by trying to flirt with Sophie.
“Can we discuss the important issue, here?” Everly asked, looking at me. “What’s happening with Corban?”
“Very good question.” Nora raised her eyebrows and folded her hands.
“This sounds juicy.” Jensen rested his arm on the table and leaned forward. “Who’s Corban?”
“The guy she’s been hate-fucking,” Nora said.
His mouth hooked in a grin. “I’m proud of you, darling. I love a good hate-fuck.”
I pushed my glasses up my nose. “I don’t think that’s accurate anymore, nor can I continue calling him my nemesis.”
“Is his dick game that good?” Nora asked.
Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. “It’s not just that, although our physical encounters have been…”
“Satisfying?” Sophie offered.
“Exciting?” Every asked.
“Mind-numbingly hot?” Nora said.
“Yes, all three.”
Nora’s lips curled in a smile. “Good for you, sweetie.”
“But you don’t hate him anymore?” Sophie asked.
I sighed. “No. Not at all.”
Nora clicked her tongue and shook her head. “There goes another one.”
“I haven’t gone anywhere, and certainly not the way of dating, engagement, and marriage, as your tone suggests. We’re no longer enemies—in fact, we work quite well as a team—and yes, we’ve slept together. Several times. But that’s all.”
“So no more hate-fucking,” Nora said. “Now you’re friends with benefits?”
I thought about that for a second. Was that an accurate descriptor of our current relationship? “Yes. I think so. Maybe.”
“It should be quite easy to tell,” Jensen said. “Are you friends?”
“Yes, I’d say we are now.”
“And you’re having sex?”
I nodded.
“But you’re not dating,” he said.
“We did have dinner together the other night. But it wasn’t a date.” I paused again, my mixed feelings—and confusion—over Corban swirling to the surface. “Actually, it might have been a date. I’m not entirely sure. These things are so much easier to determine when you’re observing the behavior of others instead of experiencing them yourself.”
“Well, tell us about dinner,” Everly said. “Did you just happen to eat together because it was convenient and then it started to feel like a date? Or did he ask you to dinner but you’re still not sure if he meant it as a date?”
“Neither. I invited him to my apartment and cooked him dinner.”
“Sounds pretty date-like,” Sophie said.
Jensen lifted a shoulder. “Maybe. Or it was a booty call with the added bonus of a meal. After all, he didn’t ask you out, but the other way around.”
Nora rolled her eyes again. “Since when does the man have to be the one to ask for it to count as a date?”
“He doesn’t.” He took a sip of his drink and I nudged Sophie under the table. She was staring at him again. “But if he’d asked her to dinner, it would undoubtedly have been a date. A man looking for no-strings sex isn’t going to feed her first. And if she’d asked him out, but they’d gone to a restaurant, that’s also clearly a date.”
“But since she invited him over to her place, dinner could have been her excuse to get him there for sex,” Nora said. “I hate to admit it, but you have a point.”
“Really?” Everly asked. “A booty-call dinner?”
“Certainly.” Jensen raised his glass. “And cheers, darling—if you’re feeding him and fucking him without commitment, he’s earned my envy.”
“Did he think it was a date?” Sophie asked.
“I’m not entirely clear on that, but I don’t think so.”
“And he’s never asked you out, has he?” Everly asked. “So you don’t have reason to believe he wants to get serious?”
I thought about his invitation to lunch with his sister and Paisley. That wouldn’t have been a date by anyone’s definition. He’d only asked me to join them because I happened to be in his office at the time.
“No, he hasn’t given me any indication that he would like to date me.”
“I think the real question is, what do you want?” Everly asked. “Did you want it to be a date?”
I took a drink of my martini, giving myself a second to consider her question. “I think that’s the source of my confusion. I’m firmly committed to remaining single. I’ve tried relationships and they’ve never worked for me. I even got married once and we all know how that turned out.”
Everly and Nora glanced at each other, nodding.
“I don’t know this story, but I have a feeling I shouldn’t ask,” Sophie said.
“There’s not much to tell. We got married mostly out of convenience. It seemed logical at the time, but it didn’t work.”
“He was such a stick-in-the-mud, even your divorce was boring,” Nora said.
“Not that we wished a painful breakup on you,” Everly said.