I couldn’t help it—a wide-ass grin broke out on my face. Even though I’d been dying to tell him everything for nearly a week, I drew it out for a few more seconds by taking another long swallow of beer. I hesitated until I was sure he was about to punch me.

“This is all confidential,” I said. “I know you know that, but I mean, the deal hinges on that. Nobody can know this or the investment is off.”

“Who?” Kemp demanded, but his eyes lit up in spite of him wanting to kick my ass for holding out on him. “Tell me who.”

“Sometimes you miss what’s right under your nose,” I said. “Chloe offered the funds.”

He narrowed his eyes, looked more than a little startled, and took a moment, like he was doing long division in his head or something. “Chloe Abrams?”

“How many other Chloes do you know?”

“You’re gonna need to fill in some blanks. How does Chloe have a quarter million dollars and why would she give it to us?”

Kemp had never really understood my friendship with Chloe. Probably nobody understood my friendship with Chloe. It had likely always seemed illogical and unlikely to others, but the foundation of our friendship was planted when we were little kids. In fact, I’d been friends with Chloe longer than I’d been friends with Kemp.

My family had moved to Nashville when I was in fourth grade, and I’d lost touch with both of them for a while. I’d never taken to being a big-city boy, never really adjusted. In middle school, I’d gotten in enough trouble that my parents got fed up quickly, and when I’d begged them to let me move back to Dragonfly Lake and live with my grandmother during high school, they’d all agreed.

Maybe Chloe and I wouldn’t have reconnected then, as we were so different. She was still an outsider, somewhat by choice by that time, and I, well, I could get along with just about anybody. It was fate that, on my first day back, Chloe and I had a class together and sat next to each other. The puns had started as if we hadn’t lost five years.

Kemp and I had been friends throughout high school, had been on some of the same sports teams, hung around the same crowd, but we hadn’t become best friends until after we graduated. That was after Chloe had left town.

The only times I’d seen Chloe since had been when I went to Nashville. Kemp was never with me, so the two of them hadn’t run into each other for years. In high school, though I’d been friends with both of them, I’d kept them separate.