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Taylor sat up and crossed her arms over her chest.

“I wasn’t going to say anything! I was just going to say, ‘Yes, I’d love some coffee, thank you!’ ” She swung her legs off the bed. “But since you offered…”

Avery laughed out loud as she pulled a robe on. She took another one out of her closet and tossed it to Taylor.

“Here. It gets chilly in my kitchen in the mornings.”

Taylor shrugged the robe on and followed her into the kitchen.

“What else do you have today other than that meeting?”

“A bunch of calls all day, and I’m having dinner with Luke.” Where she would probably tell Luke about whatever this was going on between her and Taylor. Would Taylor have a problem with that?

Taylor didn’t react. Instead, she examined Avery’s coffee maker, and then sniffed her bag of ground coffee. Maybe she hadn’t heard her.

“Not terrible, but can I—”

Avery took a step back.

“Yes, you make the coffee.”

Taylor opened a drawer and pulled out a measuring spoon.

“Dinner with Luke, huh?” So she had heard. “What does he know about all of this?”

Avery took the oat milk out of the fridge.

“Nothing yet. I mean, I told him about the flirting lessons, but not…about Friday night. I haven’t seen him since then, and this felt like an in-person conversation.”

Taylor laughed as she measured far more coffee than Avery would have into the filter.

“I wish I could be a fly on the wall when you tell him. He’s going to flip out.”

Oh good, Taylor wasn’t going to be weird about her telling Luke. Not that she thought Taylor would be, but you never knew.

“He sure is,” Avery said. “Don’t worry, I’ll tell you what he says.”

“You’re doing WHAT with Taylor?”Luke half shrieked. Avery was glad she’d decided to have this part of the conversation in the car.

“I mean, do you want me to go into detail, or…?”

Luke shook his head vehemently.

“No, that’s not what I meant, you know what I meant!”

Avery giggled. She couldn’t help it.

“Yes, I know what you meant, but I’m pretty sure you know what the worddatingmeans.”

Luke glared at her.

“That’s not how you said it. You made this dramatic pause before you saiddating, like there was another word you were thinking about putting in there and didn’t.”

Avery giggled again. It was way more fun to tell Luke about this than she’d thought it would be.

“Well, yes, we did…another word before we decided we would start dating, but you get weird when I tell you about doing that word, so I didn’t mention it.”

“Iget weird? You get weird, too! Remember when I—” Luke shook his head again. “You’re trying to get me sidetracked. Back to the point. You and Taylor? I thought she was just teaching you how to flirt? I thought you knew you didn’t want to have anything with her because you knew she was kind of a heartbreaker? What happened to all of that?”