Page 28 of Friends to Lovers

chapter seventeen

“Open up!” Fists pound on the doors from the house to the screen porch, stomping feet accompanying them. “Rise and shine!” Sasha shouts.

I bolt upright so fast the blood rushes from my head.

“Wake up!” Stevie calls. “It’s my bachelorette today!”

I feel hungover without having had anything to drink the night before, the room slowly coming into focus, brain moving sluggishly. As I stand, Ren is stirring in his bed, the heels of his hands pressed to his eyes, and last night comes flashing back to me.

His hands on my waist.

My back against the tree.

His breath on my neck.

“We’re coming in!” Sasha shouts, her final warning.

“I’ve got it,” I say to Ren, who’s in the process of swinging his legs over the side of his bed. I just need to do anything but look at him.

“There you are!” Sasha says once I open the door, throwing her arms above her head like she’s at the Eras Tour. “It’s time to go!”

She and Stevie barge in past me, Stevie walking over to flop across my bed. I glance over my shoulder at Ren. He’s sitting on the edge of his bed, hair messy from sleep in a way that makes my pulse hike.

Get it together, Joni.

“You need to get ready too,” Sasha says to him, kicking his ankle. “Leo and Thad are in the kitchen.”

“Great,” Ren says, but he doesn’t move. In fact, he seems dazed, like he’s still dragging himself out of sleep.

But then his gaze suddenly flicks up to mine, alert, and I realize I’ve been staring at him. I shift my attention to the dresser, pull a swimsuit and shorts out of the drawer. “Give me five minutes,” I say to Stevie and Sasha. “I’ll be right there.”

“I’ll pack the car!” Sasha says, hurrying back inside, Stevie close on her tail.

I’m almost to the doors, going in to change, when Ren says my name. The slight gravel in his voice flutters down my spine.

“Yeah?” I say, turning back. Only a few feet separate us now.

He looks at me for a minute. “Why did you go to bed early last night?” he asks, concern lining his forehead.

“What?” I say, distracted by the shape of his shoulders underneath his T-shirt.

“Everyone went down to the firepit,” he says. “And you…” He trails off.

I finally let myself focus on him, on all the planes of his face I couldn’t see clearly in the dark last night.

It would only take a few steps for me to reach out and touch him.

I could brush away that one stubborn wave that falls across his forehead.

I could trace a thumb over the line where his eyebrows have creased together.

I could press the pads of my fingers to his full bottom lip.

“I have to get ready,” I say quickly, pivoting to the door.

Ren grabs my wrist and spins me back toward him.

I look down at where his fingers slide back down against my palm, breath catching in my throat. He tugged me back to him so easily, like my feet will just go wherever he asks.

“Can we—” he says, my thigh brushing against his knee as I turn to fully face him.

Our hands are still clasped between us. He glances at them, back at me. Doesn’t continue.

“Joni!” Stevie’s voice has me stepping back, once, then twice, drawing my hand to my side. I hear her come pattering through the mudroom. “Can you bring your Polaroid?”

“Of course!” I say, unable to tear my eyes from Ren.

The sound gets closer, and I shuffle around, hold my clothes up to my chest as if to prove I was, in fact, about to change.

Stevie pokes her head through the door. “Do you have enough film?”

“Yes,” I say. “I brought a bunch.”

The tension in the room is palpable, especially with Stevie here. I force myself not to look back at Ren.

“Okaaay,” she says, slowly. She holds a hand out toward me, wiggling her fingers. “Come on, let’s get ready!”

I take her hand and let her pull me out of the room.

* * *

Sasha, Stevie, and I drive the twenty minutes into town for coffee and pastries from Stevie’s favorite bakery.

We head another twenty minutes east to a small lake that connects to the Pacific through a winding four-mile river, their calm waters perfect for kayaking.

Stevie’s only requests for this week had been to do something outside this morning, and to go to her favorite bar, Clyde’s, tonight.

“Look at me,” Stevie says as she buckles her life vest on outside the rental shack. “I’ve gotten so outdoorsy since I moved back to Oregon.”

We’ve kayaked on this river once before, when we were kids. Stevie spent the entire time exclaiming that this was her dream as she languished instead of paddled, letting the current carry her. Today, though, she seems less content to do that and instead hell-bent on proving her kayaking prowess.

“Have you?” I ask, a doubtful laugh slipping out of me as I yank one of the straps on her vest to make sure it’s tight enough.

