Page 160 of While You Were Trending

“What?” I say to her.

“It’s just nice to see you making your dick face at someone else.”

I love this woman.

My heart, my soul, my next life and the one after that and the one after that into infinity—they all belong to her. I’ve been hers since the big bang and I’ll still be hers when the universe collapses back on itself.

But I can’t have her in this lifetime without wrecking the longest friendship I’ve ever had. Probably without blowing up this new post-hockey career that I’ve been hoping would get me back in the game too.

“You ask Walter if he did it?” I ask the group.

“Walter can’t do it anymore,” Pip says. “He’s not circumcised, and he got an infection, and?—”

“We have not asked Walter,” Mabel interrupts. “Thank you for the idea. We’ll ask him.”

“Good,” I say. “We making wine today, or are we still being dicks?”

“We’re cleaning the barn and the fermentation building,” Dori says. “Hope you’re ready to get dirty in the name of getting clean.”

My gaze subconsciously drifts to Ginny again.

She blushes.

She’s thinking what I’m thinking.

That we could get dirty together.

One weekend of Ginny is not nearly enough for me.

“Where’s Flow?” she stammers.

“Haircut,” I reply.

“Again?” Olivia says.

“She has a screen test tomorrow.”

“Oh, don’t do that to poor Flow,” Ginny says. “She deserves her privacy and her anonymity.”

“You can have that discussion with her yourself and see how it goes,” I tell her.

She smiles wider. “It would be my pleasure.”

I fall harder in love.

Half of our audience smirks at me like they know it.

“Get to work,” Heath says. He kisses Cricket on top of her head. “Late for a job. I’ll be home with Lav later.”

“Love you,” she says to him.

He smiles back at her and kisses her head once more.

Raw envy digs into my chest.

I want that.

I want to be able to saylove youto Ginny without sending her spiraling into a catastrophic whirl of fear and insecurities and doubts.