4. Owen

4

OWEN

I exit my building a few minutes later, right as River wedges his Honda into a tiny spot. He maneuvers the sleek cherry-red car to the curb with the same kind of aplomb he demonstrates when making drinks.

Mmm. There is something sexy as fuck about a man who can parallel park on either side of the street with the same ease.

Just like there’s something sexy about a man who’ll give or take in bed.

Lingering on both images for a few seconds too long, I let out a happy sigh.

My eyes pop when I see the front seat of his car is empty. The black and white dog sits in the back.

River pushes open the passenger door from the inside. “I bargained with Delilah. I promised her steak if she’d let you ride shotgun,” he says, scratching her chin. She lifts it higher, leaning into the stroke, her eyes locked on River’s, never looking away.

I get you, girl . Oh yes, I do.

“Awww. I’m touched you negotiated on my behalf,” I say, getting into the car, and tossing my jacket to the back seat.

River lets go of the dog, cups the side of his mouth to whisper, “Don’t tell her, but you’re more interesting than she is.”

“Blasphemy, and I like it,” I say, setting my backpack and cooler on the floor near the dog. She dips her nose, sniffing, but doesn’t try to open the cooler. Well-trained—that’s Delilah. I stretch to stroke her soft head. “She looks like a little furry person sitting upright.”

River beams. “Be still, my beating heart. Complimenting my dog. You are officially my favorite person.”

And you’re mine.

I keep that thought to myself as I turn around, tug on the seatbelt and click it in.

When I raise my face, River’s fiddling with his Waze app. As he taps in his sister’s address in Petaluma, I steal a few seconds to stare shamelessly. His sun-streaked hair falls onto his face, and I want to push those strands off his forehead and say, Can’t you see better like that ? He works the corner of his bottom lip with his teeth as he types, like concentrating on Echo’s location is mission-critical. Then, he lifts his hand and sweeps his hair off his forehead. The angle affords me an up-close view of his inked skin, since he’s pushed up the sleeve of his shirt, showing off the tattoos that cover his left arm. Black bands, sunbursts, a tree, a sparrow, and a rainbow band too. I want to trace them all with my fingertips, then my tongue, then my lips.

My chest twists.

TJ is right.

I’ve got to say something.

It’s going to eat me alive.

I’m surprised it hasn’t yet.

“All set,” River says, then drops his hand to the wheel. For a few seconds, his gaze travels down my body, then back up, slowing at my lips, then my eyes. He blinks, swallows, then flashes a bigger grin. “Oh, by the way, Grant asked if we’d stop at Declan’s mom’s cabin to do a few quick things to get it ready for their visit next weekend. Should take fifteen minutes tops.”

“Sounds good.”

“Excellent. Ready, then?”

Nope. Not one bit. But maybe somewhere on the way to or from Tahoe I’ll find the guts to tell you I want to be more than friends with you . So badly.

“Let’s get this show on the road. I made a playlist,” I say with as much vim and vigor as I can inject into my tone.

“I thought we could listen to a podcast,” he counters as he pulls into Friday afternoon traffic.

I mime retching.

“You don’t like podcasts? Like, in general?”

“That’s like saying you don’t like cake in general ? When the answer is I love chocolate cake, but I can’t stand red velvet. In fact, I’d go so far as to call it a cake abomination.”

As he flicks the turn signal, he shakes his head, tsking me. “That’s because you’re a cream cheese hater.”

“Cream cheese is up there with raisins, Monday mornings, and yogurt that expired a day ago.”

“I love cream cheese. Cream cheese with chives, cream cheese with strawberries, garlic cream cheese.” River lets his tongue loll from his mouth for a few seconds.

I cringe, not at his tongue, but at the flavor mention. “Garlic is unacceptable.”

“As what? As a garnish? A flavor? A spice?”

“As anything. It’s unacceptable as literally anything,” I say as he cruises up Fillmore on the way to the bridge.

