The Love Coupon (Stubborn Hearts 2)

“Replaced me already?”

“No. Er. Josh has a cousin and, I mean, I need to think about it.”

Flick laughed. She wore a dress, flowers on it, lots of skirt, a kind of 1950s-sex-kitten-on-a-wholesome-family-picnic style about it. He liked it. The way it nipped her waist and fitted to her chest, that barest hint of cleavage that was intoxicating. It’d looked like one of Gram’s old tablecloths on the hanger. He tried not to stare at her in front of Josh.

“Oh, Tom, don’t get uptight about it.” It’s what he might’ve expected her to say. She turned to Josh. “The last time I saw you was the night the Courier fired Jack Haley and half the industry showed up for farewell drinks and he’d already left the bar. You were the official whiskey taster, I believe.”

Josh groaned. “I was so drunk that night. The Courier firing Haley, felt like the end of journalism. That’s your last memory of me. Gah, that’s bad in a way that’s probably good for my star power.”

Tom coughed a laugh. “Your star power?” He remembered the night. The shock of Haley’s axing. How drunk everyone got because it felt like all of their careers and lives would suffer the loss of quality reporting that truly mattered.

“I haz it,” Josh said.

“You do,” said Flick. “I had never seen an official whiskey taster pole-dance on a bar top without a pole before that night.”

Josh laughed with a self-deprecating shoulder shrug.

“You were there?” Tom said to Flick. He didn’t recall seeing her that night.

She turned her eyes to him. “You used to avoid me when we ended up somewhere together.” She didn’t say it unkindly, and it was the truth. Now he tried to avoid time spent without her. Flick’s leaving was going to hurt in ways he couldn’t account for; replacing her was going to be impossible.

“Where’s Wren?” Josh said, and as if he’d summoned her, the intercom buzzed.

There were tears. Josh’s, though Wren got glassy-eyed.

Tom stood there dumbly watching, trying to understand how love and being in love with someone who wasn’t in love enough with you was supposed to work until Flick poked him. “Come on, we must have kitchen things to do.”

“Yes, ignore us at least until I’m less embarrassed about sobbing my heart out in front of you all,” said Josh.

“He’s not embarrassed. He was born without that capability,” said Wren. She took Josh’s hand, and pulled him toward the balcony. “No one wants to see you ugly-cry.”

The moment they were outside, Tom started up. “I didn’t mean for you to hear that.”

“You auditioning a new roommate? Tom, it’s fine. It has to be done.”

The fact he felt very much not fine about it was more than anxiety about dry duck. What’d possessed him to do a dish he’d never tried out before? Could’ve simply barbequed.

“Tom.” Flick touched his arm. “What can I do to help?”

Stay. “Drinks.”

She went out to the balcony to play hostess and he stood in the kitchen and watched her pour wine, admire Wren’s shoes and chide Josh. Flick was a social creature and he could get angsty about seeing his dad and serving a meal to the best friends he had. It was good to see her laughing, enjoying herself. Once she hit Washington it would be hard work settling in with no friends on deck except new ones she’d have to take the time to make.

The duck, as it turned out, was not dry. The conversation was easy, and he should’ve known it would be. Josh was entertaining, talking about the blunders he’d made trying to navigate the China office, with command of the language but not the nuance, and Wren and Flick traded barbs about reporters they’d both worked with. Tom could sit back and let it all happen. By the time he plated and served the cheesecake, he relaxed for the first time since Josh arrived. There was more than a decade of friendship between them—it felt good to have the old team back together again.

“The plan was for the three of us to take over Rendel,” Josh told Flick. “We used to joke about it when we were mere graduates without the money between us to split a Happy Meal.”

It had been a break-room joke over pizza or pot stickers on nights they’d been forced to work. It was a joke now. “We were idiots,” Tom said.

“We learned.” Josh topped up their glasses. “We’ve begun our ascendency.” He lifted his to prompt a toast.

“Those of us with dicks,” Wren said, but she lifted her glass to accept more wine.

“We need to get Tom into Harry’s office, or we should think about starting our own firm,” Josh said.

Tom lifted his glass. His ascendency. Wren’s. Their own business. It was a toast worth making.

“To Lams,” said Josh.