Page 22 of Back To You

Her slightly wet hair is falling over her shoulders and down her chest, and her exposed arms are pebbled withgoosebumps. It’s a warm July night, but I turn the heat in the car on a little bit anyway.

Annie didn’t even think to change out of herstupidpajamas with thosestupidlittle cherries on them. She just slipped on some sneakers in our rush to get out the door.

Now—not only do I have to worry about what Annie was going to say to me before we had to rush to the hospital, and that two of our best friends might have our niece or nephew before we even get there—-Ialsohave to worry about how the fuck I’m going to go to sleep every night for the next three weeks picturing Annie in the room next to me wearingthose.

She turns to look at me, and she catches my eyes fixed on her. She glares back at me as she tells Mia we’re almost there before hitting me in the arm and pointing to the traffic light that is now green.

I turn back to the road and have to resist the urge to groan out loud at all the thoughts circling in my head.

We pull into the hospital parking lot and see Mia and Eddie walking up to the entrance. Annie is out of the car before I can even put it in park, and then the four of us are running through the halls of the place looking for where we can find Drew.

When we are finally all where we need to be—Annie and Mia in the room with Drew, Eddie and I in the hallway outside—I take the first breath I have since I got home tonight and ran into Annie for the first time since she moved in last week.

“Can you believe it?” I ask Eddie, grabbing his shoulder and giving him a little shake. “Drew and Emmett are about to beparents. We’re about to beuncles.”

Eddie shakes his head, looking down and letting out a chuckle. “I know, man. It’s fucking nuts.”

We both lean back on the wall across the door from Drew’s room, staying out of the way of the doctors and nurses who keep going in and out. Emmett came out to tell us that it shouldn’t be much longer, and I haven’t seen the man with that much emotion on his face since his wedding day.

“So, Annie hasn’t murdered you yet,” Eddie says. “I assume the two of you living together is going well?”

I can’t help the smile that forms on my face as I think about howgoodliving with Annie has been. Even though we haven’t seen much of each other, sharing a space with her is the closest I’ve felt to her in a long time.

“Being alive to tell the tale is answer enough,” I tell my friend, wishing that I could say more. Out of all our friends, I think Eddie suspects something between me and Annie the most. All our other friends know that there’ssomethingbetween us, but I’m positive they think I have a harmless crush on her that she doesn’t reciprocate.

“We’ll see if you can say the same in a few weeks,” he says before he laughs.

I let out a laugh of my own, remembering all the thoughts that ran through my brain when Annie and I were talking in the kitchen.

She said she mightnotwant to go back to her old apartment.

Does that mean she wants to stay longer? I can’t lie and say I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the case.

Maybe she was going to tell me she was going to look for another place? If that’s the case, my complex is an option. Of course, I’d rather her be with me, but being neighbors wouldn’t be too bad either.

It turned outextremelywell for Drew and Emmett.

I grab my phone from my pocket, typing up a quick email to my complex’s leasing office to see if there are any units available.

“Are you ever going to tell me what happened between you two?” Eddie asks, his voice a few notches quieter.

Eddie was there when I came to Lenny’s seven years ago—he saw the look on Annie’s face when she saw me—and he worked with us at Lenny’s for most of those years. I’m pretty sure he knows there is more to the story, but he’s never asked.

I made a promise to Annie that I wouldn’t tell anyone about us, but it’s hard to keep my head on straight when it comes to her.

“There’s nothing to tell,” I reply, a little too quickly, slipping my phone back in the pocket of my jeans.

“Did something happen at Drew and Emmett’s wedding?”

I turn to look at my friend. His green eyes are highlighted under the hospital's fluorescent lights, making the scar across the left side of his face a little more noticeable. His gaze is questioning, one of curiosity, not anything accusatory.

I figured our friends suspected Annie and I hooked up that night because she ended up in my hotel room, but we didn’t. She was drunk, and she dropped a bomb on me then fell asleep. I’ve never been able to ask her what she meant about being tired of pretending to hate me.

I probably never will.

But that night was an eventful night all around—being that Drew and Emmett got marriedandMia’s brother found out that she and Eddie had been secretly dating behind his back. It’s not surprising that nobody has ever asked us about it with everything else that went on.

“I wish,” I joke, hoping to bring a lightness back to the conversation.

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