“Ouch! You don’t have to stab me over it.” He pivots a bit, pulling his leg free from my death claw. “What are you scared of? It didn’t sound like you two ended on horrible terms.”

“We didn’t, but that doesn’t mean that I want to see him right now.”

“Okay, and when would you want to see him?”

“I don’t know, but ideally I’d be holding a Pulitzer Prize certificate and wearing an evening gown.”

A tired kind of smile appears on Ryan’s face and after a moment of hesitation, his hand moves. I think he’s reaching for his drink, but he’s not. His hand slides down and pushes back the hair that’s falling across my forehead. I don’t move as his fingers graze my neck and linger near my ear.

“You know, Sullivan, no girl ever made me laugh as much as you do. That always bothered me.”

His words shock me out of my somewhat panicked state. “Is that laughing at me or with me?”

“With you.”

“Thanks. My agent always says I have a way with dialogue.”

Now Ryan does move his hand to reach for his drink. “Are you done hiding? Are you going to go say hello?”

I peek around his shoulder to watch Mark and some woman sit down at a table across the room. They didn’t even take a board game. The sacrilegious pair. “I can’t go over. He’s with someone.”

“So what?” Ryan asks easily. “You’re with someone. Tell him I’m your boyfriend.”

I give him a flat glare. “I don’t need you to be my pity date.”

“I wouldn’t be your pity date. We’d just be pretending. What’s the harm in making him a little jealous?”

“I don’t want to make Mark jealous and he’s not like that anyways.”

It’s true. In all our years together, Mark was never jealous where I was concerned. But then, maybe I was suspicious enough for the both of us. Mark said it wasn’t in his nature to act that way, but part of me always assumed that he just didn’t care about me enough to get territorial.

I start to sit up and try to adjust to the very real possibility that I’m moments away from facing Mark and his new girlfriend. “Okay. I’ll just go over there very briefly and say hi.”

“If you don’t want to say that I’m your boyfriend, you should at least tell him we’re on a date. I dare you.”

“I’m not going to lie. I’m no good at it and there’s no point.”

“I guess times really have changed. Quiet as you were, the Kara Sullivan I remember never backed down from a dare.” Ryan finishes off his beer and places it softly onto the table, so as not to disrupt our game.