On The Rocks

“That won’t happen, Casey. Our relationship is… um… casual, I guess. Our feelings aren’t too deep, but we have years of care and friendship in the mix. We won’t hurt each other, I promise. And even if we did, we’d never make you choose between us. You’ll always have us both.”


She looks at me like I have a neon sign hanging above my head with a bright, glowing arrow pointing down at me that says “Idiot”.

“What?” I ask, not understanding the look on her face.

“You’re sleeping with Hunter,” she points out.

Yes, yes I am, and damn, it is good.

“Your point?” I ask with one of my eyebrows cocked.

“My point is—there’s nothing casual about that.”

I snicker and then let out a burst of laughter. “Casey… I’m sorry, girl, but you sleep with men all the time and it’s casual.”

I’m not prepared for Casey’s hand when it flies forward and slaps me soundly on my forehead. “You are an idiot. Of course, it’s casual for me. That’s because I don’t have a heart when it comes to men. They’re good for two things only, and that’s an expensive dinner and an earth-shattering orgasm. But you… Hunter… you are both ruled by your hearts. Once you decided to get intimate, you both went past casual.”

Her words hit me like a freight train, because in their simplest form, they ring utterly true. I have an overwhelming sense of dread that maybe she’s actually foreshadowing a moment in time where either Hunter or I get hurt… maybe both of us.

“No, no, no, no,” she admonishes, and my eyes snap to hers. “Get that look off your face right now.”

“What look?”

“The one that just got scared over what I said. The one that said you were going to break it off with Hunter right now to avoid further hurt down the road.”

Holy shit. She got all of that with a look? That was exactly the path my thoughts had started to take when she called me on them.

I open my mouth to say something but she cuts me off, grabbing onto my hands. “Don’t you dare break it off with him because you’re scared, Gabby. I don’t want you to break his heart because you’re scared.”

I’m stunned by her words and by her absolute turnaround from being pissed at me to not wanting me to break things off with Hunter. Her hands squeeze mine painfully.

“Promise me, Gabby,” she says urgently.

“I promise,” I squeak out, fairly certain she crushed the bones in my fingers. “Does this mean you’re no longer mad at me?”

She pulls me forward and gives me a quick hug, thankfully releasing her death grip on my hands. “You know I can’t stay mad at you long. Never could.”

“And you’re not worried that I’ll… how did you say it… ‘get my claws into Hunter’?”

She snorts. “Hey… we’ve been besties for almost our entire life. I know how to push your buttons.”

“That you do,” I agree. “So, we’re cool?”

“Cool as an Eskimo’s dick when he takes a piss,” she says with a grin.

I wrinkle my nose in distaste. “All right. I’m out of here. I need to get into work.”

“Oh, no you don’t,” she says. “We need to dish about Sasha.”

That’s right. I completely forgot about her and her skanky ways when she kissed Hunter last night. Sitting up beside Casey, I cross my legs again, resting my elbows on my inner thighs.

“Okay,” I tell her conspiratorially. “Hunter told me a little bit about her and assured me they weren’t together. Tell me everything you know.”

Casey sits up straighter, and she gets a serious look on her face. We’re getting ready to do some five-star gossiping. “I only met her once, about three months before they broke up. Remember when we went out to Huntington Beach to watch one of Hunter’s competitions?”