Page 58 of The Bodyguard Affair
Amanda slow-blinks and gives me herAre you for real?head tilt. “Ands, you don’t have friends, last I checked. And Laine doesn’t count, even if she did pity-invite you to her wedding.”
I give her a swift kick in the thigh with the ball of my foot. Damn her for being entirely correct. “You think it’s a pity invite?”
She nods. “A hundred percent. She still has lingering guilt over breaking girl code, which is why she’s kept you strung along all these years.”
“Well, that’s harsh,” I note, scratching my head in thought. Is that really what Laine has been doing? Maintaining a thread of friendship because she feels bad for me? Not because she still enjoys my company from time to time? Not because she still cares about me as a person? “I don’t think she’s been stringing me along. We’ve each been taking turns reaching out to catch up.”
Amanda doesn’t look so sure. “All I’m saying is, it’s okay to admit that your friendship has…expired. You don’t need to have some epic argument for a friendship to end. Some really amazing friendships just fade away with time, without any rhyme or reason. And that’s not a bad thing. It means you’re evolving, changing.”
Evolving. Changing.“I’m not so sure. I’ve felt stagnant the past three years,” I point out. The only time I don’t feel stagnant is when I’m writing.
“You have been,” Amanda agrees. “But I mean you and Laine specifically. You two are in entirely different places than you were when you first met, and I don’t just mean Hunter.” She’s right. I’ve gone through a whole relationship and gotten my job with Gretchen, which has taken over my life. Laine is equally busy working her way up the ranks at PCO…and now getting married.
“Yeah. Maybe,” I say, mostly to appease her. Truthfully, what she’s saying rings true. Laine and I have little to nothing incommon anymore, aside from Hunter. At the same time, she was my best friend. All those days working side by side, laughing over our cubicle walls. The late-night takeout at the office when we were slammed with data entry and cold-calling. She was the first true best friend I really had. It’s hard to come to terms with leaving her in the rearview entirely. I care about her and I still want her in my life, even peripherally, even if it means I have to put up with Hunter from time to time. And fly to Mexico.
“And she’s asking a lot of you with this wedding,” Amanda says, reading my mind. “Going to Mexico for three days isn’t exactly cheap. Not to mention, that’s three days of awkwardness, pretending to be happy for them.”
“I am happy for them,” I point out. “Laine deserves happiness. And Hunter…he isn’t my favorite person. Do I wish for someone better for Laine? Of course. But he makes her happy and that’s the most important thing. Besides, it won’t be as awkward with Nolan.”
I make the grave mistake of inadvertently smiling when I say his name, which causes Amanda’s jaw to drop. “Are you two fucking?” she asks straight up. That’s the thing about Amanda—she doesn’t have a filter, even around Mom and Dave’s crusty family.
“No! Just hanging out. Platonically.” I consider explaining ourarrangementand why we’ve been spending so much time together, but telling her we sometimes pretend to be in love in front of colleagues would only add fuel to the nonexistent fire.
“And he wants to go all the way to Mexico with you, for a wedding of total strangers, to hang out with youplatonically?”
“Neither of us wants a relationship. He’s not planning on staying for long.”
“It’s not a relationship I think he’s after,” she says knowingly, stretching her leg back so far, my body hurts just looking at her.
“He wanted to support me because he knew it was going to be a weird situation. Trust me, he’s a really good guy.”
Her eyes flatten into slits. “I’m sure he is. Doesn’t mean he isn’t hoping to hook up with you after a few too many glasses of champagne at the reception.”
“He’s leaps and bounds out of my league,” I assure, second-guessing myself as it comes out. Is it possible he does want to hook up? We did have that moment in our hotel room in Squamish where it felt like he did—until he put a stop to it. I pull up the photos Gretchen took of me and him in Squamish and scroll to my favorite one before handing my phone to Amanda, who’s now transitioned to cobra pose. I’m smiling into the camera while Nolan is looking at me with an open-mouthed smile, like he’s amused by something I’ve done or said. I like it because it doesn’t look too posed, even though the whole thing was heavily orchestrated.
At a single glance, she throws my phone back onto the yoga mat like it’s coated with infectious bacteria. “Holy shit. Why didn’t you tell me he looked like that? I deserved some fair warning!” she screams, chin hitting the mat.
“I basically just did!” I holler back, matching her volume, to the horror of our fellow yogis.
“Why are we screaming?!”
“You started it,” I note, reverting back to my indoor voice before whispering, “Sorry, I’m, um, new to yoga.”
She sits up on her knees. “I didn’t expect him to look like Jack Ryan.”
“My point exactly. He could probably sleep with anyone hewants. Why would he want to hook up with me? I look like a librarian.”
“Librarians are hot, Ands. Shushing people with authority? Punishments for overdue books? Some people are into that. Besides, it’s always the serious ones who have a wild side.”
I work through a violent cough. I am not having this conversation with my little sister. “Anyway, Nolan is coming with me as moral support.”
“If you say so,” she says knowingly, clapping her hands together. “I can’t wait to know what Hunter is gonna wear for the ceremony. How much do you want to bet he’ll be in a vest?”
“What’s wrong with a vest?” I ask innocently to rile her up.
“Oh, nothing if you’re a fifty-year-old man on the brink of collecting that sweet pension.” She was never a fan of Hunter, even while I was dating him. She thought he was a smarmy, power-hungry social climber. “Mark my words. He’s gonna look like that guy fromPeaky Blinders, but the cheap knockoff version from Shein.”
I let out a loud snort, earning a warning look from the instructor at the front of the room.
