Page 29 of Treat

“Sure they do. What’s the third one?”

“Um…The Detroit Tower.”

“On?” Amy prompted.

Brynn tried, she honestly did, but she really was a shit liar. “Detroit Street?”

“You’re ridiculous,” Amy announced.

Brynn gave up with a sigh. “I know.”

“Is this a fetish?”

Brynn choked on a piece of popcorn. “Excuse me?”

“This unrequited lust thing,” Amy elaborated. “Is it some kind of self-torture fetish? Because I can’t come up with any other explanation, and I want you to know there are healthier ways to explore these kinds of desires.”

Brynn rolled her eyes and nudged Tilly away from the popcorn bowl. “No, it’s not a fetish. And it might not be unrequited.”

“What?”

“We had a moment,” Brynn admitted.

“What kind of a moment?” Amy demanded.

Brynn rolled her eyes. “We didn’t have sex, so calm down. It was like a…a romance novel moment.”

“A romance novel moment,” Amy repeated.

“Yeah, you know. A ‘their eyes met, and desire was thick in the air’ kind of a thing.”

“First, that would be a terrible romance novel.”

“Hey.”

“Second, I’m going to need more than that.”

Brynn shoved another pillow behind her head. “Well, we were walking the dog, and he was telling me about the twenty-five thousand, and I had to stop and get my breath because that was a lot.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Amy said, impatient. “Get to the moment.”

“And we sat and talked for a minute,” Brynn said, refusing to be rushed. “And when he got up, he held out his hand to help me up.”

“If you’re going to tell me something asinine like you couldn’t tell where his hand ended and yours began, I swear to God, Brynn?—”

“I’m not going to tell you that,” Brynn interrupted in a near shout, then huffed out a breath. “You have no romance in your soul.”

“I’m getting a PhD in Medieval history,” Amy said. “I amfilledwith romance.”

Brynn snorted. “May I continue?”

“By all means, do go on.”

“As I was saying,” Brynn said, ignoring the sarcasm. “He reached down to help me up, but I guess I pulled him off balance, so we sort of bumped into each other, you know like you do? And he grabbed my shoulders, and I kind of grabbed his chest as we were smushed up against each other, and I could feeleverything?—”

“Happy Pants?” Amy interrupted.

“Definite Happy Hants, and for a second I thought he was going to kiss me, but then he was staring at my forehead for some reason, so I started to ask him if he was going to kiss me, but then that absolutedorkof adog,” Brynn went on with a glare for Tilly, who was trying to Jedi-mind-trick the popcorn bowl, “yanked on the leash and hit me in the ear and it kind of killed the mood.”

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