"Yeah."
She twisted her lips to the side when I didn't say anything else. "Was it like, bad? Or weird?"
My eyes fell shut so I could remember for the millionth time how his firm, soft lips felt moving over mine. How surprisingly slick his tongue was but not in a bad way. How the scrape of his teeth along my bottom lip was the thing that snapped me violently out of the moment because it made my breasts tingle and my thighs press together desperately.
"Not bad." I glanced at her. "Definitely not weird."
"Was it good?" she asked, eyes sly and cheeks pink.
If her cheeks were pink, then mine must have turned fuchsia. Joy giggled.
"So"—she waved a hand at my hair and face—"why is allll this happening?"
I smiled a bit, amazed how one little curl of my lips and the shift of my muscles on my face could feel so good after such a shitty week. Sometimes you didn't realize how little you'd smiled until it finally happened again.
I set the spatula down and spun the lazy Susan once more to make sure everything looked even. Then I snagged a clean spoon and scooped it through the buttercream. Rolling it over my tongue, I thought about what to say without unloading five years of history onto an unsuspecting Joy.
"He's been, I don't know, wanting this to happen between us. For a long time."
"That's so roman—"
"Do not even say it," I interrupted. "You can think it all day long, but don't say it to my face right now."
She frowned. "Why not? I can think it's romantic without it changing your opinion."
Shit. "Well if you're going to be logical about it," I mumbled. My tongue swiped the last of the frosting off the spoon, and I leaned over to toss it into the sink. "It doesn't feel romantic because it feels like our friendship has been a lie."
Joy hummed, reaching forward for a spoon of her own to dip in the bowl. "That's delicious, by the way."
"Thanks."
She ate the small bite of frosting slowly before speaking again. "A lie sounds malicious, doesn't it? Purposely deceitful. I don't know Levi well. I knew him in high school, everyone did, but he's nice. He was nice to everyone." She shrugged. "If someone asked me what kind of friend he'd be, I'd never think words like deceitful or malicious."
"No, he's neither." I missed him. Talking about him, even for a minute, made me miss him so damn much. "So maybe it's a lie by omission, but he's had this thing in his head for years, and I didn't know. And that thing, about me and us and some future relationship he was hoping for, wasn't something I was aware of. Not even a little. It feels like someone's had me on a stage this whole time, only I didn't realize it. Was he dissecting things I said or did, or I don't know."
Joy picked up the cake off the turntable and walked it to the large fridge for me.
"Thanks," I told her. I could've done it, but trying to set it on my lap without it tipping sounded like a bit too much responsibility for me in my current unkempt state. I couldn't even manage to brush my hair, for crying out loud.
"So if Levi had told you, say … three years ago, that he wanted to date you. What would you have said?"
I looked down at my lap. "I probably would've laughed at him. Not like, in a bitchy way, but it was just so far off my radar at that point still."
She nodded. "And he probably knew that."
"Probably," I hedged.
"What about two years ago? Or one? Is it the same thing?" She held my gaze even though my eyes were narrowing as her point sank in. "Clearly, your friendship is more important than anything else he might have felt or might have wanted for him to wait for you to have dating on your radar. If he'd pushed at the wrong time?"
"I would've run," I whispered. Joy's mouth popped open, and I rolled my eyes. "Figuratively speaking."
She laid her hand on my shoulder. "I think it's okay if you're not ready to see the romance of it. And maybe you never will. But if kissing him was good enough that your face matched the raspberry coulis you made yesterday, then you just might need a few days to get used to the idea."
I nodded, shifting uncomfortably in my chair. "Thank you, Joy. I don't—I don't have many people to talk to. He was kind of it, you know?"
Her face transformed into a beaming smile. "Well, now you have two people."
I laughed under my breath. "I guess I do."
Chapter 19 Levi
I never thought I'd be as thankful for my big brother as I was after the past five days. There was no way for me to know that the day after I left Jocelyn's, ready to punch my fist through a wall, that I'd get a call from the Washington Wolves organization, saying they wanted to fly me out to Seattle for the next round of interviews.
It was the first time in five years that she wasn't the first person I called with the news. The first time in five years I'd flown across the country without her knowing. I spent three days in Seattle, trying not to gape at Pike's Place Market, the mountains stretched behind the sound, and the smells and sights and all the people.
As soon as my mom's car cleared the outskirts of Knoxville, the roads and the views all seemed changed somehow, just from three days of seeing something new.
"So you liked Seattle?" she asked.
"I loved it," I told her honestly. "The sights and the food, the culture, all of it. Hunter made me try seafood I've never even heard of, but it's so fresh. Like they snatched it from the ocean straight to your plate."
"That's wonderful." Her voice, because I knew it so well, sounded a little
