Page 14 of Don't Fall For Your Best Friend

Before Hartford can respond, I cut in, “No thanks, we’re a package deal here.”

Bryan gives me a once over and smiles wide. “You can play too,” he says.

“I don’t share,” I say. I grew up with four brothers, so I don’t share well. Especially Hartford.

“I completely understand. If you ever change your mind, you know where to find me.” Bryan tips an imaginary hat at Hartford and walks away.

“Asshole,” I breathe out as he leaves.

Hartford nudges into me and turns back to the buffet. “He was nice.”

“He was too forward. I didn’t like him.”

Hartford rolls her eyes with a smirk as she scoops potato salad onto her plate.

I nod at her plate. “You know, they say you shouldn’t eat potato salad at a cookout.”

“Who says that?”

“They,” I shoot back. “Whoever they are. But they say potato salad is the first thing to grow bacteria at cookouts.”

“That’s not true.”

“It’s completely true.”

“Says they?” She gives me a look like she doesn’t believe me.

“It’s a major concern at cookouts.”

Hartford rolls her eyes, still not believing me, but transfers the potato salad back into the container. “There,” she says.

“Classy.” I laugh and scoop the potato salad she just discarded onto my plate.

“Oh my god, you did that because I took it all and you wanted it.”

I shake my head. “Not true.” It’s completely true.

She grabs a fork and stabs at my potato salad. “I’ll just eat all of yours.”

I raise my plate above her head and grin as she tries to reach for it. Sometimes it pays to be six-foot-two and your bestie to be five-foot-four.

“I hate you right now,” she says as she moves down the buffet line to get chicken.

“You don’t hate me.”

She finishes her plate with pasta salad and sighs. “You’re right. As much as I try to hate you, I can’t.”

“You’ll never hate me.” And the thought of Hartford ever truly hating me causes a slight panic to wash over me.

She smiles wide, her real smile, and says, “I could never hate you.”

And her words cause my racing heart to stall out. “I’ll never hate you either. Now let’s eat and talk about sex.”

The rest of the community munch was interesting to say the least. We both learned a lot and decided the first thing we’ll try is public play. Once we learned what it entails, we felt this would be right up our alley. Hartford and I love having our inside jokes that are a mystery to everyone else.

Public play is similar to that. It’s basically doing things in public where only we know about it.

Natalie came up with a few ideas that Hartford wrote in her notebook. After some discussion, there was only one that Hartford was down to try. A remote-controlled vibrator. And guess which lucky bastard gets to control the remote? Yep, me.

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