Page 110 of Drop Three

The silence at our table stretches a mile wide.

Until each of them yells something different at the same time.

“You hooked up in Fiji? When?”Kodi.

“I’ll kill him. I did always want to be an only child.”Penelope.

“Son of a bitch.”Tenley.

I’m not typically quiet, but when I am, it’s for a valid reason.

Right now, I feel exhausted. Mentally exhausted, that is, from the constant battle I’m in with my feelings for Bodhi.

It’s as if the universe won’t let me escape them.

Somehow, they keep getting blown up in my face, reminding me how much I care for him and how he never has and never will feel the same.

It’s draining.

My friends' constantly bringing it up only makes it worse. I know Tenley means well; she voices it because she cares, but it bothers me because they don’t know the whole story.

Until now.

Penelope, being the sweet and new friend that she is, waves them off and holds my hands in front of me to give me her full attention. “Let’s backtrack. Start from the beginning.”

I don’t want to talk about it, but I know I set myself up for this. Besides, I could use a woman’s perspective. It’s been more difficult than I expected to keep what happened between Bodhi and me to myself.

It’s been this hidden secret we’ve kept for so long now; I know our secret is safe with my friends.

I take a deep breath and tell them everything. I tell them how Bodhi showed up for me for all my issues with Luke, the breakup, and when I needed a place to stay. I tell them how we had been running circles around each other for weeks, building up the sexual tension, emotionally getting close to each other, leading to an undeniable physical connection. We knew Cal would never approve, so we pretended it wasn’t there. I told them about the moment we shared in Fiji, and how I felt so fucking seen and worshipped by him. Until he dropped a bomb on me and things haven’t been the same since. Not for my lack of trying.

“Wow,” Tenley says. “I had no idea.”

“God, Navs. Are you okay? I knew you and Bodhi shared something special, but I always thought you both only saw each other as friends. I never knew you cared about him so deeply. On that level, I mean,” Kodi adds.

I nod. “I’m pretty sure I always have,” I admit to them, but also to myself.

I’ve always admired Bodhi and how true to himself he is. It’s incredibly attractive to see a man stay in his own lane when everyone else in his village is in another. He never strays.

His showing up for me in a season full of self-doubt only solidified what I should have known.

Bodhi is loyal to a fault.

However, it never made sense to me howIcan be the thing he casts aside so easily and dismisses my feelings—all the true and very real feelings I shared with him. He never once gave me any inclination that I was misjudging the vibes I was very clearly receiving from him.

It was as if a switch flipped.

A switch that shifted our entire dynamic.

“So that’s why he froze up,” Penelope says.

“What do you mean?” I ask her.

She ponders for a moment before saying, “When I got to the house this morning, he was all Chatty Kathy, and as soon as you came downstairs, he froze up. It was as if his brain glitched and went into fight or flight. I don’t know how I missed it at the time.”

Tenley looks at me. “I think she’s now seeing what we’ve seen all along. What you said happened in Fiji only explains his recent behavior.”

“It all makes sense now,” Kodi murmurs, putting the pieces together.

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