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Willa catches me and raises her eyebrows. “You gonna finally do it?”

I twist my long hair into a bun and hold it there, looking from side to side in the mirror. “Yeah,” I say slowly, letting my hair fall back against my shoulders. “I think I am.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

TONI

“You did not have sex in my bed.” Max leans against the doorjamb, arms crossed over her chest. She has dark circles under her eyes and looks completely exhausted.

“Oh, hey,” I say, bundling the bedsheets I’d stripped off her bed into a ball and holding them close to my chest. “I didn’t expect you home for a while yet.”

“It’s two thirty in the morning, Tone.”

“Is it?”

I’m not sure if it’s the sheets I’m holding or if the entire room smells like sex, but what I am sure of is that Max is not amused. I shift from foot to foot, the endorphin high I’d been on after the best sex of my life leaching out of me.

Max relaxes and grins. “I’m just fucking with you, Toni.”

My body collapses in relief. “Oh thank God. I’m sorry, Max. But I?—”

“Couldn’t very well tell a woman like Audrey Adams that you’re homeless and sleeping on my couch. I get it.”

Adams. I file the surname away for later. “I’m not homeless,” I say defensively.

Max dips her head and raises her dark eyebrows.

“OK, yes. I’m technically homeless. But, not for long.”

“So you keep saying,” Max says. She goes to the closet and pulls out a stack of fresh bedsheets.

“You have extra sheets?”

“Yes, I have extra sheets because I’m an adult,” Max says, throwing a pillowcase at my face. “Help me.”

I drop the dirty sheets and help her wrestle the fitted sheet onto her bed. Her very comfortable bed. “So, spill,” Max says.

“Come on, I can’t kiss and tell.”

Max lifts her nose and sniffs. “You mean fuck and tell, and yes, you can. My bed, remember?”

I grab a pillow and shove it into a pillowcase, catching a faint whiff of Audrey’s perfume. Or maybe that’s just the laundry detergent. “This smells really good,” I say.

“Gain,” Max explains.

I make a mental note to buy Gain detergent when I get my own place. I toss the pillow against the headboard. I lift my hands and let them drop. “It was great. Amazing. Like, next level.”

“That tells me nothing.” Max goes back to the closet.

“You do not have an extra down duvet in there,” I say.

Max pulls out a homemade quilt that’s seen better days and tosses it on the bed. “No, but you’re taking that one to the cleaner’s tomorrow.”

“OK, OK.”

Max goes across the hall to the bathroom. “So, are you going to see her again?”

“Unfortunately, no.”