Page 12 of The Rules

He glanced beside him at Dani. She smiled as a waiter filled a glass of water for her. With Cat and Josh out of town, he wouldn’t have to worry about seeing Dani either. They could consider the whole thing forgotten.

Dani pressed her fingers to her temples as the bright sun taunted her hangover. Her rolling suitcase caught on the door of the hotel, and she had to tug it with both hands, nearly toppling over from the exertion. She pulled her sunglasses onto her face and bit back a wave of nausea. She really should have eaten something at brunch, but she was too busy lamenting her latest act of self-sabotage.

How could she have possibly thought sleeping with Dylan because she was feeling sorry for herself was a good idea? Hadn’t she been standing on the dance floor pondering her lot in life moments before? She supposed she had her answer as to why she was the only one who hadn’t found any sort of meaningful connection. And to top it off, sitting at that table with their best friends, pretending she and Dylan hadn’t woken up together was torture. Now every time she and Dylan saw each other, that’s how it would be.

And she was about to experience it again.

She stepped into the valet area to find Dylan packing his bags into the trunk of his Audi. Ugh, she was too hungover for a repeat of their awkward morning. She needed to clear the air, though, before they both went their separate ways and ended up at some group event in the near future with this weird tension still simmering.

“Dylan,” she called, dragging her suitcase over the curb with a thud. “Hey.”

He looked her up and down as she approached, but his expression was flat, like he was looking at a stranger. Maybe he was just hungover too.

“Hey, Dani.”

Something soured in her stomach at the sound of her real name. From him it felt formal. Off. Where was Dani-pie?

“Listen, about earlier. I meant what I said about us being friends. Can we just go back to the way things were?”

Dylan licked his bottom lip and smiled thinly. “Of course.”

“Oh.” He’d said that awfully quickly, but she supposed she didn’t have a right to claim a bruised ego. She knew exactly who she was dealing with. “Okay. Well, good. I was worried.”

“Hey, we’re grown-ups. We’ve both done this before. If you don’t want anything to change, then nothing will change.”

If she didn’t want it to?What exactly did that mean? She opened her mouth to question him, but he was giving her a look like the conversation was over. Maybe it wasn’t worth it. Expounding on loaded sentences like that were what drama was made of, and drama was why you didn’t drown your sorrows by sleeping with your best friend’s husband’s best friend.

“Great,” she said. “Glad we cleared that up. Again.”

“Yup. Me too.” He gave her a salute, then slammed his trunk, heading for the driver’s side. “I’ll see you around, Dani.”

“Okay.” Her head started to pound just thinking about it.

Four

“So this is Cat’s boyfriend-now-husband’sbest friend?” Benji asked.

“That’s the one.”

“You little fiend! Does Cat know?”

Benji had never met Cat, or Josh or Dylan for that matter, but they’d been sharing an office at Root Media long enough that he knew all the characters in her stories. Just like she knew that his boyfriend Ronnie was in Northern California for the weekend for his old roommate’s fortieth birthday, and Benji was pretending he wasn’t jealous but secretly he was stalking them all on Instagram like Hipster Sherlock Holmes.

“Cat does not know, but she’s in Hawaii for a week. It will be old news by the time she gets back. No need to share.”

“Would she be upset?”

“Of course not. I don’t think.”

Benji rolled his office chair over to Dani’s desk and propped his elbows on the edge, resting his neatly-bearded chin in his hand. One of his unruly, rust-colored curls fell across his forehead and he blew it aside. “Show me a picture.”

“Ugh. Fine.” This was part of the game they’d been playing for years. Benji would pretend to beg for gossip and Dani would pretend to be put out, but honestly, it was refreshing to have someone outside of their inner circle to talk toaboutthe inner circle.

She turned her laptop toward him and opened a few pictures she had uploaded from the wedding. She’d intended to use the photo-editing software her office owned to spruce them up and give them to Cat when she got home from her honeymoon. Even without touching up, though, everyone looked great. Especially Dylan. Maybe she was showing off a little.

“Here you go.”

Benji leaned forward, peering through his wire-rimmed glasses. “Oh, I remember him. The charity 5k your friend made you do. You showed me pictures and you talked about his ass in those shorts for days afterward.”

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