“So you won’t kiss someone with garlic breath?”

“Not if I can help it.”

River mimes checking off an item on a list. “Note to self: no garlic.”

My heart speeds up. My mind jumps too many steps ahead. To kissing, to fresh breath, to how his lips might taste. So I do the thing I do well. Needle him. “Anyway, the retching was for your podcasts.”

He arches a questioning brow. “My podcasts? What’s wrong with my podcasts? Are they red velvet podcasts to you?”

“Yes, they are. Red velvet and raisins.”

River’s jaw drops. “I’m just learning this now? You equate my podcast taste to... raisins ? The mutant form of grapes?”

I nod several times. “Because you listen to all those murder shows.”

“You don’t like murder podcasts?” he asks, as if I said I don’t like chocolate or champagne, when I love both.

Clearly.

“I don’t like murder,” I correct as we reach the Golden Gate Bridge.

River cracks up. “No one likes murder, Owen.” He tilts his head, takes a beat, then raises a finger. “Wait. Hold on. Do murderers?” He curls both hands tighter around the wheel as we cruise across the bridge, concentration etched in his brow perhaps from the driving, or perhaps from the questions he’s asking himself. “They must, right? At least, serial killers do. They probably dig murder. They probably relish murder. I mean, the mind of a serial killer is a fascinating place. But even so, do they actually love murder? Can they love anything? Even something evil? Or is it about their own twisted makeup? Hmmm. So much to think about.”

Exasperated, I toss up my hands. “And this is why I hate your podcasts. They make you think about murder, and talk about murder, and wonder about murder. I don’t want to think about murder. I also don’t want to think about politics, or the national debt, or global warming, or news, for that matter. So I don’t listen to those podcasts either.”

“I like news. And politics.” He taps his temple. “But I like you too. And I get you now, cutie. You want podcasts about cats or cake or maybe even something quirky and fascinating. Well, don’t you worry. I’ll find something perfect for you. Also, I said that as P-U-R-R-F-E-C-T, since you love cats.”

“You’re ridiculous,” I say, rolling my eyes, but laughing too much as he hands me his phone.

I take it.

“Just look in Pocketcast. I downloaded some stuff for you.”

I turn to River, study his face. “You did?”

“This surprises you?”

It sure does. “A little,” I say, but it excites me too. The idea that he picked something for me in advance, that he researched something I might like. Was he in his apartment looking up podcasts late last night? Did he check them out on his hike?

I’ll take any of the above options.

Like I have a spring in my step, I open the app, scrolling through his endless list of true crime and unsolved murder podcasts.

“There. At the bottom. Found three just for you,” River says, sounding pleased, but a touch nervous too. Almost like he’s worried if I’ll like them. Or that he wants me to like them.

It’s possible I’m reading way too much into this moment.

But I also don’t care. I want to read the world into it, and so does my hummingbird-fast-beating heart as I slide my thumb to the bottom of the app.

A stupid grin spreads across my face as I find the trio. I try, truly I do, to rein in the grin. But it’s futile. “ How to Tell if Your Cat is a Certified Asshole . This is a podcast?”

“That’s an important life lesson. I thought we could get to the bottom of Goldilocks’s issues.”

“Newsflash—she’s a cat. Ergo, she’s an asshole.”

We cruise past the seaside town of Sausalito, mid-November sunlight reflecting off the crisp blue of Richardson Bay. “Maybe she’s just picky. Certifiably picky, to be precise,” River says.

I click to the next one. “ Everything You Wanted to Know About Cake But Were Afraid to Ask ,” I read, then scratch my chin. “I dunno. Is there that much I want to know about the subject?”

“Admit it. You have tons of questions swirling in your pretty head about cake. Can I have it for breakfast tomorrow ? Does it taste better with milk or coffee? Will cake marry me someday ?”

I roll my eyes. “Please. Cake and I have been promised to each other for years. Obviously, I’m marrying cake, but... shhhh,” I say, whispering. “I’ll have a thing on the side with coffee.”

