Page 31 of Friends to Lovers

The dark edge to his gaze has me imagining crazy things, like what would have happened if Stevie hadn’t come back this morning, if the blue team hadn’t won at that moment last night.

It’s the last thing I need to be thinking about right now, and yet, the longer we stare at each other, I can’t help but wonder if Ren is thinking them too.

“Okay, your turn,” I say, trying to keep my voice light.

I flip his arm so his palm is facing up to the ceiling, his skin warm under my fingers.

I grasp one of the initial heart tattoos from the pile and step in closer to him. It’s not until I’m gently pushing the tattoo to his biceps that my eyes catch on the single line below his elbow, aligning with the same one on my arm.

“Think this will hurt as much as getting that?” I ask as I hold the damp towel to the tattoo, ignoring the way his muscles subtly move wherever I touch him.

“So far, it’s not so bad,” he says.

My eyes rise up to meet his again. “Did you ever think about getting rid of it?”

Ren’s expression goes tense. “Never,” he says, then, mouth softening, “Did you?”

I shake my head. “Never.”

“Okay!” Stevie calls from the other side of the room. She has an entire half sleeve of Leo’s faces on her left arm. “Let’s get this party started!”

Once everyone is finished with tattoos, we traipse down the street to the Mexican restaurant we’ve been eating at since we were kids.

We push two tables together on the patio beneath green and blue globe lights, order pitchers of margaritas.

As people swap Stevie and Leo stories and talk about the wedding on Saturday, I snap pictures for them to remember the night by—of Stevie mid-laugh, of Oliver doing an imitation of Leo when he plays guitar onstage—and make a stack of Polaroids in the middle of the table.

When I look up again, Ren is watching me.

Predictions? he mouths from his seat across from me.

I smile as I sink back into my chair, nod at the glass in his hand. Tequila , I mouth back. The thing that made some of our best nights possible.

He laughs.

Once we put in our food orders, it’s time to begin. “Okay,” I say, pulling a sheet of paper out of my bag. “Per Stevie and Leo’s request, dinner is for trivia about the happy couple.”

“We rule trivia night in Portland,” Stevie says from her seat next to me, to the table at large.

“We always come in last, babe.” Leo drums his fingers against the back of her hand where it sits on her chair.

“We came in third when they did the decades night,” Ren says, gesturing with his glass toward Stevie. He’s sitting with an ankle resting on the opposite knee.

“See?” Stevie says, waving a hand in his direction. “Third.”

“You’d think a team with a music scout, a culture writer, and a whole band would do better,” Sasha points out.

Dev, the drummer, raises his hand. “I bring the history knowledge to the team. Majored in it in college.”

“Yeah, and when Joni visits, we can finally get all the art history questions,” Leo says.

I’m about to interrupt, tell him I remember exactly three facts from my art history classes, when Stevie pipes up.

“I think six is the max number of team members,” she says almost absentmindedly, as if Leo isn’t just being polite and pretending I visit, as if this trip marks the end of my hiatus from Portland and I’ll be hamming it up with them at their local bar next month.

To be fair, I might be now, and the idea begins to take root inside me.

But then again, I could also be living in Nova Scotia next month, for all I know.

“Joni can play for me,” Ren says. “I’ll just be there for moral support when she’s in town.” He winks at me, the rim of his glass against his lips, and it’s like the prosecco Stevie kept pouring into her glass earlier is fizzing through my body.

“Okay, I know I’m good at Stevie and Leo trivia,” Oliver says, lacing his fingers and stretching them out in front of him. “Let’s play.”

When Stevie and Leo asked for this, I leaped at the opportunity, coming up with questions about their relationship, sending them the final draft to get their fully fleshed-out answers, treating it like I did a Novo project.

It felt like the least I could do to make up for missing their engagement party.

I’d planned to be there, my first trip to Portland in years.

But just as I was mustering the courage to purchase my ticket, three puppets randomly went missing and everything went into meltdown—and a small, selfish part of me was relieved to postpone my return.

Sitting at this table now, with everyone laughing together, things like they used to be, I don’t know what I’d been so afraid of.

“Rules are simple,” I say. “You answer correctly first, you win a point. I’m moderator.”

We get through only five questions before Stevie turns it into a drinking game that isn’t so much a game as it is drink whenever Stevie tells you to, which is sometimes punishment when you get it wrong and sometimes to celebrate if you get it right.

“What song did Leo dedicate to Stevie—at the band’s third Sublimity show—that made her admit that she loved him?” I ask.

Dev shouts out “‘You’re So Vain’!”

Stevie has just taken an enormous bite of one of Leo’s fish tacos, but manages to tell Dev to drink, loudly. I fold the paper over so the next question is at the top, read it confidently before I can think about the answer. “Okay, where did Stevie and Leo meet?”

“Sublimity,” Ren says to me, and I know that look, have seen it before, have felt the same roller coaster drop as I do now.

“Thanks to Ren and Joni!” Sasha slaps a hand on the table.

“Ren and Joni drink!” Stevie shouts before pointing at us. “Sasha, you too. Drink your water.”

I have no choice but to oblige, tilting my glass in Sasha’s direction, then Ren’s.

“To Stevie and Leo!” Oliver calls out, and now everyone toasts.

“To us!” Stevie coos, leaning her head against Leo’s. Everything she says is an exclamation, gaze getting glassier by the minute.

I look at Ren again. His eyes are on mine, his mouth set in a way that I can’t read. It’s not that it’s a bad memory. In fact, the night Stevie and Leo met is a great one, as far as memories go. It’s what came directly after that should have the fizzy feeling in my stomach going flat.

But soon enough we’re both drawing ourselves out of the memory of that night. I focus on the way Ren’s smile slowly returns, on the laughter around the table, and leave the past to the past.