Audrey swirled the ice around in her glass. “A little, yeah. I mean, you have Oliver. Claire has Scott. We all get together plenty, but most of my nights are pretty solo. It’s not like I have any prospects on the horizon, and my romantic history is dismal at best.”

“And people do get married for worse reasons all the time,” Naomi granted.

“Yes!” Audrey said excitedly. “See!”

“Okay, I can’t believe I’m doing this,” Claire said, “but I’m jumping on Naomi’s bandwagon here for a second, and I’m going to ask the intrusive question. Is this a friends-with-benefits situation? Like, how does the living situation work?”

“We’ll live together,” Audrey said. “I don’t know whose house yet. But separate bedrooms.”

“So no on the benefits, then?”

“No. Clarke doesn’t see me that way.”

Naomi’s blue eyes went wide. “Interesting choice of words.”

“Yes,” Claire murmured. “It is an interesting choice of words.”

“How—”

“You said he doesn’t see you that way. You made no mention of how you see him.”

“Of course I don’t—” Audrey broke off, thinking of Clarke’s kisses, first at the engagement dinner, then at the cake shop. They’d thrown her off balance. The kiss at the ski lodge, though, had straight up knocked her off her feet.

If she were really honest with herself, could she say that she wasn’t affected by him as a man? That she hadn’t been thinking about him way too often, wondering what it would feel like if she and Clarke ever kissed for real? Could she deny that sometime in the past couple of weeks he’d gone from being just Clarke to the guy who gave her butterflies every time their hands brushed?

Putting her elbows on the table, Audrey frowned and dropped her face into her hands. “When did he get so hot?”

“He has always been hot,” Naomi said, putting a sympathetic hand on Audrey’s back. “You’ve just buffered yourself really well against it.”

“Well, what changed?” Audrey wailed. “I want my buffer back.”

Claire reached for her left hand, flicking the diamond engagement ring good-naturedly. “This has a way of changing things. It was bound to happen. By pretending to see Clarke in a different way, it forced you to actually see him that way.”

“So how do I undo it?”

“Well, you don’t marry him,” Claire said in exasperation.

“No, no, hold on, I think this is workable,” Naomi said. “I mean, what if you did propose the friends-with-benefits situation? Would it be so crazy? You’re both beautiful. You trust each other. The sex could be epically fun.”

“It could also be epically disastrous,” Audrey said. “Claire, what do you think?”