“Um, pass?”
“Or two: help get you two weirdos back together so I can continue to eat my mother’s mediocre cooking with my best friend and my sister.”
Sam’s spirits perked up slightly, but he felt far from hopeful. He replayed her words over and over: I’d rather have no romance than be caught in a bad one …
“How drastic do you want to get?” Liam asked.
Key moments from the previous few months flitted through Sam’s mind.
Riley and the brave hope in her eyes when she’d boldly suggested they sleep together.
Their first kiss in that cramped room with her mother’s Christmas tree jabbing him in the hip.
The look on her face when she won the softball game. The noises she made when he touched her in the middle of the night.
The fact that she bought him a dog he didn’t know he wanted.
And the most painful memory of all: her telling him she loved him even when he was pushing her away.
He wanted it all back. Desperately.
But there was no brokenhearted Riley waiting by the phone, no pleading magazine article begging him to reconsider. It would take more than a casual drop-by apology.
“I’ll do anything,” he said quietly.
Liam nodded. “Good answer. Also, I don’t want any of those fussy little flowers on my lapel at the wedding.”
Sam’s stomach dropped. “Easy there. Nobody said anything about a wedding.”
“Wanna bet on it?”
Sam looked down at Liam’s outstretched hand.
Then he pictured the white dress. Her walking toward him with forever on her lips.
He pictured waking up every morning to Riley’s sassy comebacks and messy dark hair.
“Put that away.” He swiped his friend’s hand out of the way. No bet.
Liam grinned. “Thought so.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Riley wiped a glob of cream cheese off her chin as she looked at the piles of mail covering both her and Grace’s desk, not to mention the smaller piles on Julie and Emma’s chairs.
“Why do I have to select the letter to the editor?” she muttered.
“Because your article got the most responses,” Grace said reasonably as she dug one of her sugar-free birdseed breakfast bars out from under a stack of envelopes. “It’s easy. Just pick two to feature in next month’s issue and do a quick little response.”
“But I don’t wanna respond,” she said around her cinnamon bagel. “It’s nobody’s business but mine.”
“Yours and Bruce Dinkle’s,” Emma muttered.
“Hey,” Riley said, holding up a finger. “Camille put the kibosh on Samuel Condon. I had to get creative.”
“Yeah, I’m sure Sam had noooo idea you were referring to him.”
Riley’s head snapped up. “Do you think he read it?”