Page 30 of Roundabout

The corner of Coty’s lips quirk before he can stop it.

“Dayum, neighbor girl, we didn’t need to know all that.”

“You’re the one making assumptions about my sex life, Beckett.”

“Pull your heads out of your asses, boys!” Paige shouts, then claps like she’s a teacher getting her class of misfits’ attention. “Angela would never cheat on Coty.”

“I didn’t say she did!” Marc shouts back before waving at our tallest friend. “It was him.”

“I didn’t say she did, per se,” Beckett explains with the kind of innocence a bank robber has when he gets caught holding the duffle bag full of cash. “It’s just… Angie, shit looked bad.”

“You could’ve asked. You should’ve. And I would’ve answered you honestly.”

Below drawn eyebrows, Coty’s chocolate eyes appear even darker as they search mine.

“Would you have?”

Yes.

Probably.

Maybe.

I don’t know. This all happened so fast. I didn’t have time to play out every hypothetical. Aside from the few I told him when we were first getting to know each other, I haven’t lied to Coty, but this was an extreme situation, one I acted on out of pure instinct. Those moms that lift cars off their children, they don’t stop to question if it’ll ruin their back, they just fucking lift. I lifted and now my back’s out.

“I don’t know,” I confess.

“Will you now?”

“Yes.”

“What were you cleaning off your back seat?”

“Lice.”

“Pube lice?” Beckett guesses incorrectly.

“Do you mean crabs?” Marc asks with one of his less-hostile scowls.

“Same thing.”

“It’s like their minds are programmed to always go straight to sex,” Bentlee murmurs, and I nod.

“Especially that one.”

No doubt about it, Beckett Meyers is a thirty-one-year-old teenager.

“Heads up, big guy!” Bentlee yells a second before a small box goes sailing through the air in a high arc over our heads.

Beckett catches it, mumbling, “The fuck?”

“Head lice,” I say with a roll of my eyes, before repeating what Paige just said, “I would never cheat on Coty.”

“Told you,” Paige mocks, earning a groan from her husband.

“Then can someone please explain what the fuck she is doing here?” Marc asks. “And why you two are here?”

“We came to celebrate,” his wife answers simply.