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“So sorry,” I answer, rolling my eyes. “Next time we can just call Manuel in too and loop him in.”

“Ignore him,” Vera says. “It’s how I make it through the day. What happened after?”

I shrug. “Nothing much. I basically packed up and left in a hurry after that. Ran into Ezra’s brother on the way out. That was fun.”

“You met Eli Hart today?”

I curl my lip in distaste, taking a sip of my amaretto sour before answering. “Unfortunately. He might be a bigger asshole than Ezra. I can’t tell.”

“Please.” Nate snorts loudly. “We both know you don’t hate Ezra as much as you pretend.”

Vera twirls the straw in her drink. “She’s allowed to hate him and enjoy his dick. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.”

“Exactly,” I stress, snapping my fingers. “If anything about him were half as enjoyable as his dick, I’d marry the man.”

“No you wouldn’t,” Vera and Nate both say at the same time.

Nate and Vera areveryaware of my thoughts on relationships. Nate, the romantic, thinks someone will sweep me off my feet one day. Vera, the realist, thinks Nate is an idiot.

“Fine,” I agree, grumbling.

“Sounds like you’re dangerously close to objectifying Ezra Hart,” Nate accuses. “Not very feminist of you.”

“You are not allowed to talk about objectification,” Vera scoffs. “Or feminism. Actually, why did we invite you again?”

He reaches to pluck one of her neat braids in an attempt to twirl it around his finger, laughing when she smacks his hand away. “How can you continue secretly pining for me if I don’t make myself available? I’d hate for you to have to stoop to gazing wistfully into my office.”

“You know, I don’t like youoryour dick,” Vera says flatly. “So I’m wondering what I gain from these interactions.”

Nate blows her a kiss. “Don’t knock it until you try it, darling.”

“Can you guys do your weird verbal foreplay somewhere else?” I rub my temples. “I have a headache.”

“You invited us out for a drink,” they both say at the same time again.

“Stop that,” Vera huffs.

Nate laughs. “It’s because we’re soconnected.”

“I hate him,” Vera says to the ceiling before giving her attention to me. “Youdidstop sleeping with Ezra though, right? You said you were going to after the last time.”

“I”—I give my own tiny red straw a twirl, shrugging—“did say that. Yes.”

“That’s Dani-speak for ‘We totally boned again,’ ” Nate says.

Vera cuts her eyes in his direction. “ ‘Boned’? Really? You’re thirty-five.”

“What would you rather I say? ‘Fornicated’? ‘Made the beast with two backs’? ‘The horizontal mambo’? I could just say they fu—”

“Shh,” I hiss. I drop my head to the bar, ignoring the slight stickiness there and forcibly not thinking about when they might have cleaned it last. “I didn’t mean to.”

“You didn’t mean to?” I catch Nate arching an eyebrow at me when I peek at him from the side. “Did you, like, fall on his dick?”

Vera’s nose wrinkles. “Classy.” She turns toward me curiously. “You didn’t, right?”

“I swear to God.” I close my eyes, expelling a breath. “No.I just…maybe he’s a witch or something.”

Nate leans in, lowering his voice. “I think they’re called warlocks if they’re dudes. Don’t joke about that shit.”