When my shift ends a little later, and we head to the game room to play pool, my mind isn’t on stripes or solids.

  It’s on whether Owen’s going to ask me to Friendsgiving or not.

  I do want him to, since I bet it’d be a hoot, and I love a good time. Nisha, Hailey, and I hit it off at the party.

  Maybe I’ll just try to reel Owen in.

  “Admit it. You’re dying to watch me wow the crew in Tahoe with my Everything But The Kitchen Sink pie,” I say as I lift the stick and laser in on the blue-striped ball.

  Owen takes a beat as a smile curves his lips. He’s quiet, like he’s thinking. His eyes spark with possibility. “You know what? That’s a good reason to invite you. To see if you can pull off this pecan-pumpkin-apple-pie feat.” He gestures with his pool cue. “River, would you like to come to Friendsgiving at Nisha and Hailey’s Airbnb in Tahoe next weekend and test out your pie skills?”

  Next weekend.

  Fuck my life.

  My shoulders sag.

  Knew it was too good to be true.

  “That’s one of the biggest weekends here at The Lazy Hammock,” I say, dejected.

  “We could man the bar for you,” Grant offers, gesturing to his fiancé and himself. “You could even bill it that way. A night with two of the city’s pro baseball players doing the serving.”

  Owens eyes light up. “As the PR guy for the Dragons, I have to say that idea is the best. I swear I can see the hashtags now and the retweets.”

  “You do love your social media, Owen,” I say.

  Owen rests his chin on the end of the pool stick. “Like I love pecan pie,” he says, then tilts his head, his expression serious, maybe even a touch nervous. “So, what do you think, River?”

  That it sounds like an entirely fun way to spend a weekend.

  Bonus that it comes with zero risk of pact-breaking temptation since we’ll be in a house full of friends and food and games.

  “Yes, let’s do it.”

  It’ll be like every other time we hang out.

  When we don’t kiss, touch, or anything else. And I’m fine with that. Because why wouldn’t I be?

  2

  River

  “Who’s a good girl?”

  Delilah wags her tail, thumping it against the hard-packed earth, the Golden Gate Bridge a majestic arch behind her.

  “That’s right. You’re the best girl in the world,” I tell the planet’s greatest dog as we finish a hike in Muir Woods on a chilly Friday morning, with the spectacular vista of the Pacific Ocean as our backdrop. “You deserve a special dog biscuit when we get home. What’s that, you said?” I wait for her answer, then respond. “Of course I got you one from the gourmet, organic dog bakery. As if I’d shop for you anyplace else.”

  Bending down, I pat the front of my fleece jacket. My black and white Border Collie mix jumps up and paws me and licks my face, making me laugh. Then, we cover the last hundred yards to my car, where I grab a collapsible dog bowl, pour her some water from a bottle, and let her indulge.

  I snap a slow-mo shot of her drinking water, since dog tongue is funny, and send it to Owen.

  River: Hate to break it to you but Delilah already claimed shotgun for the trip.

  Three bubbles dance on the screen forever as I pick up the bowl, dump the rest of the water on the ground, then open the back door for my girl. Once inside, I buckle her into her doggy harness.

  “Seriously, you should model this. You need to be a spokeswoman for dog seat belts,” I tell Delilah.

  My pooch tilts her head to the side, then wags her tongue, which means Yes, I know, I’m a brilliant, well-trained, and eminently beautiful beast, but I won’t let it go to my head.

  I hop into the front seat, when Owen’s reply appears at last.

  In the form of a picture of his orange cat.

  Walking away.

  Tail in the air.

  Like only a cat can do.

  River: Goldilocks is such a cat. Anyway, Delilah is feeling generous so she’ll let you sit in the front seat once we drop her off at my sister’s.

  * * *

  Owen: How magnanimous of your dog to give me the front seat when she’s NOT USING IT.

  * * *

  River: She can be generous now and then. All right, I need to shower. Pick you up in an hour.

