Page 78 of Not A Chance

This hug felt good.

“What are you doing here? Where’s Gizmo?” She pulled back and held me by the shoulders. Em’s brows furrowed, her eyes examining my face for clues as to why I was making this surprise appearance.

She definitely wasn’t expecting me. After the third Christmas I turned her down, she’d stopped asking me to rejoin her family for the holidays. Respecting my needs, she’d never asked me why and instead just let it go.

“What’s wrong?” She gave my shoulders a mild squeeze. “Did something happen? Oh my god. Are you okay? What did your parents do?” Her questions piled on top of each other so quickly that I hadn’t had the chance to even answer her first one.

“Em. I’m okay. Everyone is. I have a hotel room, so Giz is chillin’ out in four-star luxury right now. I just came to talk to you.” I didn’tmention that it was Theo who’d taken Giz in her carrier back to our hotel room with him when we’d parted at the airport.

“Yeah, sure. Come in, then.” She turned to move through the threshold and then looked back when I didn’t immediately follow. “You coming?”

“Yep. Can we talk somewhere private, though?” I didn’t need her brothers to overhear this particular conversation.

“Tree house talk?” Em’s eyebrows rose in question.

We hadn’t been in her backyard tree house since we were about sixteen and Emery made us all go up there so she could tell us about having sex for the first time with her high school boyfriend.

Tree house talks were called for only the most secret and sacred reasons.

She led me around the side of the house and into the yard, where the tree house sat among the branches of the biggest tree in the yard.

“Ready?” she asked, looking back at me before she began to climb. At the top, she kind of tumbled inside, and I heard a muffled “ouch!”

“Coming? Shit, ow.” Emery rubbed her forehead. “Watch your body parts when you get up here. I must have grown since the last time we used this thing. I don’t remember having to bend my knees so much when I sat down.”

If Emery struggled to sit at five foot four, I was going to have to crunch into a ball to fit since I was six inches taller than her.

I groaned internally, cursing the draw of the nostalgia I’d imagined was waiting for us up there. This might be one of those things that seemed like a great idea until it wasn’t.

When I made it to the top, Emery had moved to the far side. There was a little bit of dirt in the corners, and the little stools and table Emery used to have were gone, but otherwise, it hadn’t changed much since the three of us last squished in here at sixteenafter our sophomore formal.

“So what’s so important that we needed this level of secrecy?” Emery’s gaze flitted all over me as if she’d find a clue somewhere on my person.

“Em. I don’t know how to say this, really. But before I say it, I need to tell you how much your friendship has meant to me all these years.” My eyes stung with the force of the emotions I held at bay.

Crying was not something I indulged in, but I couldn’t stop my tear ducts from going rogue, threatening to blur my vision.

“Em. It’s about Theo.” Her eyes widened. I took a deep breath and forced the rest of the words out of my mouth. “You know how we’re both in Toronto…”

Emery nodded, waiting for me to finish my thought.

“Well, we’re kind of dating.” I bit my lip nervously.

Her eyes remained too wide for a moment before she covered her face with her hands and pulled her knees in toward her body. She started shaking but not making any noise.

I didn’t know what to do. Abbie was the cuddly one in our group. I was used to taking action. If she was upset with me, did I even have the right to comfort her?

“Em. I didn’t mean to upset you,” I rushed out.

Her head popped up, and she let out a peal of laughter so loud it made me afraid for the structural integrity of this twenty-year-old treehouse.

“Oh my god!” she gasped. Her shoulders shook with her laughter. “I thought… God, I thought that Theo had gotten you fired somehow and I was going to have to blacklist my most sane brother.”

Stunned, I remained silent. Even if I’d been nervous, I’d known it was likely she would support me and Theo. But I hadn’t expected the giggling.

Emery giggle-choked, trying to suck in more oxygen. “But you’re just dating?” She managed to sound closer to her normal self. Her shoulders no longer shook.

“Just dating?” My mouth formed a shocked O. “You’re not mad?” I watched her carefully, looking for any sign that she might not be telling the truth to save my feelings.

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