“Bea!” Juliet chides. Jean-Claude’s eyes narrow to slits as Juliet turns away from him and gives Beatrice a What the hell are you doing? look.

“We’ll just be going.” I nudge Bea out the door.

She shuts it behind us and rounds on me. “How are you friends with him?”

“It’s complicated,” I mutter. “He’s more forced pseudo-family than friend.”

“Yeah, well, I’d disown him.”

My mouth quirks, almost smiling. “They’re not watching, so I can say my goodbye here,” I tell her, warming to the idea. Then I don’t have to kiss Bea, while trying—and failing—not to enjoy it. “You don’t actually have to see me out.”

“Oh yes, I do,” she says, strolling past me toward the stairs down to the first floor. “Twenty bucks says Jules is in her room, peeking through the curtains like a nosy poke as we speak. Well, assuming Jean-Claude lets her get up off the couch. He’s so intense with her. I’m not overreacting, am I?”

I shrug. “He’s always been like that. When he’s in love, he’s obsessed.”

“It’s weird,” Bea says. “You two, even as pseudo-family or whatever, is weird.”

“We’ve just always been together. Our mothers are like sisters, so it’s been family vacations, holidays, then we ended up at the same university. He just sort of . . . stuck.”

Bea makes a noncommittal noise.

“So.” I clear my throat. “Assuming Juliet’s escaped his clutches to peek from her balcony, what’s this . . . romantic farewell we’re thinking?”

“Definitely a tongue tangling for the books.”

I miss a step and grab the railing just in time.

“Okay?” she asks.

“Yes. Fine.”

I’m not fine. Not at all. My mind is snagged on “tongue tangling.”

“I swear these stairs are a death trap,” Bea says. “I trip on them at least once a day. I’m permabruised. Then again, I’m a walking accident.”

“You shouldn’t say that about yourself.”

She arches an eyebrow, glancing over her shoulder as she opens the foyer door and bursts out into the night. “It’s true, though.”

Taking me by the hand, she glances casually toward her apartment’s windows and brings us to the edge of the curb. “Right here,” she says.

“She’s watching?”

Bea nods, searching my face. “Both of them are. You have a queasy look. Is kissing me that terrible?”

“No, Bea. Not in the least . . .” Stepping closer, I strain for the words to tell her, but they stick in my throat, a traffic jam that builds to a brutal pileup.

What’s “terrible,” I almost tell her, is how much I want to kiss you. The ways I want to kiss you. The ungentlemanly things I want to do to your body when you stand there, blushing as you peer down at the ground, swaying your skirt.

Bea’s thumb softly sweeps over my palm.