Page 29 of Gin and Bear It

“Fuck.” He runs a hand over his face. “Waylon’s pissed at me.”

“I know. But we have to do this now while it’s fresh. Show them that we’re really in love,” I say.

“I guess.” He closes his laptop and puts it on the coffee table. “But you forget that we hardly know each other.”

“How could I forget that? I just said yes because I miss my friends.” I rest a hand on my hip.

“Do you not see them all the time?” He leans back into the couch, which Pip takes as an invite to crawl into his lap.

“It’s been a while. I’ve kind of been…” A terrible friend? Flaky? A mess? “Distant. After my grandparents. And just all the stuff with work since I had to take over for them.”

“Mm.” He nods. “What else have you been up to for the past six months?”

I sigh. How can the past six months be both a blur and a drag at the same time?

“Working. Grieving. Being a mess trying to figure out this whole inheritance thing,” I say.

“Sit down and stop hovering,” he says. “Pretend to be my wife.”

I glare at him and sit down. Pip doesn’t bother to climb into my lap. Instead, he lightly baps Ash on the chin and squeaks.

“You really like attention, don’t you?” Ash asks, petting Pip between his ears. Pip purrs louder than he squeaks.

“He’ll wilt away into dust if he doesn’t get it.” I try to get comfortable on the couch, but Ash’s presence feels huge. “Anyway, that’s about it. Just working at the hotel, managing it. Dodging the real world because it’s been too much without…”

A stupid lump in my throat appears, even though I tried to play it cool. I’ve literally never played it cool in my entire life, so why do I try to start now? Will I ever be okay enough to talk about this without being all messed up?

“Without your grandparents,” he says. I nod. “I’m sorry for your loss. Sounds like you loved them a lot.”

I swallow again and pat my lap so Pip will come to me. He finally slinks over and I rub the white patch on his chest.

“They were amazing. So full of life and charismatic. But older, of course. They weren’t going to live forever.” I clear my throat. I can’t cry in front of him this early on. “Anyway, what about you? What have you been doing?”

He blows out a heavy, heavy sigh. “I started suspecting that something was up with our money around Thanksgiving. There was this whole big blowout when we were starting to work on our next album, and Dylan suggested we look at the contracts again. We found that they’d split songwriting credit, so we’re getting half of what we should be. So we fought even more and I decided to come home to regroup.”

Pip decides I’m not petting him hard enough, so he stretches out across both of our laps.

“And by regroup, I mean we had an argument and Dylan and I decided to sue,” he says. He winces when Pip extends his claws into his thighs.

“That’s messy,” I say.

He sounds resigned to it, though. Like this whole thing was inevitable. I can’t imagine how rough that would be. Ash was always “the one who left Jepsen” and made it big. He always had a reputation in high school for being trouble, so running away and joining a band felt on par for him. Like he was cool.

Going from traveling around, playing sold-out shows, and doing things most people would only dream of to this must be some serious whiplash.

“Yeah. We’ve always been a bit all over the place but this time has obviously been the worst.” He rubs the back of his neck. “I fucked around for a few months, traveling to try to shake some writer’s block. But it all felt kind of worthless because, y’know, we were being ripped off and we could hardly stand being in the same room as each other. Then my grandfather passed and I realized that I couldn’t just keep traveling forever. Now we’re here.”

“So we’ve both had the worst past six months ever, basically.”

“Basically.” He snorts and grabs a throw pillow to put on his thighs. It’s Pip’s favorite, so he stretches out across it instead of Ash’s bare thighs. “So hey, we have one thing in common.”

I snort, too. Pip’s purring is the only sound in the apartment, aside from its usual creaks and groans.

My couch is a normal size, but Ash isn’t—he takes up space in a way I’m not used to, and I can feel the heat from his body. My own body starts warming up like a damn oven.

“Are we going to touch?” I blurt. “In front of everyone later?”

“Presumably. Wes and Rose are all touchy-feely. So are Waylon and Bianca.” He rolls his eyes. “Why, you want to make out? Have our first kiss?”