Page 181 of Never Not Friends

“What?” I jerk away from Vinny.

“For a second, I forgot that you two are a couple, and I had a full-on panic attack that Vinny was cheating on Juliet.”

Camila swats his shoulder. “Hess! Are you trying to make them feel bad?”

“No, but my mind just forgot.”

“The wedding was one month ago,” Camila says. “By now, you should have your brain wrapped around the situation.”

“It’s okay.” Vinny laughs. “We already addressed the huge elephant in the room that I’m here with Emma and that Juliet is not here at all. Everybody already said seeing the two of us together is going to take some getting used to. You’re not the first to tell us that.”

“That’s why it pays to come on time.” Blair sips her drink. “You missed the entire recap.”

“What?” Hess frowns. “That’s the whole reason I’m here.”

“It was too major not to start with that,” Carly says.

Hess moves his finger in a circle. “Restart everything from the beginning.”

“You didn’t miss anything new,” Camila says. “Just that it’s weird that Vinny used to be here with Juliet, and now he’s here with Emma.”

“Are you sure?” Hess looks around. “Because I’ve been looking forward to this conversation since the wedding.”

My brows lift. “Since the wedding?”

“Emma, things like this don’t just happen,” Nate explains. “I mean, ever since I started dating Carly, I’ve known it could happen, but I never thought it would.”

“Wait.” Vinny frowns. “How did you know it could happen?”

“It’s not like Emma having feelings for you is new information,” Carly says, leaning forward. “We’ve all known for years. We just didn’t know how it was going to get resolved.”

“I’ve been waiting for Vinny to figure it out,” Blair says.

“Wait a second.” Vinny leans forward, glancing at my friends. “You all knew that Emma had feelings for me?”

“Oh, yeah!” they answer in unison. “It was so obvious.”

“Not to me,” Vinny scoffs.

Blair shoots him a pointed look. “‘Cause you’re an idiot.”

“Hey!” Nate holds up his palm, coming to Vinny’s defense. “He’s not an idiot. He was in a relationship with another woman. He wasn’t supposed to be noticing Emma.”

“Thank you.” Vinny nods.

“The truth is,” Camila says, “we knew, but we didn’t talk about it until recently because it was an impossible situation. Emma’s our friend. Juliet’s our friend. There was no good way for it to work out.”

“And even when we did talk about it,” Carly adds, “we couldn’t agree on how to handle it.”

“I wanted to tell you.” Blair raises her glass to Vinny. “I like a little drama.”

“But”—Carly pushes Blair’s arm down—“we didn’t want Juliet to get hurt, so we stayed out of it the best we could.”

“The friend-group dynamics are totally going to change now.” Camila frowns.

“Why?” Hess looks around. “Did Juliet say she doesn’t want to be friends with you guys anymore?”

“I just mean, Juliet is our friend first.” Camila looks at Vinny. “I know you’ve been coming to dinner on and off for years as one of our friends, but now that you’re Emma’s significant other, we might just have to have girls’ nights and skip the men altogether. Just to make things easier on Juliet whenever she decides to come back around. Keeping our friend group together is our number one priority.”