“Really?” I grin up at him. Happiness of my own floods my senses at how easy things are between us despite our talk yesterday. Maybe we can do this after all. “Me, too.”
“Traitors,” Callie mutters. She pulls over the bread so she can butter the slices.
Kellan leans down and whispers in my ear, “Wanna know a secret?”
Must. Not. Focus. On his breath. On my skin. I suck in a deep breath, which is a stupid thing to do, because now I’ve got a lungful of his yummy scent. We’re friends. We decided to be the very best, very closest of friends. Oh gods. He smells so good.
One day at a time, Chloe.
Except, the urge to kiss him right now nearly renders me speechless. So I end up saying, oh-so-eloquently, “Urgh?”
I can practically feel his grin growing against my earlobe. Delicious shivers wrack my spine. “Forget about what’s happening out there with Astrid and Cameron. It’s these two you ought to be paying attention to since they’re incredibly attracted to one another. Did you know that?”
He pulls away and I’m frozen for a moment before bursting out in laughter. He’s got to be kidding. Astrid and Cameron, okay, I can maybe see that. They have been talking a lot lately and used to date. But Will and Callie? No. No way. They’ve done nothing but argue since the moment they met. Callie’s hung up on Jonah and Will’s unfortunately still stuck on Becca. “Are you serious?”
“Yep.” His grin is adorably naughty as he helps himself to another piece of bread.
“Serious, serious?”
Two fingers are held up. “Scouts honor.”
My sides hurt, I’m cracking up so hard.
Both Callie and Will ask what Kellan’s just told me, but we’re too busy laughing to answer. “Screw you two,” Callie finally snaps, and when Will agrees, I reach the point where tears leak out of the corners of my eyes. It feels good to laugh this hard. It feels better to do it with Kellan. Like the promises we made each other last night will be kept. And that we can do this.
Dinner is highly entertaining for once. Every so often, Kellan nudges me with his foot when either Callie or Will slide furtive glances toward one another in between insults and debates. They think they’re being so sly, staring at each other when they think the other isn’t looking. How had I not noticed this before? I try not to giggle at the table since, while they’re watching each other, Kellan and I are watching them. And Astrid and Cameron? Forget it. They’re in their own little world where they’re only noticing each other. They’re not doing anything other than talking, but they’re totally enraptured with each other.
Afterwards, the unbelievable happens—Astrid and Cameron encourage us kids to go get ice cream. I’m not kidding. They said ice cream in unison and passed over money to us twenty-somethings, which forced another round of tear-worthy laughter from me and Kellan and confusion and annoyance on behalf of Will and Callie.
Halfway down the block, as we trail behind the constantly bickering pair, Kellan says to me, “Astrid is really glad to have Cameron back in her life.”
Which makes me so very glad. Nothing inappropriate had happened tonight—I don’t think I saw them touch once, but the joy I saw in both Astrid and Cameron’s eyes when they spoke to one another was so sweet. “They’re cute, don’t you think?”
“Like puppies.” He fails at keeping his face straight. “Actually, they are. Ridiculously so. FYI, Cameron is pretty happy, too. I tried not to pry too much into their feelings, though. I mean, Astrid’s my mom. I may be twenty years old, but I still don’t want to know if my mother is digging on some guy or not, you know?”
I kick at a stray rock on the sidewalk. “Isn’t it weird though? I run all the way to Alaska, and I end up hooking up with Astrid’s old boyfriend of all people.”
Kellan lifts up an eyebrow, his lips curving in a smirk. I burst out in another round of laughter and swat at his arm. Which . . . was a mistake, because touching leads to longing and . . . no. Don’t go there, Chloe. “Gods, no! EW! Not hooking up, you skeevy perv.”
“You’re the one who said it. Not me.”
“You know what I meant.”
He shoves his hands in his pockets and gives me that half smile of his. Will I ever become immune to it? “It is pretty crazy, though.”
What’s crazier yet is that we’re going to go get ice cream, and we’re laughing and joking and things feel so easy between us. And it makes me feel like anything is possible.
“You realize,” he says, “that if these two hook up, we will officially win the prize for most incestuous family ever.”