Page 38 of Friends to Lovers

chapter twenty-three

When I wake up in the rental house the next morning, Ren is lying next to me, his palm over mine.

We’re both on our sides facing each other, the same position we fell asleep in after we walked back into the house to discover Thad spread-eagled on the air mattress he was supposed to share with Ren, and Sasha sound asleep on the sofa.

We’d settled onto the remaining air mattress.

Ren smiles at me, warm and slow, like he’s still waking up. There’s a healthy distance between our bodies, but his fingers slip from mine and trace down them in slow, featherlight circles that have me almost curling closer to him, my own fingers folding down to capture his.

Morning , I mouth, not sure who else is awake in the house yet.

“Good morning!” Stevie calls from the kitchen before the sound of a coffee grinder whirs loudly.

Our hands release as I sit up on one elbow, and Ren rolls onto his back. Stevie watches us from the little window into the living room, her hair shoved up on one side of her head and dark shadows beneath her eyes. She looks, nonetheless, incredibly smug.

“Coffee’s almost on,” she says as she lets go of the button on the grinder. “I need Fern’s.” At that, she picks up the grinder and carries it deeper into the kitchen toward the coffeepot.

Ren rubs at his eyes, then tucks his hands behind his head, tanned arms flexing. He looks up at me, another smile passing between us.

He considers me, a wordless come here and I can’t and let’s go somewhere passing between us until Thad is stirring on his air mattress, a groan emanating from him, our silent conversation dissipating with it. “Pink shots,” he grumbles. “Pink shots. ”

Ren and I brush our teeth at the kitchen sink while everyone else cycles in and out of the bathrooms. We lean against opposite counters, his mouth never far from a smile and his gaze climbing around inside me.

As planned, we herd the crew—those we can actually coax out of bed, at least, leaving the band’s guitarist and bass player and Oliver behind—down the street to the diner, Sasha pausing to lean over a flowerpot with her hand at her stomach, one finger held aloft behind her in a don’t come any closer gesture until she recovers and, thankfully, doesn’t puke into the peonies.

“Are you okay?” I hear Ren ask her.

“I had a rough night,” she says, patting his shoulder. “But thanks, little brother.”

At Fern’s, a classic diner if there ever was one, we pile into a corner booth with its familiar green-vinyl seats cracking in places.

Ren and I slide in next to each other, and because we’re all crammed in, I can feel every small shift of his body, his forearm against mine when we both reach for our waters, the thigh of his jeans when Thad moves on his other side to grab sugar for his coffee or when Leo leans across us to talk to Dev.

At one point, Ren stretches his arm along the back of the booth, his fingers lightly tapping the part right above my shoulder, and I have to work hard not to relax into it.

“Ready to go over the plan for today?” Leo asks.

Sasha doesn’t respond. Her sunglasses are on, and she looks something of a strung-out Kennedy as she sips her coffee, all dark hair and stained lips, a crisp white button-down casually listing off one shoulder.

“Don’t ask about a plan for at least another hour,” Thad says.

“You knew today was about wedding setup.” Sasha seems to come alive again, but there isn’t much conviction behind it. “No one forced the pink shots on you.”

“ Please stop saying pink shots,” Thad says.

“See, when the pink shots taste like that, you try not to take so many of them,” I say. A loud thump rattles the salt and pepper shakers. “Sorry, Thad.” His head is in his hands, elbows on the table.

When the server comes by, redirecting everyone’s attention, the hand Ren has stretched behind me just falls against my shoulder.

It’s innocuous enough that nobody would notice unless they were looking closely.

Under the table, our legs press tighter together and the conversation fades to a dull buzz and—

Someone clears their throat, shocking me back into the present.

I swivel my head toward the source of the noise.

Stevie is staring at me. When our eyes lock, she starts shoving fries into her mouth one by one like a ravenous hamster, making the whole thing scary.

I reach forward and pick up my coffee, Ren’s hand flat against the back of the booth again.

On the way out, Stevie grabs my arm, dragging me back under the awning in front of the restaurant and tucking us in next to a newspaper rack.

“Do you want to tell me where you and Ren went last night?” she asks. “Or why you were holding hands this morning?”

Thad and Leo are at the candy dispensers that sit at the opposite end of the patio, holding cupped palms underneath as Thad puts a quarter in and a rush of years-old Chiclets falls out.

“I don’t know, Stevie.” I glance toward where Ren is leaned against a building post near the vending machines, sunglasses on and hands shoved in the pockets of his faded blue jeans as he listens to Dev animatedly tell a story, the cool shape of him sending a pleasant flutter through me even from a distance.

“Joni,” Stevie says.

