Page 17 of Friends to Lovers

We move inside for dinner, to tables draped in white linens and flowers the same shade, a dance floor in one corner and a bar in the other.

The dipping sun filters golden through the windows.

We’re not at the same table as Everly, but by the time dinner is over, she’s practically burned a hole through the back of Ren’s head from her seat across the room.

“You should dance with Everly,” I say, nodding in her direction.

Ren’s knee brushes against mine under the table as he turns to look at her. She glances away quickly, waits all of two seconds before her eyes dart his direction again, but he’s already turned back to me, one side of his mouth twisting in a confused smirk.

“What are you talking about?” he asks me.

“Everly’s into you.”

Ren half rolls his eyes as he picks up his glass.

“Ren,” I say.

He takes a drink, swallows, sets his glass down again before fixing me with a mock-serious expression. “Joni.”

“Dance with her.”

“Why?”

“Because she likes you.”

“So?”

“So, that’s usually how two people meet ,” I say.

“I’ve already met Everly.”

“Ha ha. Why don’t you want to dance with her?”

Ren’s teeth run over his bottom lip. “Why do you want me to dance with her so badly?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “I just think it might be good for you.”

“ Good for me.”

“Is there a reason you maybe shouldn’t dance with her?

” I ask. Since Ren doesn’t often share this type of information with me, I don’t know how else to broach the subject other than this roundabout method.

I know he doesn’t mean it to come off this way, but the fact that he withholds stuff sometimes makes me feel like he doesn’t fully trust me or like I’m giving more of myself to him than he is to me.

Ren raises an eyebrow. “My doctor did tell me not to put weight on my ankle for at least six weeks,” he jokes.

“Oh my god,” I say, picking up my wineglass. “Never mind.”

“No, I’m sorry.” He faces me, moving one leg so his knees bracket mine.

If Everly didn’t believe that nothing was going on between us before, the way we’re sitting now might plant another seed of doubt in her mind.

I shift away from him slightly. “Why wouldn’t I be able to dance with Everly? ” he says.

“Are you seeing someone?” I finally ask him.

The half smile Ren has been wearing this entire conversation falters. “No,” he says. “I would have told you if there was anyone serious.”

“Of course,” I say. A strange mix of guilt that I doubted he would tell me and relief that he wasn’t withholding something settles over me.

Ren, apparently done with this conversation, nods at my empty glass. “Another?”

“Sure,” I say as he stands. “Thank you.”

He weaves his way through the crowd, stopping to talk to a few people on the way.

He laughs with them, leans in to listen to their stories over the din, nods along at all the right moments.

It feels like I’m removed from him, even though he’s just across the room, like I’m watching a version of him I don’t have access to now that we live so far apart.

The band plays the opening notes to a familiar song, a cheer going up from the dance floor in one corner. Ren is just breaking away from the couple he’s been talking to and he turns to me, eyes going wide.

I lift my hands up in a what are the chances move. “Your song,” I call as he walks backward toward the bar, head bobbing to the rhythm of “Mr. Brightside.” I don’t know if he can even hear me.

“America’s song,” he calls back. He pretends to sing into my empty champagne flute, his other hand clutched against his chest.

He grins as people on the dance floor start singing along to the chorus, then sets our glasses on the bar behind him. The bartender is busy, and Ren looks back at me, mouthing the words to the next line before I mouth back the next.

We’re about to get to the chorus again when Everly appears behind him, pressing a hand to his back, and he pivots her direction.

A server appears beside me. “Champagne?” he asks, extending a flute.

I accept it and thank him, wrenching my eyes back to Ren and Everly. Ren is holding out his hand with a smile, and Everly takes it eagerly, the two of them chatting as they snake their way to the dance floor. The song changes to “God Only Knows” just as they reach it.

I sip my champagne as Everly sets her hands on his shoulders, his own hands a polite height on her back.

She leans back, says something to him, and he nods, that wide smile still on his face.

