Page 116 of Prickly Pair
Nick
Me too?
Austin
Yeah, fucker, why do you think I’m texting you?
I started laughing. God, they were idiots.
A side text from Matthew came through.
Matthew
Do you think they’ll figure it out soon?
Me
I hope so LOL it’s getting painful
Matthew
Are we placing official bets or is that tacky?
Me
I’ll place a bet. I give it a month
Matthew
I give it two weeks. If they haven’t fucked by then, I’ll owe you $100 and fancy night out
Me
Deal
I shook my head and slipped my phone in my pocket. I headed to the back of the bakery and pulled on my apron. It was hard to think about work when all I could think about was Avery’s announcement, but I had pastries to prepare. Pecan pies weren’t going to bake themselves.
I turned up the music and fell into the familiar rhythm of making the filling and pie crusts. These pies had gotten me a lot of attention over the years. I loved it, especially around the holidays when folks came in from out of town just to get a pie for their family.
Once they were in the oven, I cleaned up, then sat down in the chair in the corner of the kitchen. I rubbed my eyes, my mind still going a thousand miles a second.
I was really falling in love with three people, and it was starting to scare the hell out of me.
The last few weeks, it’d been easy to get swept up in the excitement and energy between us. But the longer we went on, the more real it felt. And all the little doubts I had in the back of my mind started getting louder.
What if I didn’t deserve this? What if I hadn’t earned this sort of love? I knew that was silly to even think that. I’d heard the same words from June and had given her so much hell about it.
I lived in a small Texas town where everyone really stuck to the mottowhy not.Maybe growing up here, I’d embodied that energy. Even so, the more real my relationships became with Austin, Matthew, and Nick—the more I wondered what the future would actually look like for us.
Would we move in together like my friends had with their partners? Would we spend holidays together? Did any of them want kids? I wanted kids, but it wasn’t just a decision between two people anymore, it was four.
Maybe knowing Avery was pregnant was just giving me baby fever.
There was no rush, I had to remind myself. No rush toward marriage or moving in together or putting roots down or having children.
But, the thing was, I knew we had the sex part down. The chemistry, the desire, the lust.
But what about the life part? What about thelovepart?
