“I don’t think I said one hundred. Besides, I’ve only been here a month. That’s hardly any time.”

“I’m surprised, I guess. You went there for the lessons, but I thought you were excited to move on after.”

“I’m having fun here,” I insisted. Even as I said it, the irony hit me that all I was doing tonight was sitting on my couch and eating a slice of pizza. Frankie wasn’t working at Marie’s tonight, so I didn’t have to suffer through another dinner there.

I’d tried convincing her to come hang out with me tonight, but she was too stressed about the job in New York. Her second interview was in the morning and she had been preparing for it nonstop.

Her commitment to getting a job far away from here didn’t exactly thrill me, but who was I to say anything about that? I was, what? A fling to her? It was obvious we liked each other, but our lives weren’t even close to heading in the same direction. Even though it sucked, there was no point in dwelling on it. So I chose to do what I normally did—ignore our inevitable ending and live in the moment. I refused to think about her leaving. Not yet, anyway.

There was a long pause on the other end of the line.

“Did you meet someone?” he asked.

“No,” I said too quickly. How the hell could he read my mind like that?

There was a loud squeal from the background and his girlfriend Lila’s voice took over. “Ollie, you met someone?”

Amusement stirred within me hearing the excitement in her tone. She was the complete opposite of my gruff, burly best friend. In fact, she was a hell of a lot more similar to me. I loved them together. They were two of my favorite people.

“Nope.” I popped the p when I said it, which apparently didn’t make it sound very convincing.

“Are you sure? Sticking around isn’t like you,” Harrison pressed.

“Come on, tell us,” Lila begged. “We tell you everything. You were the first person to know when we got together.”

“You sure you didn’t tell Charlie first?” I teased, knowing that Lila would have told her best friend, who was also my sister-in-law, first.

“Well…” She paused. “Harrison is basically your Charlie. So you should tell us.”

That made me laugh.

“Then why do you want to stay if it isn’t that?” Harrison asked instead.

“I don’t feel ready yet,” I insisted.

“There’s a girl. There’s totally a girl,” Lila repeated.

There was a girl. A girl I didn’t quite know what to do about. But if I told Lila, hopeless romantic that she was, she’d insist we were meant to be and that fate had brought us together. She wouldn’t see that logically, Frankie and I weren’t compatible in the slightest.

“Hey.” I decided a change of subject would be best at this point. “Since I’m not leaving yet, you two should come out for a camping trip.”