Alle Kapitel von Hooking up with my best friend’s crush: Kapitel 31 – Kapitel 36

The door clicks shut behind me. The apartment smells like a confusing mix of lingering takeout containers and the heavy, cloying scent of Gwen’s favorite vanilla candle. The lights are low, the living room bathed in the soft, blue glow of the television. Gwen’s out—some girls’ night thing she’d mentioned, probably trying to outdrink the stress of her own life. Selene is on the couch. She’s tucked into the corner, legs pulled tight under her, her phone held inches from her face. The screen light makes her skin look pale, almost ghostly. I drop my bag and walk over, my heart thudding. I lean down to kiss her—a soft, familiar gesture intended to bridge the gap—but she turns her head at the last second. My lips brush the cool skin of her cheek instead. I pause, my hand hovering near her shoulder. “Still mad?” She doesn’t look up. Her thumb flickers over the screen, scrolling through a feed she isn’t actually reading. “Mad about what, Christian?” “Come on. Don’t be like that. I

The air in the florist’s shop is a thick, humid sanctuary of botanical scents, a sharp contrast to the sterile, recycled oxygen of the floor. It’s a tiny, tucked-between-buildings spot that somehow maintains the delicate, dew-heavy smell of fresh-cut roses even as the spring heat begins to bake the city pavement outside. I stand there for a long moment, my eyes scanning the buckets until I find them: white lilies and soft pink peonies. These are Selene’s favorites, the specific blooms she once pointed out during a late-night walk, claiming they reminded her of "quiet nights and no drama." In the wreckage of the last two weeks, those words feel like a taunt, but I figure if fourteen days of absolute, deafening silence won’t break her resolve, maybe the physical weight of these flowers will at least crack the door open. The apartment building is eerily quiet when I finally shoulder my way through the front door. There are no lights flickering in the parlor, no low thrum of the indie

The neon overheads at Lane 7 hum with a low-frequency buzz that vibrates in my teeth, but it’s a welcome distraction from the suffocating silence of the apartment. Megan is already there when I return from the vending area, she’s looking so pretty and I can’t help but notice all her curves and damn, those pointy nipples poking out of her shirt like they could pop out anytime now. I feel this is a set up and a tease to make me fall for her all over again and it’s working. Not that I ever even fell out of love with her in first place. , tokens jingling in her palm like pocket change, the digital scoreboard glowing with a preemptive, expectant zero. She’s leaning against the plastic casing of the ball return, one hip cocked at an angle that feels like a dare, that black tank top still doing dangerous things to my focus every time the overhead blacklights catch the sheen of the fabric. “Finally,” she teases, her voice cutting through the crash of a strike from the lane over. She snat