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So we’ve been playing this careful game with each other, one that’s fun to play because I know I can’t get hurt too badly when all we’re doing is texting sometimes. Once we went on an accidental double date when me and Alex and Park and Jack all ended up at the same diner one night. Except when I went to grab my bill I realized that he’d already paid for my grilled cheese. When I said something he smiled at me, so maybe it wasn’t an accident that we met up after all.

So when my ex-boyfriend asks, U talking to Park? I answer yes, and our text conversation out of nowhere ends abruptly.

And I couldn’t give less of a shit.

40. JACK

I kind of miss Branley.

It’s weird. In a lot of ways Branley is my best friend, and suddenly cutting her out made that really clear to me. Yes, sometimes I’d have to plow through piles of shit to get down to the real Branley, the girl who used to sneak up on me in seventh grade and buckle my knee from behind. And it’s work to bring that out of her, but it’s worth it, always, and I miss that girl even if she’s buried inside of a tanned, waxed, lip-glossed, pouty Barbie doll who wants to fuck before starting a conversation.

Because that’s what would happen if I tried. I know because she keeps sending me nudes, each a little trashier than the one before since I never respond. She worked up to a video, and I watched it because duh, and then I felt kind of terrible. If she just sent me a damn text with words instead of shots of her tits I might actually answer her.

But I can’t. Because she’s a crowbar in a door I’m trying to shut and she’ll wedge her way in and use the leverage to get me in bed and goddammit I don’t know if I could tell her no. I miss Branley, but I miss sex too, and I’m trying to be a good guy and why can’t the two of those things be separate anyway?

Tonight is not going to be easy. Park wants us to hang out at the church, even though it’s ass cold outside. He’s got this big idea that if Alex is there with me then Peekay will be with him by default, but the downside is Adam somehow got in on this too and that means Branley will be there. Park’s fine with that because it’ll just make it even more obvious that this is a couples thing and he’s totally into Peekay. And I can’t exactly explain to him that Branley sends me palm-worthy vids and that makes the whole thing weird for me, because then he’d want to see it and I’m definitely not doing that.

I tried to communicate my non-interest in this group thing by just making throat noises when he talked to me about it, or responding with texts that just said meh or whatever. But somehow Alex and I have become an integral part of getting him and Peekay together, and now there will be three couples there. Me and Alex, Adam and Branley, Peekay and Park.

Read as: The Guy Who Used To Bang Branley and His Occasionally Violent Girlfriend Who Doesn’t Know Branley Still Sends Nudes To Him, Peekay’s Ex-Boyfriend Who She Might Not Be Over and The Girl Who Still Sends Nudes To The Guy Who Used To Bang Her, and The Girl Who Almost Punched Branley In The Face Not That Long Ago and A Pretty Clueless Guy Who Thinks This Is A Good Idea.

It’s a small town. There aren’t a lot of dating options, but this is still its own special kind of mess.

It’s okay because I have my own ideas about how to handle tonight. The six of us all together can only be nonnuclear for so long, so Alex and I are going for a walk after about an hour. We’ll be alone, the way we both like it, and I have a surprise for her, and if I said that to Branley she’d think it was my dick even though it’s, like, five degrees outside and I am human after all.

Tonight I’m going to tell Alex that I love her. It’s been like a pressure inside of me, a combination of words that wants to erupt at the wrong times, sounds that might escape on their own if I’m not concentrating. I swear to God I can feel I love you in my throat like a physical thing, and I need to make sure that when it finally gets out there it happens in the right way.

Because this is special, because Alex is special. And I need to make tonight special, too.

It doesn’t start out great.

Park is big on planning, but execution is another thing, and lighting a fire with nothing but soaked wood is not easy.

“Son of a bitch,” he says, as yet another match flares out before catching.

Alex is watching him with her eyebrows crunched slightly together. I know she’s trying not to embarrass him by taking over, but it’s freaking cold and our basic needs are going to overcome being polite really soon.

Peekay has her hands jammed into her armpits and starts stomping her feet, which makes her boobs jiggle. Park doesn’t even try to act like he’s not staring and Alex smoothly takes the matches from his hand while he’s distracted.

“Christ, it’s cold,” Branley says as she walks in, Adam trailing behind her. She’s wearing the thinnest jacket possible; it hugs her tiny waist and accents the explosion of her boobs. She looks fantastic, but there’s a reason she’s freezing.

“I brought body heat,” Adam says, and Park makes a gagging noise onto Alex’s shoulder. She knocks him onto his ass with her elbow as flames flick to life under her hands.

“Good thing Alex got the fire started then,” Branley says, clearly finding her boyfriend as lame as the rest of us do.

Park drags a couple of bigger rocks over to the fire, and I help him with a pew, our combined muscles still not enough to get the damned thing off the ground, so we’re making a horrible screeeech as oak that hasn’t budged in years scratches its way across stone.

It’s accomplished eventually. We’ve got a fire that gives off heat, and seats and beer for everyone. Peekay claims a spot next to Park on the pew so fast that I know this entire thing didn’t need to happen in the first place, but we’re here now. Branley sits on one of the rocks, her cold hands jammed into her pockets so that the best thing Adam can do is take a rock next to her and put his arm in the crook of her elbow. They look like an awkward prom photo and it’s pretty clear if there’s dancing she’ll be the one taking the lead.

It’s kind of funny and my eyes meet Bran’s and she somehow finds a way to shrug with one eyebrow and I’m trying not to laugh because secret communication across a fire with a girl who sends you nudes is probably not cool when your girlfriend is right next to you.

Except Alex is not right next to me. She decided to sit on the ground for some reason, which leaves me sitting on an old aluminum lawn chair that someone dragged here in the nineties and never reclaimed. We’re still close. She’s by my knee and she does rest her temple against my kneecap for just a second after I sit, which is nice and all, but I like seeing her face and now I don’t get to. I settle for running a strand of her hair through my fingers as I crack open a beer.

The fire is hot and the beer is cold enough to have ice chips floating in it, and I’m settling into a comforting haze when Peekay’s phone goes off. She jumps, and nobody can miss her face collapsing when she reads her text.

“Sorry,” Peekay says, disentangling herself from Park. She’s dialing as she walks away from us, her silhouette lost in the shadows. But her words float in the darkness and the ones her voice cracks on might as well be said to our faces they’re so loud.

What? . . . I thought he was . . . your parents . . . okay? . . . about you? . . . of a bitch . . . the cops? . . . don’t think . . . fucking terrible . . . so sorry . . .