“Don’t worry—I’ll keep your secret. Also, I’m not surprised you have a secret wedding plan with cake. Cake is like your soul mate,” River says.

I pat my flat stomach. “Cake is also why I go to the gym.”

He hums, a sexy little sound. “Is that so? Then I’ll feed you some cake.”

“So I can go to the gym?”

“Well, the gym is very, very good to you,” he says, letting go of the wheel to wave his right hand at me. It’s a gym-approving wave, I think.

“Thanks,” I say, trying not to let on how much I enjoy that he’s noticed the gym effect as a result of the cake obsession. “I’ll have to ponder what unanswered cake questions I might have. So let me keep this in my back pocket.” I flip to the next one, then gasp. “Holy fuck! Are you serious? When did this podcast start?”

“Just last week,” River says, his tone pleased. “I heard about it in The New York Times recommendations. See? My news consumption pays off for you.”

“I love Discovery Prism . It’s one of my favorite shows on Webflix.”

“I know,” he says, smiling big too.

“I had no idea it had a podcast.”

He squeezes my shoulder, sending a zip of pleasure down my left arm before he lets go. “That’s what I’m here for. To find things to make your life fabulous,” he says, then makes a rolling gesture with his hand. “Want to pick an episode? There are only seven, since it just launched, but we can get started.”

I hunt through the list, reading the titles. Discovery Prism highlights quirky, weird, and just plain unusual spots all around the globe—a burning hole in the earth in Turkmenistan, a museum in Poland that’s home to centuries-old timepieces, an underwater sculpture park in Indonesia. I pick that one to start, settling in as the host takes us on a tour of a man-made coral park.

When we’re done, River takes a deep breath, then asks, “Did you like it?”

“I did. Very much so,” I say.

“Want another?” he asks, sounding hopeful.

“Sure.”

He hits play on another ten-minute episode, interrupting to weigh in, “I want to go to the burning hole in Turkmenistan.” Then adding, “Please say we can go next year, please, please, please.”

When it ends, I shoot him an incredulous look. “You’d really want to go to Turkmenistan to check out a burning hole?”

“Yes. Definitely. Sign me up. I want to see the underwater sculpture park too. And anything and everything,” he says, words piling up, his energy skyrocketing. It’s infectious, the way he latches onto ideas, how he digs into them, rolls around in them. His curiosity is one of the many things I find wildly attractive about him.

We slide into a discussion on off-the-beaten-path trips we’d want to take around the globe—I’d love to see the street art in Santa Fe, Maritime lore in Nova Scotia, and River wants to experience wilderness immersion in Maine.

As we pull off the highway in Petaluma, I grab my phone and click on my text app.

“I’ll let Nisha know we’re about four hours away now. She’s like a mom sometimes. She likes updates.”

“Perfect. And tell her I’ve become addicted to her company’s body wash and shampoo.”

I scoff. “How about you tell her that in person?”

“Excellent point,” he says.

After a few turns, we wind down the road to his sister’s home.

When we pull into the driveway, the door swings open and Echo steps onto the porch.

River cuts the engine, and the three of us get out of the car, Delilah bounding to the porch to bestow kisses on River’s sister.

“Awww, are you ready to be spoiled, girly girl?” Echo asks, hugging the dog, her purple hair spilling in waves down her shoulders.

“Hate to break it to you but River already spoils her,” I say.

“I do not. I instill appropriate boundaries,” River says, then bends to give the dog a kiss on her furry face. She licks his cheek in response, whimpering a goodbye to her person.

“And he gives her gourmet treats from the organic dog food bakery,” I add.

Echo shrugs happily. “Where else would you buy treats for a dog? Anyway, be on your way, guys,” she says, shooing us back out, then wrapping her arms around herself. “It’s cold. I need to get inside, crank some heat, blast some Beyoncé, and love on my dog niece for the next forty-eight hours while we watch chick flicks.”

