Page 76 of Never Not Friends

Maybe getting over someone doesn’t happen all at once.

Maybe it happens in tiny pieces.

One mini golf game.

One smile.

One surprisingly good date at a time.

VINNY

No man knows how much crap a woman has until he invites her to move into his home. That’s when everything gets multiplied and magnified.

Take shoes, for example. Juliet has eight boxes labeled shoes. How have I never noticed that she has enough pairs to wear one every single day of the month?

“Where exactly are all of these shoes supposed to go?” I ask Juliet as she breezes by, holding a box labeled lotions. There’s an entire box devoted to just lotion? A person doesn’t need to smell that good.

“The bedroom closet,” she says without even stopping.

My eyes follow her back as she continues down the hall and into the bathroom. “There isn’t enough room in the bedroom closet.”

“There is now that I reorganized and decluttered it.”

I frown. “You reorganized my closet?”

Her head pops out just long enough to say, “Our closet.”

Right.

My shoulders drop.

Our closet.

In seventeen days, what’s mine is hers, legally and officially.

But she wanted to get a head start on moving some things into my townhome because her dad is in town this week, taking care of her mom, and Juliet decided it would be easier to get most of her stuff over here before the final wedding chaos kicks in. Plus, the lease is up next week on her condo, so instead of moving things twice, it’s easiest to just bring them here.

All valid points.

Which is why I’m spending my Wednesday evening carrying Juliet’s entire life’s worth of stuff into my square footage.

Our.

I meant our square footage.

I don’t mind.

I’m just not sure one woman needs eight boxes of shoes.

The front door swings open, and it’s Emma back through the doorway with another box. I read the side: yearbooks and memorabilia, which explains why Emma appears to be struggling with it.

I run over and lift the box from her arms, holding her gaze. “This one looks heavy.”

“A little.”

Our hands brush during the transfer. Hers immediately pull back. Mine tighten around the cardboard. She doesn’t meet my eyes; she just spins around and walks back outside to collect another box.

It’s been this way since her birthday. Before the wedding-confession video, Emma was normal around me. The same as she’s always been. But now, things are different. She’s not rude. Emma’s incapable of being rude.