Page 63 of Best Friends, Tennessee

He warmed up next to me, and the same feeling from earlier flooded me.

I’m so fucking lucky.

But another thought came right on its heels, orbiting like a soft warning inside me.

Or you’re totally screwed, because none of this is going to last.

At some point, Ori would slip away again. From this bed or from Bestens entirely. But tonight, he was here with me. And I knew that was going to be addictive.

11

ORI

Turns out ‘possessive’ isn’t such a dirty word…

I stepped out of the old brick apartment building feeling like I’d just left one of the lower circles of hell.

It was warm outside again. I’d been stuck outside a nondescript two-story building for twenty-five minutes before the rental agent showed up to give me a tour of the place, and by the time I walked inside, I’d been sweating my ass off.

The tour had been even worse. Online, the apartment had seemed so promising. It was in Sable Valley, the next town over from Bestens that had a pretty big college and a good handful of apartments. I’d always liked Sable Valley, and the unit had looked pristine in the pictures.

In person, it had been anything but.

Now that the tour was over, I felt like I had to take a long shower and maybe some painkillers, too.

My phone buzzed as I walked the short distance to my car, and I pulled it out.

I had a text from Finn.

Seeing his name on my phone screen was starting to give me a little thrill in a way I didn’t like to admit.

I didn’t like the feeling of someone having that much power over me. But seeing anybody else’s name on my phone had been annoying me ever since I’d hooked up with Finn a few nights ago.

Hooked up with Finn, I thought, biting the inside of my cheek as I leaned against the side of my car.

If I’d gone back and told teenage Ori that anything close to a hookup with Finn would ever happen, he’d have rolled his eyes to the back of his skull.

A breeze hit my skin under the canopy of a tree with fresh green leaves all over it. I opened up Finn’s text, trying to whack-a-mole my own little happy flutter of excitement.

>>Finn: So? Did you find your new home?

>>Ori: I think I found Tennessee’s best-kept secret roach spa.

>>Finn: Oh no.

>>Ori: I’m telling you, Finn, the roaches must be feasting in that apartment. It smelled like weird chemicals. The rental agent had to pick up a half-eaten strawberry that had been molding in one corner of the kitchen floor.

>>Finn: No fuckin’ way.

>>Ori: One of the windows had a hole in it near the bottom the size of a baseball.

>>Finn: Naturally. How else are the roaches supposed to come in?

I snorted, pulling in a deep breath.

The breeze was finally making me feel a little bit better about today.

Or it’s Finn’s texts.

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