“I’m fine,” I say, my voice raspy. “I just didn’t feel like playing anymore.”

“Because I’m a horrible kisser?” I can hear the playful note in his voice. “I know for a fact that’s not true. I have sources.” There are some shuffling sounds outside, the tapping of his fingers against the door. “Maybe I’m such a good kisser you were overwhelmed with bloodlust and you had to get out of there. It’s—”

“Bloodlust is a thirst for blood.” I pull my head off the mirror. “I don’t want to kill you.”

I open the door a crack and see him grinning on the other side. He comes in and shuts the door, sitting down next to me on the edge of the Jacuzzi tub. Even though it’s the downstairs bathroom, the one right next to the guest room, it’s still huge, twice the size of my parents’ bathroom. Next to the sink, there’s a framed photograph of Danielle from middle school, standing proudly next to a horse. I turn away from her stare.

We sit in silence on the edge of the tub. Somehow it was easier to talk to him through the door, to remember how to be his friend when I couldn’t see him. Now that he’s next to me, his left leg against my right, the slight smell of him—his sweat, his shampoo, the beer that’s now drying in his hair—is making me dizzy.

“Is this how it’s going to be?” I ask finally. I pick at a thread hanging from my shorts. “I was always so proud of us because we’d managed to stay friends after growing up. But maybe we just have to accept the fact that it doesn’t work.”

“Of course it works,” he says. “It’s been working for years. Just because we kissed in a stupid game, it doesn’t mean we can’t—”

“It wasn’t just that stupid game,” I say. “It was everything else. It was the Plan. It was you seeing me naked, touching my boobs.” Saying it out loud, I burst into unexpected laughter. Andrew starts laughing too, and I feel something ease inside of me.

“They’re nice boobs,” he says, and I swat him. His eyes widen and he loses balance, falling backward into the empty tub. I yelp as he pulls me with him so that I land hard on his stomach, bumping my elbow against the porcelain.

“Ow!” I hold up my elbow where I know a bruise is going to form. But I can feel him shaking with laughter beneath me, and so I’m laughing too. It all feels so natural again, like the old days.

“Can we just stay here the rest of the night?” I ask. “I don’t want to go back out there.”