ine because we’ve been picking on her.”
Bree saluted him then poured herself a gigantic glass of red, sipping it slowly and licking her lips.
“Mmm, delish!”
I reached over to the cooler that was beside me and handed Jesse a beer. “Don’t tell anyone I’m leading you astray, okay?”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
“Where I come from, people can drink from the age of eighteen so let’s pretend we’re in England tonight.”
Jesse smiled when I winked at him, then as everyone began to break off into their own little conversations, I turned around to look at Will.
“You okay? You’re pretty quiet tonight.”
He nodded. “Yeah. I’m okay. I broke up with Heather a couple hours ago.”
I heaved myself around to fully face him. “You what? Why?”
Will shrugged. “It just wasn’t right. She was too clingy. I really hated feeling like I couldn’t even leave my apartment without her asking where I was going and how long I’d be.”
“I’m sorry. But you don’t look too upset.”
“That’s because I’m not. I don’t think it was ever going to work. The more needy she got, the more I wanted to get away. Maybe now it’s over I can get my friendship with Freya back on track. I mean … that was one of the problems, right? She felt left out.”
Shaking my head, I lifted myself up to my knees so I could whisper in his ear. “She didn’t feel left out, she’s in love with you.”
Alcohol wasn’t the motivator for my revelation. Even though it wasn’t my place to tell him, I couldn’t stand the idea of him wasting any more time when it was so obvious how much they cared for each other.
Will’s eyes widened and he sat bolt upright, then sprang to his feet and dragged me across the room and out to the balcony, closing the doors behind us.
“Well, luckily nobody noticed,” I said, sarcastically. Everyone inside was staring, probably because we’d trampled over them as he’d pulled me outside.
“Sorry, sorry. But … what?”
“Can you really be that stupid? Your inability to see the bigger picture is astonishing. Freya is in love with you. She has been for years and you are the only person who doesn’t see it.”
He stared at me for a moment, processing the information.
“That’s impossible. If she … I would know if she … if she felt that way about me, right?”
“You’d think so but, no.”
He leaned back against the railings and let out a sigh. “Wow. Why didn’t she tell me?”
“Why didn’t you tell her?”
Will’s mouth opened to protest, but he changed his mind and sighed. “Because it didn’t occur to me that she would ever have feelings for me. I’m Will, her buddy, he co-worker.”
“I’m really starting to think I’m in high school again. It shouldn’t take me saying, ‘Hey, guess what, my friend fancies you,’ to get you to see what’s obvious.”
“I’m a guy. We’re notoriously dumb when it comes to women.”
“You’re thirty-two. You should have learned something by now, especially when that something is that your best friend has spent the last few months wanting to die because she didn’t know how to cope with her feelings for you.”
Probably more information than he needed, but I was on a roll. Will’s eyes glistened. “What do I do now?”
“Once you’ve recovered from the shock, you should talk to her about it.”