Leaning over the sink, Bea splashes her face, getting soap from the dispenser and scrubbing her skin. “I’m a little concerned you have a hard-on when I look like a Smurf.”

I catch a few silky, dark hairs that have slipped out of my grip. “A very pretty Smurf.”

“Keep talking to me like that and I’m going to get ideas.”

I wish she would. “What kind of ideas?”

“Ideas in the vein of Friday. Without the painful awkwardness afterward, because it would have been discussed and agreed upon.”

“What does that mean?” I ask.

“It means we’re in a fake relationship, but there’s no rule against real sex. We could sleep together.”

My heart stalls like an engine on its last legs. “Sleep together.”

But not be together. Not move past pretending and actually be a couple. A real couple who doesn’t tick off a list of Instagrammable to-dos or limit themselves to the occasional fool-around on the sofa. A real couple who evolves beyond unlikely circumstance and unexpected friendship into something deeper, a connection I’ve felt strengthening between us, begging to be named.

Silence fills the bathroom as Bea shuts off the water and snatches a handful of paper towels. “Forget I said that,” she mutters inside the towels.

“Bea—”

She’s past me in a blur, but I catch the blush on her cheeks, her expression downcast as she unlocks the door and throws it open.

“Bea, wait.” I stop her in the hallway when I catch her wrist.

“Jamie,” she whispers, spinning her hand so it grips mine, too. “Please. I shouldn’t have said that. Sometimes I speak before I think.”

“Bea, sometimes—” Words stick in my throat, thicken my tongue as I stare at her. It takes longer than I want, but she’s patient. She waits. “Sometimes,” I finally manage, “I don’t speak after I think, but I wish I could. I’m not always strong at spur-of-the-moment dialogue, but I want to talk. Right after this. Please?”

“Okay,” she says quietly. “After this. Now, come on. Let’s go be Instagrammable.”

· TWENTY-FIVE ·

Bea

I had to do it. Blurt what I’ve been thinking since Friday night in the worst possible way. I didn’t mean only sex, but I wasn’t exactly sure what else I meant, either. Because I’m scared to admit that I daydream about being with Jamie, about him really being mine. Not just on Instagram or at house parties, not just during painting dates and in overheated conservatories and at the bowling alley. Twenty-four seven. For real.