Page 10 of Oops, I'm Having My Best Friend’s Baby!

CHAPTER 5

AMY

Going through a drive-through in the passenger seat of a six-figure sports car was a surprisingly entertaining experience. The guy at the window had practically drooled over Kai’s sleek black vehicle as they’d been handed their food. Then they’d driven off into an empty parking lot to enjoy their midnight meal. They were just killing time until everybody else had left the reunion and they could swing back to the school and pick up Amy’s catering van. But leaving together in Kai’s sports car, arm in arm, letting everybody look and gossip and glow green with envy, had been way too good of an opportunity to pass up. The second the doors had shut, they’d been doubled over in hysterics, unable to keep it in a second longer. Now Amy’s chest ached from laughing and her cheeks hurt from smiling. Getting burgers, just the two of them, was the cherry on top of the evening.

They’d used to do this all the time during high school and the early years of college — before their lives had started to turn in significantly different directions. If either of them had had even a slightly inconvenient day, they would use it as an excuse to head out at ungodly hours of the night in Amy’s beat-up sedan, go to the cheapest fast-food place that happened to be open, and drown their sorrows in burgers and fries. It was a little different now, with the glow of a streetlight above them in Kai’s sports car and no class to rush off to tomorrow morning. Amy was trying not to get burger juice on her seat. She didn’t want to ruin Kai’s nice things, even though Kai was eating as if he didn’t seem to care what splattered where, but still… this was nice. Just the two of them doing something that had been such a regular thing at one point but now was something special.

Out of nowhere, Kai laughed quietly to himself.

“What’s so funny?” Amy asked.

“I keep seeing Kirsty’s face on repeat in my head,” he said with a smile. “I can’t believe they were still like that, like exactly the same.”

“You knew who they were the second they started walking over,” Amy accused. “Mister, ‘sorry, do I know you?’”

Kai laughed around his mouthful of burger before he was able to swallow it without choking. “I knew the second I heard that voice. It sent me back in time, I swear,” he said, shaking his head. “Felt my whole spine turn cold, like I was sixteen again.”

“So you mean you weren’t interested in making any of them the future Mrs. Nichols?”

Kai gave her such a filthy look that she nearly choked.

“I date to have fun,” he said. “I don’t date to get married. Those are two entirely different sorts of dating, thank you very much.”

“Noted. Marriage, no good.”

“No good,” he said emphatically. “I’m glad we agree on the topic.”

Amy didn’t really agree on the topic at all. In fact, she thought Kai had a general phobia of commitment that spanned from the topic of marriage to what he wanted to eat for dinner. Amy had always seen herself getting married one day and having kids, so she didn’t think the idea of it was “no good” at all.

But this wasn’t the time, place, or mood to push on those particular buttons. Instead, she let it go and ate her fries, content. That was until Kai reached over, took her fry from her fingertips and shoved it into his own mouth.

“Hey!”

“It was too good to resist,” he said, chewing and swallowing.

“You have your own fries.”

“I wanted one of yours. Here, have one of mine.”

“I don’t want one of yours. I want mine back.”

“The only way you’re getting it back is licking the residue off my teeth, sorry.”

“I’m not sticking my tongue in your mouth. Don’t be so disgusting, Kai.”

“Oh, stop with the goody-two-shoes act,” he said, thoroughly enjoying himself. “Acting like that wouldn’t be so different from a kiss. I’ve seen you making out with people. It always looked like an invasive procedure.”

Amy felt herself blush so hard and fast that she thought her blood vessels were going to explode. Thank God it was dark, and thank God Kai was more interested in his food than noticing how red her skin had flushed. Amy shoved her hand into his fries and took whatever she could grab.

“Mine now,” she said.

“Nope,” he countered, grabbing her wrist with ease so she couldn’t steal his food. Then she was stuck there, leaning over the center console so close that their noses were almost touching. She could feel his breath on her cheek, warm in the cool night air, his fingers around her wrist in a loose grip, skin against skin. Then Kai caught her eye, and they stared at each other. He wasn’t blinking and neither was she, neither of them saying a word. A moment — just stealing some fries — that should have only lasted a second felt like it had trapped them for hours.

It was a physical effort for Amy to kick-start the muscles in her body, to get them moving, but somehow she did and dropped Kai’s fries.

“Fine,” she said. “You win.”

With that the spell was broken, his fingers around her wrist loosened and she pulled away back to her own seat, which was so close but felt miles away now.

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