Page 42 of Once Smitten, Twice Shy

Everyone shrugs, nonplussed.

“Fools, every one of them.” Juliet blows out a breath and peers up at me. “I need a drink after that. You?”

“Hell yes.”

“Margo!” Juliet calls. “Can we get an emotional support drink, please?”

Margo salutes us as she walks toward the kitchen, barely holding in a laugh. “Two emotional support cocktails, coming right up!”

•Eleven•

Juliet

“Good night!” I call out the door. Toni and Hamza, the last to leave besides Bea and Jamie, wave as they start down the stairs.

Bea pulls me in for a hug and whispers in my ear, “He’s really cute!”

“Don’t know who you’re talking about!” I whisper back. I try to pull out of the hug, but she keeps me pinned to her.

“Will,” she hisses in my ear again. “I can tell helikesyou, you goofalloo.”

“Banana,” I hiss, our old code word from childhood when we wanted the other sister to cease and desist whatever they were doing, and “stop” meant nothing.

Bea lets me go, but she’s grumbly about it.

Jamie offers Will a handshake. “Your first game night in the books. What do you think?”

“I think you guys know how to have fun,” Will tells him. “It was great.”

“Glad to hear it.” Jamie grins. “Hope we’ll see you around for another one soon?”

Will nods. “I hope so, too.”

Bea’s been watching the interaction with a smile on her face, but now she turns to me and says, “You sure we can’t stay to help clean up?”

“Nope.” I nudge her across the threshold. “I’ve got this. Thanks, though!”

“I’ll stay and help clean up,” Will says.

Bea’s eyebrows lift. She turns to me and smiles, then smiles up at Will. “That’s nice of you.”

Will shrugs. “Happy to.”

Bea gives me a meaningful look that saysWe’re not done talking about this guy!I telepathically beam back anI said “banana.”She turns again to Will. “Great to meet you. See you around!”

“Night!” Jamie calls, before they head down the stairs, hand in hand.

I watch them until they’re out of the vestibule before I shut the apartment door. Then I round on Will. “Bea’s picked up on it.”

“Picked up on what?” he asks.

I walk past him, my stomach knotting with anxiety. I start gathering up snack bowls because when I’m stressed, tidying helps me feel in control. “On…us.”

Will follows me and starts to pick up bowls, too. “I don’t know what that means. We didn’t do anything.”

I walk past him into the kitchen and nearly drop the bowls in the sink, despite trying to set them down carefully. I’m all shook up, like a bottle of soda whose bubbles are screaming for the lid to crack so they can be let out.

I bite my cheek as I start to run water over the bowls, trying to hold back the words, to keep them inside me, but I’m tired and anxious and something about Will makes me want to pour it all out, to confess that I feel a tug between us that’s impossible to ignore.

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