“You two better have the best time. But it sounds like you will.” River hauls his sister in for an embrace. “Love you buckets.”

“Love you too,” she replies, then hugs me too. “And you, Owen. Obviously.”

“Same, same,” I say, relaxing briefly, but only briefly, into the hug, then adjusting my glasses when we separate.

I don’t come from a family of huggers, like River does. His mom, dad, and sister are all uber-affectionate, hippie, happy, lovey people. My parents? Not so much. They’re both remarried, and have been since I was in high school. But they remarried people who are just like their first spouses. Mom married a guy who’s distant and works too much. Dad married a woman who’s unhappy with him.

History repeats itself in my family, but at least Grace is happy enough with her husband and their kid.

As for me, I want more. I want the real deal. I’d like to find a guy who looks at me the way Delilah looks at River.

When we’re back in the car, my friend wiggles his brow. “Just you and me now, cutie,” he says, a little rumble in his voice.

That rumble fries my brain.

Does he know how much he flirts with me? Does he mean it?

“Yes, just you and me and ten thousand other people driving to Tahoe on a Friday afternoon in mid-November,” I say, deflecting, since that’s been my MO whenever we’ve veered into dangerous territory—the too flirty kind.

I’ve avoided it since I don’t want to get hurt.

I don’t want my hopes crushed.

I know how that feels, thanks to Ezra, thanks to others. Everything went south at the end with Ezra, but for a while there, we had a good thing going.

A real thing.

An intense and passionate artist, Ezra went from zero to sixty with me in a few days, and I liked that. Suddenly, without warning, we were spending nights and mornings together, going to concerts, and grabbing breakfast. I was caught up. There’s something about waking up with the same person every day that fills you head to toe in endorphins.

He was a whirlwind of need , and that was its own kind of magic. The kind that made me believe in possibilities.

Just like I’d hoped to have with the guy before him, the venture capitalist I dated a few years ago. Todd was fun, loved to try the spiciest food, go to racetracks, and bet big in poker games.

His relentless energy and daring attitude were a huge turn-on.

Trouble was, he was only out at work. He turned out to be closeted to his family.

He didn’t invite me to join him for Thanksgiving. Or Christmas. When he finally asked me to a Fourth of July event, he said I could come but I’d need to be just a friend . So I said, how about you become just an ex ?

The zinger alone was nearly worth the heartbreak, but I had liked him.

Legit liked him.

I was falling in love with him, so it hurt like hell to walk away.

Even when guys turn out to be wrong for you, the ending still stings.

But so can a bad relationship. I saw that in my parents, in the way they snipped and sniped at each other at the dinner table, and in the way their petty arguments spilled over into family time. Pass the salt was code for I’m still pissed at you . Like, they couldn’t have waited till Grace and I were at school to poke at each other’s sore spots. They had to do it in front of us, with underhanded jabs they thought we wouldn’t notice. There’s a time and place for hard conversations, and that time is in private.

Not in front of your kids.

I don’t want that kind of relationship.

I want something real.

Something that could last.

Something meaningful.

I haven’t dated anyone since Ezra. Maybe I’ve been hoping for the right moment with River.

Maybe I shouldn’t deflect anymore.

After eight years, and plenty of other boyfriends that didn’t pan out, perhaps I need to start leaning into his flirting more. Even if it is terrifying.

As we pull away from Petaluma and onto the highway again, I vow to hunt for the right moment to let my best friend know how I feel. But I add another vow. A brand-new one—one designed to protect me. If I tell him and it doesn’t work out, I’ll move on. Right away. I’ll get back on the apps before Christmas.

I’ll start dating again.

It’s time.

“Yes, it’s just you and me,” I say, my voice strong, masking the nerves underneath.

“Just the way I like it,” River says, then he taps the dash. “Your turn. You play some music. I want to be wowed by the deejay in the passenger seat.”

I want to wow him.

Because this chemistry isn’t only terrifying.

It’s thrilling.