She grins up at me. “You still have all your street cred. I kept your secret so no one knows.”
“Mm hmm. They can smell it on me.”
“Remember when you guys made me watch Boondock Saints?” she asks, raising a pointed eyebrow. “You got me back.”
“Please. You thought the one guy was hot.”
She nods. “Got me there. He was hot. I can’t deny that. Still, not my favorite movie. I also watched Scarface with you guys. Nobody in that movie was hot.”
“And we watched—what was the one with the cheerleaders?”
Moira rolls her eyes. “Yeah, I’m sure it was a real hardship watching a league of hot girls jump around in skimpy skirts with exposed midriffs. I feel enormously sorry for the emotional trauma I must have inflicted upon you.”
“You should,” I mutter.
She smiled and shakes her head at me. “Just for that, we’re doing a Hepburn double feature next time. You should come over tomorrow after work. I’ll make you guys dinner—whatever you want—and then we’ll watch movies all night long.”
“I don’t like being your third wheel,” I tell her.
Her smile falls. “You are not our third wheel. We both love having you here. You’re our best friend. What’s third wheel-like about that?”
“You just described being a third wheel,” I inform her. “You two are a couple and I’m the friend that tags along. I’m not going back to that. I can’t.”
Her brow is creased and she looks a little sad. “You don’t like hanging out with us? I loved all those nights with you guys. You were just enduring them?”
“It was fucking torture.”
Not for the first time tonight, Moira looks completely disillusioned. “But why? We never tried to make you feel that way.”
“We, we, we.” I roll my eyes, rolling onto my back and bending one arm to rest a hand behind my head. “That’s why I had to stop coming around, Moira. It was too hard.”
“I don’t understand.”
I cut her a look. “Yes, you do.”
“I just said I don’t.”
“Girls like you always know. You used to torture me.”
Her jaw drops open. “Girls like me? What is that supposed to mean? And please elaborate on this torture, because I always remember being nice to you.”
“You’re too fucking nice, that’s the problem. You’re lying here in bed with me, both of us half-naked, you without any panties, because you’re nice.”
That leaves her speechless. There are a lot of things she could say, a lot of things she probably should say, but she knows I’m hurting, so she chooses not to. She keeps her mouth shut, simply rolling over and climbing off the bed.
I don’t ask her to stay this time.
It’s best she goes.
5
Moira
I can’t sleep, so I finally give up and go for my morning run a couple hours early. It works out, anyway. I’m feeling the need to run a little longer than my usual two miles. I go for three, then walk for another half hour before returning home to shower.
Sebastian is awake. I feel rel
ieved when I get back to the bedroom and he’s up. Griff is still in bed—poor guy’s probably going to have a hell of a headache. I took a bottle of water in and left it on the end table before I went for my run, just in case he woke up and needed it.