Page 25 of Be Mine, Sweetheart (Something Borrowed 3)

Now, they were adults, although she’d probably tell him he wasn’t acting like one.

His phone alerted him again that another message had come through.

Stop being a child and answer me!!!

“What’s wrong?” Rachel asked.

Chris slipped his phone back into his pocket without replying to the texts. He’d call her when he got home. “It’s just Kelly. She’s mad at me because I skipped out on our weekly movie night.”

“Kelly. Right, your lifelong best friend.” She said it with a weird tone, as though that wasn’t the real story.

He cocked his head. “Yeah, since we were thirteen. You’ve met her.”

“I have. And I think it’s nice that you two are so close. Most people assume that guys and girls can’t be friends without some kind of emotional or physical complication, but not me.”

Chris studied her expression, noticing that her voice had gone about an octave higher, something his clients did when they were lying about something.

“We definitely are just friends. Completely platonic.”

Shit. Did my voice just crack?

“Mmmm…that’s great.” Rachel stood up. “I’m going to go use the restroom. Be right back.”

She grabbed her purse from her original chair and headed for the dimly lit hallway, completely throwing him for a loop. One minute she was flirting with him and the next, she was running away.

Or she just really had to pee.

He turned to find Maria and Trevor watching him.

“What? Why are you two looking at me like that?”

“Nothing. Everything okay?” Trevor asked.

“I think so. We were just talking, and she suddenly had to go pee.”

Trevor grinned at Maria slyly before addressing him once more. “Did you bring up Kelly?”

“Yeah, why?”

Trevor held out his hand to Maria. “Pay up.”

“Shit.” She laid a five-dollar bill in Trevor’s hand.

Whatever they’d bet on clearly had something to do with him and Kelly, and irritation pricked across his skin like a thousand needles sliding in. “Somebody want to fill me in?”

Maria rolled her eyes. “We made a bet.”

“Yeah, I got that. What about?”

They looked at each other again, as if silently rock-paper-scissoring who would break whatever news they had to him.

Maria apparently drew the short straw.

“Chris, Rachel has liked you forever,” Maria said. “When I told her that Cassidy broke up with you, she was really excited.”

She paused, and he held his hands up helplessly. “Okay, still not seeing the issue.”

“It’s Kelly,” Trevor broke in.