Page 29 of Triple Play

Someplace just under my sternum starts to ache—that I needed money but didn’t want the pity that came with it. “I was fine on my own,” I say coolly.

He shakes his head as if he knows I’m lying. “You know you don’t have to do everything by yourself, right?”

Except I do. “What, you would have brought me flowers?”

“Maybe.” He smiles. “I could’ve, I don’t know, gotten your groceries delivered, driven you around in something other than that death-mobile you call a car. It’s not that far from Boston to Worcester.”

That ache flares again. He’s offering friend stuff—things my actual friends did for the first few weeks, until I felt like a burden asking for more. I thought Felix just didn’t like Blake, but this sounds closer to betrayal: that he thought we were friends and we weren’t. Or I didn’t treat him like one.

“I moved to Boston,” I add. “No more club. There were more options for picking up shift work around the holidays.”

He blinks at that. “You were in Boston? And you knew I was in Boston?”

And still didn’t call you. “Next time I break an ankle, I’ll know who to ask for a favor.”

Felix practically growls. “Yes.”

That yes catches me off guard—the yes I almost said back in June. “Just like that? I call you and you come running?”

“Last time we saw each other,” Felix says, “I thought I made myself pretty clear. What’s changed?”

Everything. Starting with Blake. Distantly, from the other room or possibly an entire universe away, the shower’s still running. He might come out at any minute. My heart quickens. Felix’s hand tightens around my ankle. I want you to let me go. But that’s a lie I can’t bring myself to tell.

“Okay, if you’re so eager to be helpful…” I lift my foot higher.

“I’ll need to—” Felix mimes stepping toward me. “We’ll have to be close to do this.”

Closer than just friends. “Yeah,” I breathe. “C’mon.”

Felix does, inching toward me until his chest almost brushes mine. Heat pours off him. His arms strain against the sleeves of his green Monsters shirt as he lifts my leg.

“You can press a little harder,” I say. “I like it nice and deep.”

His eyebrows go up. A smirk plays at the edge of his lips.

“Fuck, I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Sure,” he deadpans.

I tap a hand against his chest. “For real, I didn’t.”

“Then move your hand.”

I stare down at my palm where it’s resting on his pec. Blake respects me too much to sleep with me. What do you think I should do about that? Nothing I can say. So I lift my hand finger by finger, tuck my palm in the safety of my side. “Push my ankle. I can handle it.”

That gets his smile. “I’d never think you couldn’t.” But he does as he’s told, lifting my leg. Warmth rolls off him, warmth and that smell: soap, grass. Summer. It’s hard to look directly at him, the way it is at the August sun.

Or it’s not hard—it’s too easy, especially knowing I shouldn’t.

My eyelids slide shut. My head tilts back. Think elongating thoughts and not about the man between your legs. I breathe away my urge to giggle. That little puff of air makes my muscles lengthen. My hamstring unknits slowly, then all at once.

A noise pours out of me before I can stop it. Not just a noise. A moan, deep with relief. I know what it sounds like and I can’t stop it.

From the gravel in Felix’s voice, he knows it too. “Jesus Christ, Melody.”

“Hey.” I grab his chin, his beard soft against my fingers. “It’s Shira.”

“Shira,” he says, low. He leans in until we’re breathing the same air. Until his beard brushes along the suddenly sensitized skin on my neck. It’s not a kiss—just the memory of one, how everything in my life has been a tangle ever since.

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