Page 32 of The Friendsgiving Pact

Avery’s eyes darted from side to side, not making contact with his. Theo wondered if he’d gone too far—her line around Cameron was always a little inexplicable to him, and what seemed fine to her one time would be over the line another—and he wondered if he needed to apologize, even if he wasn’t actually that sorry. In the end, he decided it was probably better to at least feign it than push her harder, given that she seemed a little more frayed around the edges than usual. “I’m sorry. I—I just can’t stand to see him acting like you’ll—never mind.”

She cocked her head to the side. “Like what?”

Theo took a deep breath. “You can’t get mad.”

“No, I can if I want to,” she said with a wry smile. “But I promise to hear you out at least.”

It was an act of trust to tell her this, especially since she wasn’t going to like it. But if there was one person in the world he trusted outside of his own family, it was Avery. And she deserved to hear it from someone, even if things with them were currently messy as hell. “The way he is with you—stringing you along, breaking up, and then thinking you’ll drop everything to get back together. I hate it.”

“Yeah, we’ve established that already,” Avery said. She crossed her arms over her chest, but not defensively or angrily, more like she was protecting herself, shielding herself from him. He hated that, because he never, ever wanted to hurt her. “What about it is driving you so nuts right now?”

“He’s acting like you’re just always going to be there, and meanwhile—he’s searching for something better,” Theo said, blurting it out before he could think too hard about what he was going to say. If he had, he never would have said it.

She looked surprised and a little stricken, so he kept talking, in hopes that her eyes wouldn’t look quite like that anymore. “He doesn’t treat you well. Hell, he calls you ‘Avy’ even though you fucking hate that nickname, and I know you—you’ve definitely told him that already, right?” Theo waited for her reluctant nod before barreling on. “And it’s bullshit, okay? It’s bullshit, and it’s because he thinks—he thinks he’s better than Itasca, and you, and—”

“Don’t you, though?” she asked.

“Think I’m better than you? Of course not,” he said vehemently. “How could you—”

“You think you’re better than Itasca, though,” she countered.

Theo sighed. “Not in the same way. I don’t like it here, and I don’t ever want to, like, live here permanently, but that doesn’t mean I think I’m too good for it or something. Cameron does.”

“He thinks he’s too good for Itasca, and for me,” Avery said, in a tone that said she was summarizing him, not arguing. That was good at least. “You think that’s it?”

“Among other things, yeah. And it pisses me off, because you—you’re so much better than him, and he’s always just treating you like, I dunno, some sort of consolation prize or something, and it just—”

He couldn’t finish his sentence because all of a sudden Avery was kissing him. It caught him off guard, because it didn’t feel like it was for show. It felt more like last night in the parking lot—like something that was for them, not for anyone else. He pulled away before he got too dizzy, but couldn’t bring himself to scan to see if anyone was watching. His heart couldn’t take that. “What was that for?”

Avery grabbed his hand and looked over her shoulder. He couldn’t tell who she was looking at—her parents, standing over near the ostentatious tree, or Cameron, standing near the bar—but then he got distracted by the way she was chewing on her lower lip, and Cameron’s obnoxious face faded from his mind entirely. He wanted to loosen her lip with his thumb, but that felt too private, too intimate for a room with dozens of middle-aged rich people around them. “Follow me,” she hissed, and towed him out of the main room. She walked purposefully down the hall, throwing the occasional glance over her shoulder. She never dropped his hand, pulling him along as she turned left and then right, and then left again down a dimly lit corridor.

“We’re not supposed to be here,” she whispered, trying a door. Like the walls around them, it was dark, heavily polished wood, and between that, the dark carpet, and the weak light from the sconces halfway down the hallway, the atmosphere was heavy and almost foreboding.

“You think?” he whispered back. “I assumed the lack of lights and total absence of people meant this was actually a key part of the party.”

The door swung inward, and she pulled him in after her. “Shut up,” she muttered, but she was grinning as she closed the door and shoved him up against it. Then she was kissing him again, and he could taste the smile on her lips. For a moment he let himself get lost in her, once again learning the shape of her mouth, the exact pressure of her tongue on his. But then he wrapped his fingers around her shoulders and moved her a step back, giving himself enough space to think. “But for real, what’s this about?”

“I don’t know, it was just the way you—no one’s ever talked about me like that before.”

“Like how?”

She shrugged. “It’s hard to explain, so can’t we just kiss instead?”

Part of him wanted to push, but the other, larger, dumber part of him wanted to kiss her some more, so he tugged her in by her waist until she was pressed flush against him. “Kissing it is,” he agreed, and brought his mouth down on hers.

The heat between them started building, gradually at first and then taking on a life of its own until Theo knew there was no way to put it out. They simply had to let it burn. He dragged his mouth down the side of her neck, kissing as he went, and listened to the soft, needy noises she made into his ear. He hitched her leg up around his thigh, and she moaned, dropping her head to his shoulder. He wanted more than anything to be able to take his time, to strip her down piece by piece until she was bare, but he knew they were pushing their luck. He didn’t even know what type of room they were in, and like hell was he going to stop kissing her to figure it out. But wherever they were, they were on borrowed time before someone either went looking for them or figured out they were somewhere they weren’t supposed to be.

Theo kissed her again, nipping at her lower lip with his teeth, and used his hand on her lower back to push her core against him. Avery gasped as he pushed his knee between her legs and he started urging her on. He was harder than he could ever remember being—at a fucking country club—as his best friend got herself off on his thigh. She rocked against him, still making those little noises he couldn’t get enough of, and all of a sudden she shivered and went still.

Avery arched her neck so she could kiss him, and he felt the light misting of sweat on the back of her neck when he reached up to hold her there. “We should—get back,” he said, breathing almost as hard as her.

But Avery cocked her head to the side. “You sure?” she said, reaching down and palming him through his pants.

His vision went white at her touch, but he did his best to stay present. “Won’t they be looking for us?” he managed, nearly losing his train of thought completely when she rubbed her hand along his length.

“Do you care?” she asked. Her face was close enough that even in the darkness, he could see the blue of her irises shining with amusement.

“Fuck no,” he breathed. “But I thought you would.”