Page 106 of Sincerely, Your Enemy

The group laughs, and we follow suit, dropping onto the beanbags and looking up at the sky through the retractable dome. Everyone except Aveena.

Xavier opens his arms. “Come on, baby.”

She closes her arms over her chest, a smile dancing on her lips. “You do know if I sit on that thing, I’m not getting back up?”

“So? I’ll help you up.” Xavier holds his hand out for her, but she hesitates.

She presses her hand to her stomach. “I can’t. I’m too heavy. I’ll crush you.”

“Baby, it would be an absolute fucking honor to get crushed by you. Now, will you just park that pretty ass on me, please?” Xavier reaches for Aveena’s forearm and pulls her on top of him before wrapping his arms around her pregnant belly and squeezing her.

Aveena bursts into laughter when he begins showering her with kisses.

They’re so cute I could cry.

What I wouldn’t do to experience that kind of love at least once.

Theo snorts at their display of affection. “If being cheesy was a crime, you motherfuckers would be getting life for sure.”

Xavier flips him off but doesn’t tear his attention away from Aveena for one second, continuing to kiss every inch of her face.

“Says the guy who’s been leaving Ashley romantic voicemails all week,” Chance counters.

“You and Ashley again? Are you back together?” Finn asks.

Theo can’t conceal his smile. “Nah, man. We’re just talking.”

Finn scoffs. “Just talking, my ass. Will you look at that dopey smile? He’s fucking beaming.”

The guys all gang up on Theo, more than happy to give him shit for calling them cheesy when everyone knows he’s a goner for Aveena’s sister.

“She’s no better. You should’ve seen her face when I dropped her off at the airport. She was devastated about leaving,” Aveena tells us.

“Is she the one you’ve been texting all the time?” TJ asks.

There used to be a time when seeing Theo so happy over his relationship with Ashley would’ve killed me. I would’ve been fuming with jealousy and dying on the inside.

This is so freeing. Realizing that the world didn’t end the day I realized my first love didn’t love me back.

One person’s inability to see your worth should never make you question if you’re worth being loved in that way. I glance up at the sky for a moment, and that’s when it hits me. Just because one person doesn’t appreciate your light doesn’t make you any less of a supernova. Rejection is inevitable in life.

And at the end of the day, all you can do is make damn sure that the person rejecting you isn’t yourself.

“How the fuckwas I supposed to act out afence?” Theo mocks the phrases we picked to play charades. I’ve got to give it to him, some of the clues we threw in that bowl were ridiculous—okay,allthe clues were ridiculous.

I scoff. “Okay, fine, the fence thing was a bitch, but you could’ve found a better way to act outmilking a cowthan pretending to pour a drink from your crotch.”

Theo laughs, dropping onto the couch next to Chance. “Yeah, that one made a lot more sense in my head.”

“Anyone up for a refill?” Chance asks, gesturing to the empty beer bottle in his hand. The concept of drunk charades was for the actor to drink every time they failed at making people guess the clue. Let’s just say Aveena, Dia, and I have been owning the guys’ asses, and they’ve been chugging their drinks since the game started.

“Fuck yeah,” Theo chimes, joined by Aaron and TJ, and it isn’t long before they’re following Chance to the kitchen to get themselves another drink.

I pull out my phone and check the screen out of habit, only to realize that there’s still no signal here, and I might just be addicted to the stupid thing. Seriously, I didn’t realize how often I check my phone until there was no point in doing it anymore.

And it’s not like we haven’t been having fun. We’ve been drinking and laughing our asses off around the stone fireplace in the living room for over two hours, and I still had to check my phone every few minutes. I think I’m going to have to take a page out of Finn and Dia’s handbook and turn it off once and for all.

“See? It’s not so bad,” Dia says as soon as TJ and the guys are out of range.

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