Page 33 of The Snuggle Is Real

"Disgusting flirting." She makes a face.

"And Jenna's aunt kept trying to set me up with her daughter. The one who was going through a divorce."

"The one who was still married, Malcolm. Her husband was at the bar."

That makes me laugh. "Details. Though I didn’t know that at the time."

"And you grabbed a cocktail napkin off the table and you asked the bartender for a pen."

"And you wrote it."

"We wrote it."

I can see it in my mind. The napkin was cream with a gold monogram. J&T. My handwriting and hers, alternating lines, her three glasses of cheap champagne in. Me, about five beers down. "Rule one: always say yes."

"Rule two: no questions asked," she says.

"Rule three: no complications."

She's quiet, but she’s smiling at me indulgently. The way you do when you have so much shared history with someone.

"You signed it with a heart over the i,” I tell her.

Her jaw drops. "I did not."

"You did. In Emily. A little heart."

"I was twenty-two and tipsy."

"I thought it was cute."

“In fifteen years, you’ve never once said anything was cute. Not puppies, not babies, not the ring bearer in Charleston who fell asleep face down in the aisle. But you think that was cute?”

I shrug. “It was cute.”

What I don't tell her is that I almost said something else that night.

Before the napkin. Before the pen. We'd been sitting at that terrible table while everyone else danced, and Emily had been wearing a very short black dress with very prominent cleavage, and little pearl earrings that made me want to nibble on her earlobes.

I had opened my mouth to say it.

I think I'm in love with you.

And instead, what came out was, "We have a deal."

Because I was twenty-two and leaving for an MBA program in Chicago, and I was terrified that if I said the real thing I would lose the one person who always called me out on my shit.

No complications.

I've been living by it for well over a decade.

"Malcolm," Emily says. “Do you still have it? The napkin?”

If I am honest, it will reveal more than it should. It could alter our friendship if I lay my cards on the table.

But hell, I’ve never lied to Emily. Not once.

I can’t start now.