Her cheek now against his shoulder, he turns his head back toward me.

People are singing along, as into it as they were “Mr. Brightside,” but Ren’s not going along with it this time.

He gently sways Everly, but his gaze is locked on mine.

The song is nostalgic in that perfect way, like time is folding in on itself, begging you to notice before it resumes its normal course.

We were listening to this song at Ren’s parents’ house when we were sixteen, his dad’s records spread around us on the living room rug, when Ren told me there are certain songs that can burrow so far into your body that it feels like you’re hearing them for the first time, and that there’s some kind of magic in that that can’t be replicated anywhere else in the universe.

For a minute, with the music enveloping us, Ren’s soft brown eyes on mine, everything—time, other people, the distance—falls away. My heart presses against my chest, like it’s trying to get at something outside of me.

And then the song is ending. People are clapping, and Everly is leaning away from Ren again, and Ren’s eyes are back on her.

I pick up my champagne and take a larger sip, the cold bubbles fizzing down my throat as Ren and Everly continue into a second dance. I’m in a room full of people I went to college with, some of whom I’d still call friends, and yet I stay glued to my chair, don’t stand up to find any of them.

Amina must notice I’m alone, because she swings by the table and yanks me up and out of my seat.

I dance with her and some friends to the next song, a classic Whitney Houston number, eyes on where Ren and Everly have moved to the bar, and remind myself that it’s okay.

We got our weekend, and if he spends the rest of the night with her, it will be worth it.

If he falls in love with her, marries her—

Amina bumps her hip against mine, jostling me back into reality. When I blink back toward the bar, Ren and Everly aren’t there. I cast around, suddenly feeling lost in the room without his presence to anchor me.

But then there’s a hand slipping into mine.

I twist around and smile up at Ren, pulling him into the group.

Before long more people have joined, including Everly, who just shrugs in Amina’s direction when she gives her a questioning glance.

Everyone expands out into a circle, Lydia and Isaac in the middle as we all belt out a Journey song.

“No,” I shout later, when “Closing Time” comes over the speakers. “I think this is your song!” Ren gives me a quizzical look, our hands clasped between us as we move absentmindedly with the music. “You can just put this on at the bar instead of having to do last call!”

“Oh, god no,” he says, a laugh lurching out of me as he suddenly spins me toward him so my back is to his chest, then out again. “Please tell me my bartending days need to be over well before I start doing something like that.”

At one point, Lydia sets her arms around our shoulders, brings us in close to her and Isaac.

“If you two hadn’t been so cool with basically getting kicked out of your rooms freshman year, I don’t know if we’d be here,” she yells over the music.

The skirt of her dress brushes against my legs, a strand of her hair coming loose from her elaborate updo. “Thank you!”

“Seriously, though,” Isaac says. “What did you guys do all those times?”

I look at Ren. “Explored Portland?” I offer.

“Studied,” Ren adds.

“Sometimes,” I say. “I did a lot of art projects in your room.”

“Is that why our RA thought someone had an illicit soldering iron in the dorm?”

I press a hand over my eyes. “Sorry, Isaac.”

“You know what?” he says, pulling Lydia into him and kissing the side of her head. “It’s so fine.”

After they’re dragged away by the wedding party, I turn back to Ren, sliding my hands over his shoulders as the band plays the opening notes of “Your Song,” couples around us moving together across the dance floor.

“There has to be more than studying and art projects,” I say, thinking back to freshman year, when we were trying to branch out, grow beyond our teenage selves, but mostly failed.

We still preferred each other’s company.

“We already knew Portland pretty well. What did we do?”

Ren smiles at me like the answer is obvious.

“What?” I ask.

The hand he has on my waist tightens, fingers spreading up to my ribs, the spot warming under his touch.

“It doesn’t matter what we did,” he says, his voice low enough that I have to lean in to hear it.

When I look up at him, his face is close, eyes cast down to mine, that easy smile still lighting up his features. “We were together, Joni.”