Page 9 of 4 Hints You Love Your Best Friend

I’m struggling to breathe, period. Devasted I’ve hurt Jo this much.

As kids, she had no idea I was responsible for that mooning prank on Lane Ternent. Present-day Jolene doesn’t know I’m the one who helped her find her current apartment, after her roommate got engaged. Or that I’m responsible for having her truck fixed last year. Malcolm Boyd of Boyd’s Service Center couldn’t access the part she needed. Sandra, being the exceptional spy she is, texted me the issue from her burner phone. I found the part at a random garage across the country, had it expedited to one of Malcolm’s suppliers, who then forwarded it to the mechanic, with no mention of how it suddenly appeared. Jolene’s happiness has always been more important than praise.

Except she’s not happy, is she? She thinks I’ve written her off. That I don’t care, when the problem is I care too much.

I scrub my hand over my mouth, leaning heavier on the bar. “I’m sorry.”

“For what, exactly?”

“For avoiding you.”

“But…why?” The plaintiveness in her voice flays me, as does the sad slant of her eyes. “Why can’t you talk to me?”

“It’s complicated.” An old mistake I can’t erase and a heart that might still be vulnerable to her mysterious charms.

She stares at me a beat, then deflates. “Just order your drinks, Cal. Go sit with the guys. You clearly don’t want to talk to me.”

I should do exactly that. Order. Pay. Go. But the wrecking ball on my sternum presses down harder, grinding painfully. I can’t live with Jolene thinking I wouldn’t move heaven and earth for her.

“When I’m with you, Jo…” I put the credit card on the bar and pick at a splinter in the wood, trying to find a middle ground betweenmy heart misbehavesaround youand a flat-out lie. “A lot of memories come back.”

“Bad memories?”

“Hard memories.”

“Like what?”

I look up at her gorgeous face. Her cheekbones are more angular than when we were teens. Her nose is still slender but more defined. Even with those changes, I still see the girl who’d pick up a snake bare-handed and act like a goof to make me laugh. My fellow adventurer.

“Remember our Cool List?” I ask.

She seems to startle, a small smile tilting her lips. “I think Loser List would have been a better title.”

I huff out a laugh, becauseyeah. The two of us didn’t hang out with the cool crowd back then, but Jo was determined to be different in high school. To morph into the popular butterfly she became. Before that, we’d built a ramshackle tree house together—my first taste of construction and working with my hands—where we’d often lie side by side, grumbling about the annoying cliques at school, or we’d play board games or pretend we were jungle people hollering up to the sky.

“I was so nervous to start high school without you,” she says.

“I hated that I wouldn’t be there for you if things were rough.”

“The list we made was hilarious.”

It was. The year was 2005, and I remember every line of it.

Sit at the back of classes.

Laugh at everyone’s stupid jokes.

Flip your hair (Jo).

Only listen to Bow Wow and Snoop Dog (Cal).

Wear oversized belts and low-rise jeans (Jo).

Streak my hair and wear a wallet chain (Cal).

Strut instead of walk.

We actually practiced that—our cool struts.

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