“You left him in bed?” Ashley’s eyes widen and she grips her coffee cup in both hands outside the corner café on Main Street.

“What was I supposed to do? Make him breakfast, kiss him good-bye, and tell him to have fun on his date with this mystery girl?” My hands shake as I reach for my elephant ear.

“You think he’s still going to see her today?”

I shrug one shoulder. “Why wouldn’t he? I was the stupid ass who brought up your whole ‘friends with benefits’ idea. I’m sure he thought last night was just about two lonely people who hadn’t had sex in a long time.”

“What was it about?” She leans forward and narrows her eyes at me. “Aria, do you have feelings for him?”

Not ready to admit that, not even to Ashley, I say, “Of course. He’s my best friend. I don’t want to lose him.”

“I’m not talking about losing him. I’m talking about being with him. You two are perfect for each other.”

“He was talking about the other woman last night and he was drunk. I was the poor substitute for the one he really wants.” That’s the only explanation I can come up with. He’s a man, after all. I practically threw myself at him. Again. Any other guy in his position would have done the same thing Nate did.

“I know Nate. He’d never do that. Especially not to you.” She shakes her head and sips her coffee. Her face contorts in pain. “God, why do they have to serve it so damn hot?”

“It’s kind of expected with hot coffee.”

She raises a hand in the air, flagging down a waiter. “Could I get some creamer, please?”

He removes some mini-creamers from his apron and places them on the table.

“Thank you.” He starts to leave, but Ashley says, “Oh hey, wait!” I’m expecting her to order something else, but instead she says, “You’re a guy, and we need a guy’s point of view.”

“Ash, what are you doing?” I ask, nearly spitting my mouthful of coffee at her.

She holds a hand up to me. “If her best friend, who happens to be a guy, sleeps with her—”

“Stop!” I stand up and glare at her. “Can we not seek advice about my love life from perfect strangers, please?”

Ashley shrugs at the waiter, who looks like he wants to make a run for the kitchen. “Never mind. Thanks anyway.”

The waiter places our check on the table without asking if we want anything else and hurries off.

“I got this,” Ashley says, reaching for the check.

“Great. I’m out of here.”

“Wait! What about shopping?” she calls after me, but I keep walking and hail a taxi at the corner.

“Where to?” he asks, leaning his head in my direction but keeping his eyes forward on the road.

“Priority News on Ninth.”

I don’t even have my seat belt fastened when he pulls out. I catch a glimpse of Ashley running toward the taxi as we drive away.

“You avoiding someone?” the driver asks. “Scorned lover maybe?”

“She’s my sister,” I say, horrified at the thought.

“I dated my stepsister once.”

Ew. I slink down in the seat, hoping he’ll get the hint that I don’t want to talk. He doesn’t say anything else until we pull up to the Priority News building and he tells me how much I owe him. I hand him the fee and get out of the car as quickly as possible.

Why I came here, I’m not sure. I can’t go home though, not with the possibility that Nate is still there. In my bed. Naked. Dear God, what have I done?

I open the office door, walk through the lobby, and take the elevator up to the newsroom floor. Oliver and David’s voices reach me long before the elevator doors open.

“This wouldn’t have happened if Aria was still the features editor,” David yells.

Oliver is about to dispute that when his eyes rise to meet mine. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“I had some free time and thought I’d get an early jump on tomorrow’s story. You know, lay some ground work.” I walk past them to my desk and sit down.

Oliver storms off to his office and slams the door. Once he’s gone, David approaches me.

“What was that all about?” I ask.

“He screwed up the story assignments. Emily and I were given the same feature, and of course we both wrote it already. So now we have two stories on the same topic and another that never got covered.” He runs his fingers through his hair and leans on my desk.

“Okay, so work with Emily to combine the features. You were covering the art show, right?”

He nods. “But what do you mean combine them? I’m the art lover. Emily thinks they’re all a bunch of unemployed losers. She focused on how the show will cause extra traffic downtown since the road crews are busy repairing the bridge. We don’t exactly see eye to eye on these things.”

“Okay, then each of you cut your stories in half and we’ll run a feature that’s meant to show both views. If it goes well, you can each run the other halves of your stories in the next issue.”

“Smart thinking,” Mr. Monohan says, standing in his office doorway. “Carmichael, I want a word with you in my office.” He turns to David. “You and Emily have work to do. Call her in.”

“Yes, sir.” David walks off, and I make my way to Mr. Monohan’s office.