  * * *

  Owen: How long do you take to shower, man? Are you taking a spa shower with hot stones and gardenia lavender body wash or something?

  Rolling my eyes, I tap out a reply.

  River: I just went for a three-mile hike. This body doesn’t come in a bottle. I gotta work for it!

  * * *

  Owen: Mine does. I ordered it online. Try it sometime. But you didn’t answer the question. What kind of showers do you take? Are you getting hosed down in there by the men’s swimming team?

  * * *

  River: If that were happening, I’d need much more than an hour, I assure you.

  * * *

  Owen: I’m assured. But I feel confident that’s not happening. So, I ask again. What’s the story with you and showers? I’m in and out in five minutes and out the door in fifteen.

  * * *

  River: Are you bragging about being speedy?

  * * *

  Owen: Yes, River. WHEN IT COMES TO SHOWERS. NOT EVERYTHNG IS ABOUT SEX.

  * * *

  River: It’s not??? Since when???

  * * *

  Owen: Fine. One percent of things aren’t about sex. Anyway, see you in an hour after you take the world’s longest shower. Also, don’t answer why they take so long. I know why.

  * * *

  River: It’s not the shower that takes that long. It’s everything I have to do. For the record, I’m in freaking Muir Woods! I have to get across the bridge, drive to Russian Hill, go to my house, take a shower, grab my bag, Delilah’s bag, the food stuff, a jacket, get back in the car, and then drive to Hayes Valley to pick up your sarcastic ass. Think about everything I’m pulling off—I’m like Flash.

  * * *

  Owen: River, are you bragging about being speedy?

  I huff. Damn him, getting me all twisted. I bang out a final note.

  River: See you in fifty-five minutes on the goddamn dot.

  Forty minutes later, I give my girl her well-deserved organic biscuit, then Delilah and I bound down the front steps of my building to my wheels. As I click the key fob, my phone rings.

  Rolling my eyes in anticipation of Owen giving me a hard time about who the hell knows what, I hit answer before I check who’s calling.

  “I’m on my way. I did not take a shower in gardenia body wash. I used forest rain, and it’s super manly. And you better be ready.”

  A deep laugh rumbles across the phone line. “Well, I guess that makes things clear. Also, someone is bossy.”

  Oh. That’s not Owen.

  Opening the door, I toss my overnight bag on the floor of the back seat. “My bad. I thought you were Owen. Hi Grant,” I say.

  “And does Owen like it when you’re bossy?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” I say, but that raises an excellent question. Does he like bossy in bed?

  Dirty brain, wash your lobes out with soap.

  “Want me to ask for you? I’ll be all secret-y and shit when I ask.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” I say, staying strong, doing my damnedest to refocus my mind. Who cares what he likes in bed?

  “Clearly, since you’re already at the stage where you’re telling him how manly you smell,” he says, and I can hear Declan laughing in the background.

  I pat the back seat for Delilah. “In you go, girl,” I tell her and the perfect pet leaps inside, then I click her in. “Anyway, thank you again for covering for me this weekend. I appreciate it so much. Did you check The Lazy Hammock insta? The guys are going crazy knowing you and the shortstop will be manning the bar. I bet this will be our biggest weekend ever.”

  “And we’re ready. As long as I don’t have to mix drinks.”

  “All you have to do is look pretty and serve them. Ergo, be yourself,” I say, heading to the driver’s side and sliding in. “Anyway, I need to head to Hayes Valley, so I should hang up unless you need something.”

  “Actually, Declan does. His mom has a cabin in Markleeville, about thirty minutes outside of Tahoe,” Grant says, in the universal I-need-a-favor voice.

  I nod, checking my mirrors. “I know Markleeville. Right near the hot springs.”

  “And she’s going there with her hubs next weekend. After Thanksgiving. Any chance you can swing by and check on the place before she goes? Deck says it’s supposed to snow next week, so he wants to make sure the pipes won’t burst in the cold. The faucet needs turning on a drip and the cabinets need opening. Any chance you can do that?”

