“Before that, I dated Doug—”
“And I was with Alexa, maybe six months ago.”
“Alex and Alexa? That’s cute,” she replied.
“I dumped her because I thought the personalized towels would be too awkward when we got married.”
“So true,” Emma agreed. “Although it must have made it handy during sex. That way, when you screamed your own name, she’d think, wrongly, that you were interested in her pleasure—”
She broke off her sarcastic jab when she caught him watching her with an almost-smirk.
“What?” she asked.
His smile grew a little bigger, and he leaned in. “You think about us in bed.”
Her mouth dropped, and he laughed outright. “You do. You think about the two of us together. How we were.”
“I can assure you—”
“Don’t bother denying it, Sinclair,” he said, clinking his glass to hers.
She glared at his back as he moved toward the rest of the group, and he turned around at the last minute.
“Emma.”
“What?” Her voice was testy.
“I think about it, too.”
Well. Well. That . . . called for more wine.
Except her glass was already full, so instead, she sighed and decided that there was a damn good reason they’d put up all that ice between them. Time to reinstall it before he made any more precarious trips down memory lane.
She joined everyone at the kitchen counter, where they’d gathered around the appetizers like vultures.
“Em, any update on your apartment?” Jake asked.
“Nope, but it’s not my problem anymore,” Emma said, picking up an olive. “My renter’s insurance check is in the mail, and I gave notice to my landlord, so even if it is all fixed up, I won’t be moving back in. I was month to month anyway, so it was an easy out.”
“Thank God,” Riley muttered. “Can you imagine the smell? Like rot and mildew and upstairs neighbor’s dirty water and mud—”
“So what’s next?” Grace asked, ignoring Riley’s rant.
Emma shrugged. “Camille’s not back for another two months, so I’ve got awhile to figure it out.”
“You better not leave the Uppers,” Julie said. “I need solidarity up here in classy-town while these hip friends of ours hang out in the Village and Tribeca.”
“Um, sorry, but whose lease in the Village did I take over?” Riley said tapping her lip. “Was that yours, Jules?”
Julie changed the subject. “Hey, Cassidy, Mitchell has something to ask you,” she said in a loud voice, quieting all other conversation.
Mitchell glared at her. “Not here I don’t.”
“Yeah, of course here,” Julie chirped, tilting her head. “He can’t say no to you here.”
“Oh, I absolutely can,” Cassidy said, raising his glass in Mitchell’s direction. “But you might as well get it over with. Is it about the triathlon we talked about, because I’m totally in—”
“Shut it, Cassidy,” Riley said, stuffing a piece of baguette in his mouth. “Let Mitchell do the talking.”