and drain the last swig that’s left.
“Reread?” Alex asks.
“Yep.” I set the empty can on the step beside my feet. “I’m thinking they’re going to tell us they’re engaged, maybe pregnant, too.”
“Hmm,” Alex says.
I glance his way. “Don’t you think so? What else would ‘a significant development in Mia’s family life’ mean?”
Alex rubs his thumb over a burn scar on the inside of his wrist. “I don’t know what else it would be.” He meets my eyes. “If thatisthe case, will you go? Knowing it’s likely they’re going to say to our faces that they’re getting married, having a baby together?”
“Will you?” I ask.
A swallow works down his throat. “I asked first, Ted.”
My eyes search his, one of those moments in which the tug between us feels more weighted than it should. “Yes,” I tell him finally. “I’ll go.”
I didn’t realize his shoulders were tucked up tight and high, the way they are when he’s anxious, until I watch them fall. “I’ll go, too,” he says. He looks like he wants to say more, ask more. But he doesn’t.
“We’ll do it for Mia,” I tell him.
He sighs heavily. “Yeah.”
“But…” I lean my shoulder into his and say, “I do have one condition.”
Alex glances over at me. With how close I’ve put myself, leaning into him, our noses nearly brush. His eyes hold mine. “So help me god, if you say it’s a gas station hot dog…”
“No.” I smile. “You’ve ruined me for every other hot dog now.”
He smiles, too, slow and satisfied. “Glad to hear it.” As the wind drags a tendril of hair into my face, Alex combs it back, tucking it behind my ear. “What is it?” he asks. “This condition?”
“Wehaveto kick their asses at euchre.”
His eyebrows lift. “We’re playing euchre with them?”
“That’s the Bruscato beach vacation tradition, is it not? Kids in bed, cards on the table.”
He grimaces. “I was picturing more of a ‘play nice while Mia’s awake, go our separate ways the moment she’s in bed’ type of ‘two-family’ vacation.”
“Well,” I say, “me, too. But I really don’t think I can pass up the chance to crush them at cards.” I give him big sad-puppy eyes, a pathetic pleading pout. “At least one night?”
Alex’s mouth twists, then twitches at the corner. HisI’m exasperated with Theasmile. He rolls his eyes. “Fine, Ted. One night.Butjustone night. This vacation is going to be rough enough as it is. Deal?”
I stare at him, trying to unravel the knot of worry twisting my stomach.
A beach vacation with our exes. The last thing I need is to spend that much time around people who press my tender points and dredge up the aches of the past, who see Alex and me as the very thing I will never risk us becoming.
This vacation will be hard, Alex is right. It’ll be Ethan and Jen versus Thea and Alex, and “Thea and Alex” is a concept I already have a hard enough time keeping in its safe, sure place. Friend love. Steady love. Love that can never crash and burn and break our hearts.
Resting my head on Alex’s shoulder, I cling to what I always tell myself. That I’m good at being content with this; that what we have is enough; and that we’ve stayed this way, just friends, for a reason. Because wanting anything more could end in losing everything.
And then I tell him, from the same spot on his stoop, the same thing I did, two years ago, “Deal.”
CHAPTER 5THEN
July 19, two summers ago
This morning, I woke up in my sweltering shoebox of an apartment, got ready for work, and, as I brushed my teeth, made a bargain with myself—if I could make it through the day without crying, I would buy myself gelato. Expensive, delicious, terrible-for-my-stomach gelato.