She nods. “Always does.”
“Good. But just to be safe, we need the full hangover prevention pack,” I say, since that’s why I took her here. “Nothing rebounds you better after a night of drinking than diner food. It’s a medically proven fact.”
She manages a faint smile, and the waitress returns quickly with the coffee pot, pouring two cups. Charlotte wraps her hands around hers. “Is it now? Even though I didn’t have much to drink.” Her tone is lackluster.
I don’t let it deter me. The more I talk, the more we banter, the better the chance we can get back to who we were before. “There was a study just last week in the Journal—”
“About last night,” she begins, and the wheels of the conversation screech to a halt with those three dreaded words.
But I’m nimble. I know how to dart and dodge. I hold up a hand like a stop sign, shaking my head. “Don’t worry about it.”
“But—”
“No, buts. Everything is fine.”
“What I’m trying to say is—”
“Charlotte, we both had some cocktails, and hey, I get it. I look better to you when you’re wearing beer goggles.” I wink, going for self-deprecating humor because I don’t want her to feel bad in the least for what almost happened.
The corner of her lips quirks up, but that’s all. She’s not wearing lipstick this morning. She hardly has on any makeup. She still looks pretty. She always does, night or day, rain or shine.
“They were gin goggles, but even without them—”
I reach for her hand, wrap mine around it, and squeeze it in a nice friendly gesture. I need to reassure her. “We’re friends. Nothing can change that. Nothing is ever going to get in the way of us being friends. Well, unless you marry a total douche someday. So don’t do that,” I say, flashing my trademark grin and trying desperately to steer this conversation away from us, lest she figure out what my hand has done three times in the last twelve hours.
“Don’t you marry a total bitch,” she says with narrowed eyes, and that’s my Charlotte. She’s back, and she’s just like me. She’s not going to let last night’s weirdness in the cab derail the best relationship either one of us has ever had. Though weirdness might not be the right word. More like hardness, wetness, and hotness. Which are exactly the words I shouldn’t be using as I think about her. “But the thing I wanted to say about last night is about us being friends.”
“Me too!” I say, with far too much enthusiasm, but she’s just uttered the magic words. Friends. Us. I have to latch onto them so we don’t lose sight of what we are. “Our friendship is the most important thing to me, so let’s just keep being friends.”
Her features freeze, as if a mask has slid into place. She fiddles with her ring, and the strangest thing is, my heart seems to beat faster as I watch her play with it. She doesn’t have to be wearing it now, but she is.
“Yes. Friends. That’s the most important thing,” she says in a monotone.
“Like we talked about last night, right?” I say, reminding her in case her gin goggles performed a blackout trick on her brain. “Binge watching TV shows, eating gummy bears or lemonheads, and drinking tequila or wine.”
She nods. “Right. Absolutely,” she says, and flashes me a smile that doesn’t feel real.
“We should do that again. Since we can,” I say, like a card player sliding chips into the pot to bet I can just be friends with her.
“Sure.”
“How about tonight?” I say, upping the ante again. I am going to blow my own mind at how good I am at just being friends.
“Okay.”
“My house?” Doubling down. Big time.
“Really?” She arches an eyebrow. “You really want to just hang out?”
“Of course. We were saying last night that we should.”
She shakes her head, and I’m not sure if it’s amusement or some sort of resignation. She takes a breath, adjusts her ponytail, and shrugs. “Fine,” she says. “Friends don’t let friends eat gummy bears alone. I’ll bring the bears.”
“I’ll eat the green ones for you.”
She shudders. “Hate the green ones.”
“And I’ll get the wine. If memory serves, you prefer a chardonnay with your bears?”
“I do, but maybe virgin margaritas tonight instead?”
I toss my napkin onto the table with a flourish. “Touched for the very first time,” I say, and again, maybe I should have thought first before those words came out.
Mercifully, the waitress arrives.
“Here are your eggs,” the waitress says, setting down the plates. “Well-cooked. Just like you asked for.”
Those last words echo loudly as I realize what I’ve just done. What I’ve asked for with my cocky mouth. My big ideas. My I-can-pull-anything-off attitude.
I just invited Charlotte into my house tonight. There aren’t enough sweaty basketball players in the universe for me to deal with the danger in that decision.
* * *
We spend the rest of the meal planning for the week ahead at The Lucky Spot. Neither one of us breathes another word about tonight, or last night, or our fake relationship. When we stop by The Lucky Spot and spend a few hours working before Jenny handles the Sunday afternoon shift—and before we head to the museum—we manage the slide back into being friends and business partners so smoothly, it’s as if last night never happened.
But once we set foot in the museum, something changes.