“Yes,” she says. “Watch, I’ll beat both of you down the river today.”

But Stevie hasn’t, it seems, become quite the wilderness woman she’s touted herself to be, evidenced by the fact that she upends her kayak no fewer than three times just trying to get into it.

The guy who we rented them from—a shaggy haired imitation of a Hemsworth, if said Hemsworth smoked a lot of weed and had the air of someone who sleeps in a hammock more often than a bed—looks annoyed when he has to wade into the shallows and help her turn it over again .

I watch from the shore, one end of my paddle resting against the sand, because when I tried to help, Stevie shrieked that she could do it on her own because she is an outdoorswoman so loudly that a flock of birds startled out of the nearest tree.

Sasha, meanwhile, has paddled partway out into the lake and back four times.

I dutifully watch through another two tries before Stevie finally gets into her kayak without turning it over and raises her paddle above her head, her pink bucket hat a fluorescent spot against the gray-blue of the sky.

After I climb into my own kayak, we paddle silently, bob over a tiny, gentle slope at the mouth of the river before we’re back in calm water.

Sasha, no patience for us amateurs, goes on ahead, pausing every now and again so we can still see her.

It’s quiet here, the temperate rainforest around us muffling any noise from the road, letting in only bird whistles, the soft dip of our paddles into the water.

I stop and close my eyes, breathe in the earthy, damp smell I grew up with, tilt my face toward a spot where the sun filters green down through the layers of mossy limbs.

The sound of Stevie splashing rouses me, and when I open my eyes she’s studying me.

“You okay?” she asks.

“Of course.” I resume paddling, and she keeps an easy, slow pace next to me. “How are you feeling about Saturday?” I ask as we curve around another bend, Sasha’s red life vest already disappearing around the next one.

She lets out a small sigh. “I’m worried for Leo,” she says.

I know a bit about his family—that his parents went through a contentious divorce when he and Oliver were kids, that the two of them ended up raising each other, that any sort of family gathering has the potential to get ugly.

I wonder if that’s part of the reason Leo is the way he is—always sunny, positive, trying to bring people together.

Because he had to keep the peace between his parents for so many years.

“If anyone can bring a mood up, I think it’s Leo,” I say, wanting to comfort her.

“Yeah, but he shouldn’t have to,” she says. “Especially on his wedding day.”

“I’ll step in,” I tell her. I love Leo, and I don’t want Stevie to have to worry about running interference on her day either. “You did mention the drop-off. Who’s going to find a body in those shark-infested waters?”

“That’s far too me a comment for you to be making,” she says wryly. Then, she shouts at the top of her lungs, “I just want to be married to him already!” She hoists her paddle over her head, words echoing against the trees.

“Words I never thought I’d hear you say.”

Stevie shrugs a shoulder as she lowers her arms. “We’re malleable creatures. Leo made me soft.”

“Yes, the first word that comes to mind when I think of you is soft. ”

“Hey,” Stevie says. “I’m plenty soft. I’m romantic, even.”

“You’re right,” I say. “The girl who once told me that ‘love is a myth made up by lonely people’ is romantic.”

“Malleable,” Stevie repeats. “I didn’t know until I knew.”

We paddle for another minute before she asks, “What’s up with you and Ren?”

I glance over at her, too abruptly for it to be subtle. Stevie’s expression settles into her trademark I told you so , and I face quickly forward.

Getting Stevie into her kayak and down the river momentarily may have distracted me, but I’ve been replaying the feeling of Ren grabbing my wrist all morning. The way he pulled me back to him. My leg pressed against his knee.

“Nothing,” I say to Stevie. “We’re just— We’re good.”

“You’re good,” Stevie repeats. I nod. “And what, exactly, does that mean?”

“It means,” I say, peering ahead to make sure Sasha hasn’t doubled back. She’s still far away. “It means that we’re both over whatever happened.” Whether that’s actually true, I don’t know, but I don’t want to have this conversation with Stevie before I have it with Ren. If we ever have it.

“Oh, right. I too like to do a lot of staring wordlessly at my estranged friend.”

“We’re not estranged,” I say.

“You were ,” Stevie points out.

She might as well have scooped up cold river water and rained it down over my shoulders. Losing Ren had been like a hole punched clean through me, one I stuffed with work and distance and more work, because if I let myself feel the pain of it, I couldn’t breathe.