He motions for me to go inside, and then he closes the door behind us. “I’ve been listening to Oliver bicker with David for the past hour. Not once did he give a possible solution for the problem. He just assigned blame.”

“I was only trying to help. Since I’m here, I can take the story that didn’t get covered. I’m assuming it was the piece on the parade.”

He takes a seat at his desk and clasps his hands. “See, there you go again, saving the day. Yes, that’s the piece, and I’d love for you to cover it, but I’m afraid you won’t have time.”

“I’m sorry, but why? I’m here, and I don’t have any other plans today.” Since I’ve ruined my social life.

“It’s good you’re here because I need you. You’ll be taking over as features editor, effective immediately.”

“What?” My voice comes out much louder than I intended. “I mean, excuse me? I’m afraid I don’t understand. Oliver is the features editor. If you fire him, his mother will stop funding the paper.”

“Which is why I’m not firing him. He’ll be switching to managing editor, a position I’ve never filled before because the paper is small and we were trying to keep costs down. I’m sure Marjorie won’t mind throwing some extra money the paper’s way to get her son a promotion, though.”

I can’t believe it. Something is finally going right. “Thank you, sir. I won’t let you down.” I get up, ready to dive in and fix Oliver’s mess.

“You never have.”

I start for the door, but Monohan says, “Aria.” I turn back to him. “One more thing. Tell Oliver he’ll be covering the parade story since he’s the one who caused the issue in the first place. If he has a problem with it, tell him to come talk to me.”

I nod, but I can’t suppress my smile. Apparently, neither can Mr. Monohan because he’s grinning ear to ear. I leave the office and head to my desk. David gives me a thumbs-up. “Emily is on her way. She loves the idea to present both sides.”

“Great.” One crisis averted. Now to deliver the bad news to Oliver. I take a deep breath before picking up my phone and buzzing his office. I don’t dare tell him in the privacy of his four walls. It would give him too much protection from staring eyes and lead to more yelling than I can handle right now.

“What?” Oliver barks into the phone.

“I need to see you.”

“Then you’ll need to come to my office. I’m very busy. You’d know that if you were an editor.”

“Actually, I do because Mr. Monohan gave the position of features editor back to me, and he asked me to assign the parade feature to you since that blunder was your doing. I’ll need your story by five.” I hang up before he can start yelling.

“Three, two, one,” I count, holding my fingers up for emphasis.

Oliver’s door bursts open, and his eyes land on me. “What the hell was that?”

Mr. Monohan steps into his doorway but doesn’t intervene. I know he’s testing me to see how I handle myself in this kind of situation.

I stand up, facing Oliver head-on. “That was me cleaning up the mess you made. You left the paper short of a story, which means you’ll be the one to write it. I’ve already handled the blunder with the doubled-up feature. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.” I sit down and log into my email to alert the staff writers of the change of address for submitting their stories. Yet again.

“Oliver,” Mr. Monohan says. “My office.”

I can feel Oliver’s eyes on me, but I don’t give him the satisfaction of looking at him. I dig right into my work, a smile creeping across my lips. Once Mr. Monohan’s office door is closed, I pick up my cell and start composing a text to Nate. But I stop before pressing send. I left him alone in my bed. I can’t text him now and say I got the promotion. I don’t even know where we stand. I delete the text and send one to Ashley instead.

Aria: At work. Got the promotion!

Ashley: Is this supposed to make me forgive you for running out on breakfast?

Aria: You were about to get the waiter’s thoughts on me sleeping with Nate! You totally deserved it!

Ashley: ;) Fine. I’m happy for you.

I put the phone down when the door to Mr. Monohan’s office opens again. Even though there aren’t many people in the office right now, he makes a big show of clapping his hands to get everyone’s attention.

“Excuse me,” he says. “I have a rather big announcement.” He pauses and waits for heads to turn in his direction. “As you are all aware, I’ve been making changes to the editorial staff. After only a few days I realized I made a mistake. As of this morning, that mistake has been rectified.”

Oliver’s smug expression tells me he took the news of his promotion well.

“Effective immediately, Aria Carmichael”—he extends a hand to me as if introductions are needed—“will be the features editor, and Oliver Strauss will fill the position of managing editor.” He pauses again, and Oliver opens his mouth to speak, but Mr. Monohan continues. “Of course, before he assumes his new role, Oliver will be writing one last story for us to fill a gap in the next issue.”

Oliver’s nostrils flare at the announcement, and I cover my smile by pretending to even out my lip gloss.

