Page 86 of Don't Go Faking My Heart

She wags her tail excitedly while I gather myself. I rub my eyes for a solid minute before putting on my glasses and checking the time. It's 7:20 a.m.

This is not early by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm not a morning person. Mornings are for professional athletes and VPs of retail operations, not for a woman who spent the night holding the best friend she's falling for.

A quick sniff tells me that breakfast is on the table, and after pulling my bonkers curls up into a messy bun, I do my best Toucan Sam impression and follow my nose downstairs. I love food, but breakfast food is my absolute favorite. The fact that Rusty knows this about me and so happily obliges makes me feel special. But is it the kind of special that I hope it is? Or is it more of the "love everyone" special, because he’s such a standup guy?

Downstairs, the food is covered on the table—did he actually make more of everything this morning?—and there's a note at the table.

He could have texted, but he left me a note.

Could he be cuter?

Pookie stands at attention waiting for scraps while I read.

Gorgeous,

Not sure when you'll see this, but I'm either at Duke's working out or taking a plunge outside.

Always,

Rusty

Always?

Um, is that a Harry Potter reference? Listen, I think Snape is a stone-cold jerk, but his love for Lily …

Okay, no, calm down. You're reading into things. It's a perfectly normal sign-off to a letter.

Sign-off? What's the word?

I pull up my phone and type "what is the opposite of a salutation?" into my search bar.

Valediction. Huh.

"Valediction," I say to Pookie, who's sitting and making a whining noise deep in her throat. "That's a cool word. I need to find a way to work that into a sentence, don't I, girl?"

Pookie whines, but I'm unaffected. I love her dearly, but Rusty said she has the stomach of a carsick toddler on a windy road.

No thanks.

With my phone up, I look at my other (one hundred and seventeen) tabs and see the one on gophers I pulled up after running into Chick Hanks?—

I nibble on a piece of bacon and scroll through the gopher advice when a text from Millie appears.

MILLIE

Your man was on fire this morning working out! I lost count of how many pull ups he did.

ASH

Pull ups are the things you need abs for, right? Was he shirtless?? Did you get a pic???

Even as I text this, I feel wrong about it. I feel like I'm cheapening how I feel for Rusty, like I'm reducing it to simple lust when that couldn't be further from the truth.

But also, I wouldn't be mad if she had a picture of him working out.

Yes, no, and NO. I'm married, babe.

Yeah, and we USED to be best friends, babe.

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