  “Piece of cake. Of course we’ll stop. It’s not far from Nisha’s.”

  “Should only take twenty minutes,” Grant adds.

  “Do I need to swing by and grab a key from you?”

  “Nope. Keyless entry. I’ll text you the address and the entry code.”

  “Fabulous. Happy to help. Be sure to take pics of you and your man at the bar. I’m dying to see them.”

  “And be sure to take pics of . . . wait, no. Don’t send me pics of your weekend. I hope your weekend is not for public viewing.”

  “Grant, hun,” I say with a sigh, leveling with my buddy, “I so appreciate the Cupid in you. Truly, I do. But you understand the point of the pact, right?”

  “Yes, so you’re not tempted.”

  “No, I am tempted. Very tempted. That’s the trouble,” I admit, since I kinda need to get that out. It’s been weighing on me.

  “So, you’re into him,” Grant says, matter-of-factly.

  “Yes, no, whatever. It doesn’t matter.”

  “It kind of does, River. Feelings, shockingly, do matter.”

  “We’re not talking about feelings. We’re talking about attraction, but whether I find him attractive is neither here nor there. The pact has a purpose. Like a rubber band on the wrist, and I am snapping it right now,” I say, miming tugging a band. “It’s so I don’t act on temptation. If sex enters the equation, it’ll complicate everything. As sex does,” I say, making my point. “Already, romance and me are like a pair of cows walking a tightrope. It just doesn’t work out, so it’s best to keep friendships separate.”

  “I get everything you’re saying. But I wish you could see the two of you flirt. You’d see what I see.”

  I dismiss his observations quickly, since there’s no room to consider them. “I flirt with everyone. It’s my nature. Like talking. I am a shameless, chatty flirt.”

  “No, you flirt with him more than you do with other people,” he mutters.

  Scoff, scoff, and more scoff. “Have you met me? I am not just a social butterfly. I am a social beast and if I don’t have my friends in my life, I will die. Literally die. So, as you can see, this is a life-and-death matter.”

  “Dramatic much?” he deadpans.

  “Grant,” I say, sighing. He might have a point about the flirting, but that doesn’t change the facts. “I appreciate you wanting to smush us together. But I won’t take the risk.”

  He’s quiet for a beat. “All, right. I hear ya, man. I’ll lay off it. You just have fun like you always do.”

  “Thank you,” I say, then we hang up, and I drive to Hayes Valley.

  He’s not entirely wrong. But there are risks you take and risks you don’t take.

  I already took the biggest risk of all with Hayden seven years ago. At the age of twenty-two, I left my family here, my friends, and my job tending bar.

  I followed a man to Arizona, thinking it was going to last.

  What a fool I was.

  Ansel had nothing on the Hayden heartbreak. That was the real deal. The stab-a-serrated-knife-in-my-chest-and-dig-it-around variety of real.

  But I started over, made my own way in a new place, leaned on friends like Owen and his support to get me through the dark days. And I promised myself I wouldn’t uproot my life for a guy ever again.

  Wouldn’t trade the things I needed—work, family, a home, a circle of friends—for a man.

  I won’t walk that cow-on-a-tightrope path simply because I thought of Owen while in the shower.

  Besides, it was only for a minute.

  Fine. It was longer.

  3

  Owen

  TJ doubts me, even after I tell him nothing will happen in Tahoe.

  As I fill a big bowl of water for Goldilocks, my friend pulls a you’re so full of shit face over our video chat.

  “Nothing, Owen? Nothing? Are you sure?”

  “Positive. There’s no way something will happen at Nisha and Hailey’s Airbnb, and you know it. You’re going. Nisha’s cousin too. And there will be three other couples in attendance,” I say breezily, stealing a glance at the time, since I’m meeting River downstairs in ten minutes. I set the bowl on the kitchen counter.

  TJ points at me, a terribly satisfied grin on his chiseled face. “You said it. Couples. You think of you and River as a couple.”

