I reluctantly sighed. “Yes to both.”
Eliot got up with a cry of victory. “Iknew it!”
He even had the gall to do a little victory dance.
“Was this why you two stopped talking before?” Scott asked, turning toward me on the sofa and muting the TV.
“Yes…and no.”
Or was it?
There was no other option but to tell them about the kiss that started all of it. Only it hadn’t, had it? Because our relationship had had an unnameable quality to it from the beginning.
Then I told them of our arrangement.
“I thought the Heartbreaker didn’t do repeats.” Eliot sat down once he was done and gave me a loud pat on the thigh. “You must be quite good in the sack, Ant.”
“El.” My cheeks were burning already. I’d always been very direct with my friends, but when it came tothissubject? Talking about me?
Apparently, I was still a bit of a prude.
“Sexual tension will change one’s priorities. I know they definitely changed mine,” Scott smirked before it started to fall. “Have you told him about Connell and the favor he asked you, though?”
That definitely brought the mood down. “No.”
“So you’re not doing it anymore?”
“I am.”
Technically.
In my own way. Just like I’d done from the beginning.
They both gave me a worried look. “Ant, lies aren’t good in a relationship.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “This isn’t a relationship.”
Eliot scoffed. “Right, and I’m seven feet tall and an alien—”
“Itisn’t. And it won’t last. It’s just for three months.”
I’d kept out the details of the ‘deal’. Again.
Because really, I didn’t think they mattered at all.
“How do you know? I used to say the same with Travis, and look at us.”
Yes. Scott’s relationship with the college bad boy had had a tumultuous start, but they were now deliriously in love.
Even Eliot had had his own share of hard times when he started secretly seeing his current boyfriend, who was none other than Eliot’s brother’s best friend.
Their situations and mine were different, though.
They just were.
Even if Henry and I were ravenous for each other right now, it would fade. He’d get bored of me eventually, even if we didn’t stop at three months, and then he’d go on to find someone interesting. Someone more like him. Someone with an actuallife, and who didn’t spend days spent stuck in a library between books.
They also didn’t know about me having to graciously dodge Connell’s questions a few nights ago when I went to have dinner to his house with my mother and sister. Henry, as usual, hadn’t been there, so it had been all too easy for Connell to pull me away for a second and ask for progress.