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"What was?" I ask

I can see his smile from here when he answers "You"

Chapter SIX

Luke

I’M ELBOWS-DEEP IN a legal brief I can barely understand when my phone buzzes on the table at my elbow

Beeeeeeeeeers, the text froet to be six already? Where?

New place, on Island and 10th

I groan--I fucking hate going don during the week

Anticipating this, Dylan adds, Most of the tea hi in shock at my phone My forirlfriend, Jess, since high school In the best of ine how tonight will go down

Still, weeknight or not, I can’t say no Cody, Dylan, Andrew, Daniel, and I have been tight since freshman year when the seniors on the team locked the five of us on the pool deck for an entire Dece h no o on to o national chaht, I reply, putting downup my desk

THE GUYS HAVE taken over two tables as close to the dance floor as one can get and reasonably remain seated Not five feet frohty in his seat is a group of girls dancing suggestively, pretending they don’t notice the six-foot-eight water polo player turned fitness instructor staring at the out a chair and sitting down I’ve never been to this club--it’s new but the décor wants to fool you into thinking it’s been here since the seventies Looking to Cody, I ask, "You good?"

He puts his elass down next to another one "No But don’t feel sorry forthis to scare ht"

I feeltruly honest with hi, and Jess is actually done, I wouldn’t blaer He’s been with her for nearly six years

Six yearsit’s such a huge portion of our lives, and still, it’s shorter than the decade I spent feeling like I belonged to Mia We grew up together in nearly every way possible From eleven to nineteen she was mine

The first time I ith someone else it felt like a distraction Teeks after we’d broken up, and I didn’t want to think toodeep to understand why I was constantly nauseous and wanted to sleep half the tiot drunk, and kissed Ali Stirling She took off her shirt, then ht, I fucked her three times in her aunt’s condo in Pacific Beach Turns out, sex was still fun

Until the nextwhen I visited Mia at her dorether any, because that’s e did All of the air left the rooht" came out of my mouth

Mia had stuttered out a quiet "Wow," and we both felt it end, like the crack of a gunshot We were sitting on her bed and had gone coht down the reed to break up, but I knew neither of us had felt it yet Until that moment we didn’t really even knohat broken up looked like No one had ever touched me besides Mia, and suddenly that wasn’t true anyuy who had one love I wasn’t the Luke half of the one-word phrase, Luke-and-Mia I was the guy with an ex-girlfriend I was the guy who had sex with other people now I moved on fro back into the present, asking, "Remind me e came all the way don for after-work drinks when none of us work don?"

"I do," Cody says

Silence rings out at the table before Andrew finally can’t take it anymore "Cody, you work part-time at Starbucks"