Page 41 of Bending The Rules

I shrugged. “Like… a romantic thing, I guess. I mean, if there was something there, we would have known before now. And we’ve been friends too long, know too much about each other, all of that, right?”

Her eyes went wide, and then her gaze shot away from me, down to her entwined fingers in her lap. “Uh… right. Yeah.”

I frowned. That reaction struck me as odd – as if the situation wasn’t odd enough – but then I remembered something I probably should have been thinking about before I put my mouth on her.

“Why are you letting me sit here and talk like this, like you aren’t engaged, Tee? That adds a whole other level of confusion here that I wasn’t even considering.”

She pushed out a sigh, then lifted her eyes back to mine. “Because I’mnotengaged, Jus. Russell and I broke up months ago. He’s only around now because he’s trying to get me back. Trying to stay in my good graces, I guess.”

Why was I so damned relieved to hear that?

A better man would have been happy to hear that he hadn’t participated in helping someone cheat on their man, but honestly… I didn’t really give a shit about that, in this specific situation.Myfirst thoughts went to Toni’s availability, as if I hadn’t, not even thirty seconds before, been making a case for us to not pursue a romantic attachment.

“So… are you?”

“Am I what?”

“Getting back with him?”

She looked away again, and hiked her shoulders. “I don’t know. Maybe?”

“Why did you break up?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Okay, so then talk about why you didn’t tell me you two weren’t engaged, when we’ve talked about him several times.”

“I – mistakenly – thought it would keep me from giving in to the overwhelming desire to screw my newly restored best friend,” she said dryly, looking me right in the face. “Any more questions about that?”

I chuckled. “Uh… nah, that’s pretty clear.”

“Good. So where do we go from here?” she asked, angling her body to point toward me. She propped her elbow on the back of the swing, and then rested her head on her hand. “I don’t know if I can look at you and not think about the fact that you’ve been inside of me. Skin to skin. I’m going to have to wear a pantyliner tomorrow because of you. That’s notfriendlyshit.”

I ran a hand over my face. “I know. Iknow. And speaking of that… birth control?”

“Don’t worry, we didn’t make a Joni,” she laughed. “But we did kind of make a mess of our new friendship. I don’t want this to ruin what we were working on rebuilding. I mean… time changes people, yes. We weren’t around each other for a while, so now, as real grownups, there’s sexual chemistry there that probably wouldn’t have been, otherwise.”

Or would it?

“Okay,” I nodded, wanting to hear the rest.

“So we gave in to it. Got it out of our systems. And I don’t know about you, but I feel great.”

“I do too. So maybe… that’s done, right? A one-off. We did it, it’s done, we move on. We’re adults, who can control themselves. The extra shit will fade, and we’ll be back to the way we’re supposed to be.”

I didn’t even halfway believe the shit that was coming out of my mouth, but I wanted to. Toni was nodding, like we were on the same page, so… what elsecouldI do?

“It’s at least worth a shot, right?” I asked – that, Ididbelieve.

Toni wrinkled her nose at me, and shoved my shoulder. “Uh, Rule #9 fool. You’re stuck with me. We’re going to make it work.”

I grinned, then wrapped an arm around her, pulling her close.

“Yeah. We’ll make it work.”

- &-

“Who is thebestagent, ever?”

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