Nothing Feels Better (Better Love 3)

“Thank you! See, B? You’re just a grump.”

“You knew he’d do it eventually, Sundance. Just embrace it,” Riggs says to Bailey as he kicks off his shoes.

“Briggs is terrible,” she grumbles, and Riggs laughs.

“I kind of like it,” he tells her, repeating Ivy’s statement, and I bark out a HA!

“Ugh, go away,” she says, without looking up from the yarn, and flips me off. I follow Riggs into the kitchen.

“So, how’d babysitting go, Mary Poppins?” Riggs asks after he hands me a fancy beer, then throws the rest of the twelve pack he brought into the fridge. I don’t miss the smirk Kelley gives him from where he’s standing at the stove. I roll my eyes at both of them.

“Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, dickheads.” I twist open the bottle and take a drink. “The kids are cool.”

“Ah, the kids are cool, huh?” Kelley jests.

“I suppose it has nothing to do with The Hot Mom, then?” Riggs adds, calling me out.

I don’t answer. Just take a pull from my beer, then shrug. “I need the peds experience.”

Kelley and Riggs both laugh loudly, and I bristle.

“You’re such a fucking terrible liar, Jesse,” Kell says.

“I do need peds experience!” I protest, and he shakes his head. I can hear him snickering over the sizzle of burgers in the frying pan, and I try like hell to hide my smile.

“Zay told me you were stalking her house last Saturday morning from our couch, SD. You need peds experience so bad that you’re turning in to a window creeper?” Riggs taunts, grinning over his beer bottle like a douche.

“Fuck off, God of Thunder,” I grumble, his words bothering me in a way he couldn’t understand. “It’s not like I’m ‘bout to boil some bunnies. Zay’s a snitch.”

“You tryin’ to be a stepdaddy, Hernandez?”

“Call me Odin and I’ll be your daddy, Thor,” I joke and then have to dart away when he tries to punch my shoulder. Riggs and I are about the same height, but he’s built like a brick shit house, so I’m sure catching a fist would hurt like hell. “Watch those meat cleavers, Fabio. I’m not tryna have my ass kicked in the name of funzies.”

Riggs smirks just as Kelley hands me the plate full of burger patties, and I set them on our large kitchen island. Then I grab the bag of burger buns as Riggs pulls condiments from the fridge.

“Food,” Kelley calls into the living room, and seconds later, Ivy and Bailey are joining us.

We fix plates, grab drinks, then make our way back into the living room. The yarn stash has been tackled almost entirely and is piled by color along the wall. We sprawl out on the furniture, and Kelley tosses me the TV remote.

“No Marvel movies,” Riggs commands, and I bite back a retort about self-loathing. The way he narrows his eyes at me says he could have guessed what I was gonna say, anyway.

“And no cooking shows,” Bailey adds. “They still give me anxiety.”

I snort a laugh, and she rolls her eyes. B and Riggs participated in a baking competition over winter break. It’s kinda cool, actually, but it stressed her the fuck out. Now she says she can’t watch the competitions without feeling anxious for the participants. She likes to pretend she’s not, but this right here proves that B is a big empath softie. She’ll murder me if I say it out loud, though. Empath softie with a violent streak.

“We could watch that one—”

“NO!” Everyone shouts, cutting Ivy off, and she frowns.

“You don’t even know what I was going to say.”

We all answer at once.

“Horror.” “Something stabby.” “Serial killers.” “Creepy shit.”

She giggles. “Okay, so you did know what I was gonna say.”

“I got it,” I say, pulling up one of the programs I use to rent and stream movies. I scroll down to a movie I’d recently rented, but haven’t had a chance to watch, and push play.

“Houseboat?” Kelley reads the screen.

I nod. “Cary Grant and Sophia Loren.” I put the remote on the coffee table, then pick up my burger. “You’re gonna love it,” I promise, then take a bite of my burger and settle in for the movie.

Riggs,Bailey, and Ivy all dip out after the movie, leaving the condo empty except for me and Kelley. It’s rare since he and V started dating. I’m not complaining. I love having V around. I prefer the nights when she stays here to the nights when Kelley stays at her place.

I’m not bad at being alone, but why would I choose it when my friends are so fucking great? And anyway, having company means having siphons for the energy that’s always bubbling under the surface. People to talk to. Things to joke about. Distractions from my wayward thoughts.

We’ve already cleaned up from dinner, and the girls put away the rest of my yarn stash, so there’s no distractions when I finally breech the topic I’ve been thinking about since midway through the movie. Sophia Loren, man. Jocelyn Calligaris owns my damn brain right now.

It’s been a week since I’ve seen her, yet her image is still in the forefront of my mind.

“That first date you took V on,” I begin, then pause. He glances at me and arches a brow.

“Yeah? What about it?”

“It was pretty smooth, yeah?”

“Yeah,” he says slowly, voice mixed with satisfaction and bemusement. “I guess it was.”

“How’d you plan that?” I try to be subtle, but I’ve always sucked at it. King of Direct (and often inappropriate) Statements, right here. Kelley’s smile grows, and he shakes his head.

“C’mon, J. I had years to plan that date. You know that.”

I laugh with him. “Yeah, okay,” I relent. He’s right. He’d been pining for V for literal years before finally making his move. I’ve only been crushing for a few weeks. “But, like, say I wanted to plan something...” I let the statement trail off and Kelley’s jaw drops.

“You want to take someone on a date? You?”