  Busted.

  But I make light of the slip of the tongue. “You know what I mean. Some of them are couples. Or they’re swinging single studs, like me and you.”

  With his free hand, TJ draws air quotes. “Friends they want to benefit with.”

  Time to dodge and dart some more. “Ah, but if only my life were like one of your romance novels. Hmmm. Which one would I want it to be? I’m going with The Size Principle,” I say as I open the cupboard and grab the dry food Goldilocks deigns to eat. My sister’s kid named the cat, since this orange goddess refuses to eat anything but tuna and duck pate.

  “Not a bad choice. But in your case, maybe try Mister Benefits. That might give you some tips for your . . . situation.”

  I shoot him a steely stare. “You’re not helpful . . . King TJ,” I tease, using the nickname his legions of social media fans have given him.

  “Oh, I’m very helpful. I included lots of helpful pointers in Mister Benefits.”

  “There will be no benefiting,” I insist, as I shake some nuggets into a bowl, enough for two days, since this solitary creature is surely looking forward to forty-eight hours solo. “Especially since we’re all going to be in a house full of other people. Many of them are straight.”

  “Ohhhhhh,” he says, drawn out, as he drops his voice to a stage whisper on the streets of Tahoe. He lives in New York but he’s here on the West Coast for our Friendsgiving event. “Because straight people don’t have sex?”

  “That’s not the point and you know it,” I say to TJ, relenting a bit.

  “I think your woke straight friends know what gay sex is,” he says. “Bet some of the ladies watch man-on-man porn too. Do you know that one-third of women who identify as straight watch gay porn?”

  I press a palm to my cheek, let my mouth fall open. “Wow. I had no idea. Literally, no clue. I’ve never had any of my straight female friends whisper that little confession in my ear like they couldn’t wait to finally tell me two dicks in a scene turns them on.”

  “I’m just saying . . . they probably all know how it works.”

  “They probably do. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to entertain them that way aurally. I’m not going to have sex in a guest room in a house full of people,” I say, frustration bubbling up inside me. But it’s not frustration over TJ. It’s over all this . . . stuff I need to think about.

  Or not think about.

  TJ cracks up, scrubbing a hand over his bearded jaw as he walks past a ski shop. “That’s your rule? No sex when other people are in the house?”

  “Yes. Also, River and I aren’t sharing a room at Nisha’s, as you know,” I add as I open the cooler on the counter and drop in the farm veggies I picked up this morning—carrots and Brussels sprouts.

  “Well, then you’re definitely not having sex at the house. Because sex only occurs when you’re in the same room. As long as there are separate rooms, all dicks stay in pants.”

  This is not the state of mind I need to be in when I slide into the car for a four-and-a-half-hour drive with River. Goldilocks jumps onto the kitchen counter and sniffs the bowl of food. I pet her head for the allowed three seconds before she snarls. Cats. What can you do? “Why are we talking about sex?” I ask as I head to my bedroom to grab another shirt. I might want to wear something that shows more . . . muscles. That’s one of the reasons I go to the gym so much—muscles don’t make themselves.

  “Because you’ve been wanting River for years,” TJ says.

  His bluntness officially pops my bubble of avoidance.

  “Don’t remind me,” I sigh as I toss a blue Henley into my backpack.

  “Someone has to.”

  “No. No one has to. Literally, no one. I’m well aware of how I feel. But that’s okay,” I say, keeping calm. “It’s fine. It’s all for the best that we’re not a thing.”

  With an I-don’t-buy-it expression on his face, TJ stops and parks himself on a bench along the cobbled sidewalk. A faint dusting of snow covers the ground from a storm a few days ago that dumped a few inches on the slopes. He adopts a serious expression. “O, I’m going to level with you for a minute.”

  “Okay,” I say tentatively.

  “Have you ever considered just telling River how you feel?”

  My gut twists. “That I’ve thought about having sex with him a bajillion times?”