Page 3 of It's Complicated

And right then, Jamie’s eyes and expression were blank.

This was the first time in three years of friendship that he was actively hiding his feelings from me.

Something in my chest twisted, but it wasn’t hurt or even anxiety. It was darker than that, uglier. I couldn’t name it and had no idea where it came from, but I didn’t like it.

He dropped the shoe back onto the couch. “How much do you remember about last night?” he asked, his voice as expressionless as his face.

My chest tightened, and my blood chilled in my veins as my brain screamed the single-word answer.

Everything.

“Not a lot,” I lied, guilt churning in my gut.

Jamie and I didn’t keep secrets from each other. This was the first time I’d ever lied to him.

“What about you?” I asked, pushing my guilt to the background. I could feel like shit later. Right now I needed to do some damage control and figure out where Jamie’s head was at.

“Not too much.” He shrugged, rolling one shoulder in that way he did when he was stressed out and trying to pretend he was fine. “Most of what happened after we got back here is a blur.” He laughed, but it was forced and way too loud. “I don’t even remember going to bed or when everyone left.”

“Same,” I said quickly. “Guess I had more than I thought.”

“Yeah.” He picked up the shoe again, this time by the heel. “What should we do with this?”

“We could text Andy and see if he knows how to get in touch with Ap— whoever left it here.”

Jamie nodded, either not noticing my slipup or ignoring it. “I’ll do that later and see what he says.” He smiled, but it was the smile he used at work when he was dealing with annoying customers and not his true one.

“Do you want to take care of the empties, and I’ll do the rest?” I shook the half-full trash bag in my hand.

As much as I wanted to keep grilling him to find out how much he actually remembered, this conversation needed to end.I wasn’t going to learn anything while we were both lying to each other and trying to pretend everything was fine.

He nodded, that blank expression still on his face.

Not wanting to risk saying something stupid or incriminating, I tossed him a quick smile and went back to picking up the trash people had left laying around, effectively dismissing him.

I hadn’t thought Jamie was drunk last night. We’d each only had a few beers at the club, and as far as I knew, he’d only had one, maybe two, after we got back here. Four beers over five hours weren’t enough to get someone with Jamie’s tolerance and body weight drunk. He might have done a few shots when I hadn’t been looking, but even that shouldn’t have led to him being blackout drunk.

Jamie was a big guy, the same as me. We both stood at six-two and hovered around the two-hundred-pound mark. I’d been partying with him for three years; I knew his limits and his tolerance. Had I been so out of it last night that I hadn’t seen him pounding back shots? That was the only explanation for why he might not remember things like he said.

The clang of bottles startled me, and I jumped, nearly dropping the bag of trash I was still clutching.

“Chill,” I muttered to myself, glancing around to make sure Jamie was in the kitchen and couldn’t see me having a little pep talk with myself. “This is a good thing,” I whispered. “He doesn’t remember and is probably being weird because you are. Just chill the fuck out and stop making things worse.”

I nodded to myself, feeling more settled about the entire situation.

Jamie was reacting to my weirdness; that was it. I just had to get my head out of my ass and stop acting like the world was ending and everything would go back to normal.

If he said he didn’t remember, then I was going to take him at his word. I could assume whatever I wanted about how much he’d had to drink or his intoxication levels, but I didn’t know anything for sure.

Should I tell him about what happened last night? Just in case he really didn’t remember? Not the details, obviously, but at least give him a heads-up that we’d had a threesome. That way he wouldn’t be caught off guard if someone brought it up or he remembered parts of it later.

The back of my neck prickled with heat, and my stomach clenched with an emotion I couldn’t name as memories came rushing back to me, pushing past the mental barriers I’d put up like a flood breaking through a levy.

Everything leading up to the threesome had been business as usual. We’d gone clubbing with some of Jamie’s old friends, the same as we had dozens, if not hundreds, of times before.

The vibe at the club had been off, and the crowd had been subdued. We stayed for an hour or so, mostly hanging out and not getting our dance on since the music sucked.

Then Andy suggested we bounce and take the party to our place. We lived closest to the club, and it wasn’t unusual for us to host after-parties, so Andy’s offer of our apartment wasn’t completely out of left field. But him inviting a bunch of randoms along was.

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