Emma stuck her arm between their bodies, pushing her friends apart. “Ha. Freaking. Ha. Let me guess: Julie called you and reported that I’d danced with Cassidy?”
“Of course she didn’t call,” Grace said, going to her laptop to stop the music blaring from its crappy speakers. “It was her wedding night.”
“Yeah, don’t be a dolt, Ems,” Riley said, pulling a box of doughnut holes—they still made those—from her purse and popping one in her mouth. “She texted.”
Emma started to ask what Julie’s text had said, but clamped her mouth shut. The less said, the better. She didn’t like keeping secrets from her friends, but neither was she about to volunteer that she and Cassidy had spent all of Saturday night in bed. And she definitely wasn’t about to tell them that they’d spent half of Sunday day in bed, too.
Watching her friends fall in love had given Emma plenty of I told you so moments. She wasn’t so sure she wanted to be on the receiving end, even though she’d definitely earned it. Karma really was a bitch.
But to her surprise, Grace and Riley didn’t ask. They didn’t even fish. Grace had turned back to her computer, and Riley was eating her third doughnut hole as she used her thumb to scroll through Twitter on her phone.
Emma’s eyes narrowed suspiciously, but when they still didn’t say a word, she turned her chair around to boot up her computer.
“Oh,” Grace said, in a casual, by-the-way tone. “Cassidy stopped by this morning. Asked if you could head up to see him.”
Ah. There it was.
Emma matched Grace’s casual tone. “Did he say what he wanted?” Emma asked, toying with a hair rubber band as she spun her chair around to face them.
“You know, he did,” Riley said around a mouthful of doughnut. “Starts with a p and rhymes with…with…wait, is there no word that rhymes with *? That can’t be right.”
Emma flicked the rubber band at Riley, hitting her between her impressive boobs.
“Ow!” Riley said, rubbing the spot.
“Seriously, did he say what he wanted?”
“Said your article wasn’t turned in with the rest of ours on Friday,” Grace said, her voice curious.
“Probably because the damn thing wasn’t done yet,” Emma muttered.
But she didn’t blame Grace for being puzzled. Emma always turned in her stories on time. They all did. Well, except for Julie, who could get away with pretty much anything simply by being Julie.
Riley put her phone away, set the package of doughnut holes on the desk, and brushed the sugar off her fingers as she looked at Emma.
Emma managed not to squirm. Barely.
“Do you need help with the story? Want to talk it out?” Riley asked.
Emma bit her lip. Truth time. Because if you couldn’t tell your friends, who could you tell?
“I finished my story,” she blurted out. “Early this morning.”
“Well, that’s good,” Grace said. “Are you worried he’s going to chew you out for being a couple days late, because—”
“I didn’t write about Cassidy,” Emma interrupted.
Riley sat down in her chair and leaned forward. “Wait, you decided not to write the story about exes?”
Emma scratched her nose. “No, I did write that, I just didn’t write about…him. I did the twelve days of exes minus—”
“Minus the one who mattered,” Grace said quietly. Her voice was gentle and not at all accusatory, but Emma covered her face with her hands in shame.
“I couldn’t do it!” she wailed. “I couldn’t put it out there for everyone to read.”
“Sweetie, it’s okay,” Riley cooed, coming beside her to pet her head. “Just because you write for Stiletto doesn’t mean you’re obligated to spill your guts for the world to see.”
“You guys did,” Emma said, looking at her friends. “All three of you were brave.”
“We didn’t write about our respective love lives because we were brave, Emma,” Grace said. “We did it because in some way, for us, at that time, it was cathartic. That doesn’t mean that it’s going to work that way for you and Cassidy.”