has me crushed. And all the other stuff—the immigration interview and all of that.”
I nodded toward the hot number Heath had brought with him. An extremely fit and very good-looking Hispanic man in his mid-twenties with dark curly hair and gorgeous straight white teeth. He’d attracted the female gaze in his Speedo. “Who’s the hottie you brought with you? You never introduced him to me.”
“Because you and your hubby got here late. That’s Adan.”
“Another Adam?”
“No, Adan. With an N. We’ve been seeing each other for a few weeks. He’ll probably hang out in the pool all night. He’s a big swimmer.”
I waggled my brows at Heath. “Hopefully he’s big elsewhere too.”
Heath gave me a “duh” look. “Of course. He wouldn’t be here otherwise.”
We snickered, and I plopped some green olives on his plate. Heath hated green olives, so he swore at me and threw them back onto my plate. “Speaking of which. I need you to spill the tea on that cute hubby of yours. What’s he packing in his boxers? Have you found out yet?”
“Very clever, Hank.” I grinned at him giving him the irritating nickname we sometimes teased him with. It had originated as a misspelling on his coffee cup at Starbucks one time. People sometimes had trouble with his name and thus, Hank had stuck. I soon had Mia and all the rest calling him Hank and the more it irritated him, the more we used it.
He ignored the nickname and stuck to his favorite subject—penises. “Don’t tell me you haven’t taken a ride on his disco-stick yet. I thought it would only take a week of living under the same roof together.”
I heaved a long sigh. “A lady never tells.”
“Good thing you’re not a lady then.”
I rolled my eyes. “I got nothing to tell.”
“Come on… not even some heavy petting? The sexual tension between you two is as thicc as Henry Cavill’s thighs.”
I eyed him skeptically. “You picked that up from across the pool?”
“A fucking deaf-blind service dog could pick it up, babe.”
I shushed him when William joined us at the table, grabbing some chips and dip on a paper plate. He nodded at both of us. “How are you?”
“Hey William, I have that money I owe you. You take a check, right?” Heath asked.
William frowned. “I distinctly recall telling you I would do the work pro bono.”
My brows rose. What was this? Heath flicked me a glance. “He did some artwork for a website I just redesigned.” He turned back to William. “And no I don’t accept that. Artists shouldn’t work for free.”
Adam’s cousin shrugged at him. “It wasn’t work. It was a favor for a friend.”
“I’ll mail you the check then,” Heath said to his back.
William halted and called over his shoulder. “I’ll shred the check.”
Heath muttered under his breath about the man’s stubbornness. I kept my eyes on William where he sat beside his beloved Jenna, sharing the chips and dip with her. She rewarded him with a peck on his neck and he smiled.
He’d come a long way. Back in the day, he’d be the one insisting on always following the rules. Do the work, get the pay. But he’d loosened up a lot in the past year. Jenna’s influence at work, no doubt. My eyes flicked back to my blond friend wondering what his influence had done to her. And was it always like that?
Had Mia changed Adam or vice versa? Or what about April and Jordan?
And would Lucas end up leaving some kind of lasting effect on me, too? Or were we destined to part ways and become strangers to each other once again? It seemed so weird to think about that, even now. We weren’t intimate, but I felt I knew him at least as well as my other friends, or in some cases, better. Would we stay friends? Or would we go back to being the office rivals? Or maybe, if we never saw each other much, we’d become strangers.
I was still grazing at the table when Heath left my side to go dive-bomb Adan with a cannonball in the deep end of the pool. Mia joined me soon after. She looked gorgeous in a black bikini with thin silver stripes, her long dark hair pulled back in a high ponytail. Her husband didn’t seem to find it necessary to hide his obvious ogling of her no matter where she was in the backyard.
She noticed, too, and wiggled her fist at him, thumb and pinky extended in a