Page 110 of We Can't Be Friends

Or maybe it’s just Cal’s proximity.

Whenever he is near, I can’t help but tune everyone and everything else out. It’s only him.

“What are you doing here?” My voice is scratchy, I reach for the wine.

Under the table, his feet loop around the legs of my chair, pulling me in. Our knees brush, my stockings against his denim. The friction has my skin pebbling.

That friction, I need higher. I try to close my legs, to give me anything, but Cal notices. My subtly not turned on tonight. His head cocks to the side.

“Saving you.”

“I didn’t need saving, Callum.” I use his full name, lowering my eyelids a smidge. “I was perfectly fine. In fact, I liked that guy and was enjoying his company.” I wasn’t. “Might even have gone home with him.”

Cal laughs, the kind with a closed mouth, when the sound only comes from your nose. He’s smelling, reading, or whatever through my bullshit—which irks me, but is turning me on more than it should. His cool, calm, collective guy demeanor, mixed with protective, possessive Cal, might make me come without him ever touching me.

“What was his name?”

“Hud–Patri—Dyl—” I’m flustered. Shoot, what was his name?

“You sleep with guys you don’t know the name of?” His question is deafening, a reminder of this version of me I’m trying to run away from. I used to, but I keep that to myself.

“Don’t,” I warn.

“What are we doing, Dais?”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t pretend like you don’t know what I mean.”

I tilt my head. My hand swirls the wine glass. The stem situated between two fingers, my palm resting on the base. Red wine circles the glass. It’s a nice vintage, the legs sticking to the glass. The distraction is soothing, drawing my focus away from everything circling in my head. “I’m helping you, you’re helping me. That is the deal.”

“It’s not, and we both know it,” he says matter-of-factly.

Audrey chooses then to breeze by the table. Swinging her arms around her brother’s shoulders, her cheeks are flushed and eyes distant. She’s tipsy.

“Fancy seeing you here, Cully Sully.”

“Stop calling me that,” he grits between closed teeth.

Audrey gives me ayou’re welcomesmirk.

“Would now be a good time to tell you the other reason I’m here?” Cal pulls his sister's arms off him and around the side of our table. “Mom and Dad are here.”

30

CALLUM

This was not how I pictured the night ending.

I wanted to spend the night with Chloe. At the bar, in my bed, her bed, on the couch watching a movie. . . I didn’t care. I wanted and needed to be around her.

After seeing the picture that Audrey purposely sent me, I couldn’t sit by on the sofa and wait for her. I changed quickly and caught a ride to the bar they were at.

Finding her sitting across from someone else had me curling and uncurling my fists. My blood was pumping with frustration. Frustration that someone was sitting with my girl.

Audrey’s interruption was for the best. With how uncontrolled I was becoming, there was no telling what would happen between Chloe and me. I saw the way she curled into herself when I asked if she slept with nameless people—the bite in her tone when she saiddon’t.

I know she has a past, we all do, but hers, I fear, lingers and holds her captive like mine does. I would never want sex or any relationship between us to tighten her cuffs.

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