I look back at her. “It just happened while we were asleep,” I say, which is still technically the truth.

“You’re lying to me.” She sinks her weight onto one foot, fixing me with a small pout. “I just can’t figure out why.”

“It’s nothing, Stevie,” I assure her, then offer another small kernel of the truth as penance for lying to her at all. “We talked last night.”

“About what?”

“About being friends again,” I say. We did have that conversation, just not last night.

She squints at me, half because of the blinding sun streaming down and half because she’s trying to figure something out, I know.

At that moment, Thad lets out a shout, startling a group of passersby who jump back into the street.

“Look!” he calls, rushing toward us and raising something iridescent above his head. “Look what Leo just got!”

“No fucking way,” Stevie says as Ren and Dev stride over, all of us gathering around while Thad holds out his prize triumphantly.

“You did not get Fratty Chicken,” I say.

“I thought it was a myth,” Stevie says. “False advertising to make us keep putting quarters into that stupid machine.”

Thad holds between us a sparkling sticker on which is emblazoned, inexplicably, a chicken on a surfboard, wearing a backward hat, sunglasses, and clutching what we have long assumed to be a six pack of Pbr under one wing, though the illustration is fuzzy.

Fratty Chicken, as we named him, is a storied figure in town, imposed on the side of the vending machine next to the candy dispensers with all of the other sticker options: ice cream cones and cats and the occasional cowboy hat–wearing dolphin.

But no chicken sticker has ever come out of the machine. Until now.

“There’s no way that’s just been in there all these years,” Ren says.

Leo, always wanting to be helpful, runs back over to the machine, digging into his pocket for more quarters.

We were just kids when we first tried for Fratty Chicken.

Fern’s for breakfast was tradition on the last Saturday of the trip, all of us piling into cars and driving into town, the parents at one table and us kids at another.

Stevie would insist on sitting between me and Ren, claiming that we whispered too much when we were next to each other, and because he would play tic-tac-toe with her on a napkin, letting her win every time.

We’d finish our food quickly, our parents lingering over coffee and the view of the harbor, and we’d pool all our change for the vending machine.

When we realized no one ever got Fratty Chicken, it became our exclusive goal, never with any luck.

Ren and I would grow tired of trying, and he would buy Skittles from one of the candy machines and the two of us would sit with our legs stretched out, him pouring the candy into his hand for us to negotiate over the best colors, while Sasha and Thad continued at the machine, Stevie watchful between them.

I still find stickers floating around sometimes, as bookmarks or tucked into coat pockets.

I have a popsicle sticker that’s lost its shimmer on an old water bottle.

“You guys!” Leo hollers from the bank of vending machines, and we all look at him at once like we’re a single collective body. He raises a fist above his head. “Machine’s empty!”

“No fucking way ,” Stevie repeats. “Fratty Chicken was the last sticker ever in there?”

“You know what this means,” Thad says. We all look at him. “We said we’d do it.”

The rest of us are silent.

“Come on ,” Thad says, stomping his foot. “We promised we’d get Fratty Chicken tattoos if we ever got him!”

He turns to Ren, like he might convince him. “You and Joni are the only ones who have matching tattoos among us.”

“Not true,” Stevie says. Leo hands her a gumball and she pops it into her mouth, pushes it into her cheek. “Joni and I got tattoos together when we moved to New York.”

“The sun and moon on your ribs?” Ren asks me about the tiny symbols, reminders that Stevie and I are each other’s better halves.

He’s standing behind me, voice low, but Stevie hears the question, her eyes flying to us.

I dig my elbow into his stomach, and he coughs to cover up the small oof he let out.

“None of us are getting Fratty Chicken tattoos,” Sasha’s voice startles us from a few feet down the sidewalk, her face stony underneath her sunglasses. “We’re not twelve. You’re a parent now, Thad. Grow up.”

Debate over, we head in the direction of the house, Ren falling back a step to walk next to me.

“I just can’t believe this part of our lives is over,” Thad says ahead of us. “I thought Fratty Chicken would never end.”

“Ten dollars Sasha tries to steal it by the end of the night,” Ren says, sliding down his sunglasses and leaning in toward me. “According to Thad she’s always stealing his stuff in LA.”

“Oh, I’ll put fifty on Stevie having it by the end of the weekend,” I say.

“You don’t want it?” Ren asks.

“I’m not brave enough to put up that fight.”

“Mmm-hmm,” he mumbles. We’re smiling into each other, angled together as we walk, his fingers lifting to trace the tattoo we share below my elbow, then down to my palm, applying the slightest bit of pressure.

I look up just in time to see Stevie’s sharp-eyed gaze slipping away from us.