“You will receive an official announcement of these changes via email, but let’s give these two a quick round of applause.”

Hands clap, but only for a second or two before Mr. Monohan says, “Back to work, everyone. We have a scheduling disaster to fix.” His last dig at Oliver elicits a chuckle from David at the desk behind mine.

Oliver heads to the elevator, off on his assignment. His eyes meet mine for a moment, and I smile and say, “Congrats on the promotion.”

He glares at me and stabs his pointer finger at the elevator button. Then he turns and waits for the elevator without another glance in my direction.

“I can’t believe Mr. Monohan promoted him again,” David says, leaning his arms on the partition between our cubicles. “Think he only gave him the features editor job so the progression to managing editor wasn’t so drastic?”

“I doubt he got any experience in the short time he held the title. All he did was screw everything up for the features section.”

David waves his hand at me. “No sweat. Emily and I already have a plan. She’ll be here any second, and you’ll have the story on your desk by two.” The dreamy expression on his face tells me he’s looking forward to collaborating with Emily.

“You two are such opposites, yet you click,” I say, swiveling my chair around to face him fully. I raise my brow, waiting for an explanation of what’s going on between them.

He smiles. “Opposites attract, right?”

“I’m afraid I might lose you both to the opinions section soon. The dynamic duo of positive versus negative.” The spin I put on their feature story is bordering on opinion already.

“And work under Edie?” He scoffs and looks in the direction of her desk, which is littered with papers. “No thank you. I can’t figure out her system, and I don’t want to.”

“Hey, as long as she gets her stories in on time, she can keep her system.”

David leans further over the partition, letting his arms hang down. “What do you think it’s going to be like having to deal with Oliver as our boss? After Monohan, he’s the next in charge.”

The thought doesn’t elicit any warm feelings, but I suspect Mr. Monohan put Oliver there because he can keep an eye on him. “The way I see it, Mr. Monohan did us all a favor. He won’t need to interact with the writers much.”

“But he will need to interact with the editors.” David gives me a sympathetic look.

“True, but he’s my superior now, so he won’t be threatened by me anymore.” At least he shouldn’t be.

“Where’s Nate today?” David asks, changing the subject without notice.

“Um, not sure.” I doubt he’s still at my place. He probably woke up, saw I was gone, and went home. “I don’t think he’s on the schedule today.”

The elevator dings, and I’m happy for the excuse to look away. I’m sure my face is ten different shades of red.

Emily walks into the office. “Where’s Oliver? I want to thank the pompous ass for making me give up my Sunday to fix a mess he created.” She looks toward his office door, which is closed.

“Not here,” I say. “Mr. Monohan made him cover the story we’re missing.”

She smiles. “I love that man. He knows how to get his digs in.” She goes directly to David’s desk, flinging her purse onto it.

Being a fledgling paper, and a small paper at that, Mr. Monohan mostly hired people straight out of college, which makes us all around the same age. The exceptions being Tom Bosworth, the photo editor, and Omar Webb, the sports editor. They were both former colleagues of Monohan’s who were looking to scale back on the crazy hours newspaper life can require. Priority News is a serious paper, but we don’t publish on as demanding a schedule as a daily. Instead, we update feature and opinion stories on a weekly basis, and report news as it happens.

I spend two hours emailing, editing stories, and listening to David and Emily flirt. They sent me their story half an hour ago and are using the time to grope one another under the desk when they think no one is looking. The sexual tension between them is thick, and I’d bet money they don’t hold out from sleeping together for another week.

When I can’t take anymore of their innuendos, I say my good-byes and head home. It’s mid-afternoon and I’m starving, so I grab a sandwich from Tony’s to take back to my apartment, planning to veg out on the couch and pretend I’m not dodging my best friend.

It’s odd that he hasn’t tried to call or text. Of course, that could mean I’ve totally destroyed our friendship. I’m not willing to be the girl he has drunken sex with. Last night was a huge mistake. It was me avoiding my real feelings in the only way I could think of.

I park in my spot and lean my head back against the seat, allowing myself to think about last night for the first time without mentally berating myself. Nate, even drunk, had been so gentle and...loving. Or maybe that’s just the way I want to interpret his actions. If we hadn’t been drunk, it would have been the perfect start to a great relationship. Except we already had a great relationship and I probably ruined it. Even in college, I never threw myself at him, and there were plenty of nights where I could have. Maybe it was Aaron rejecting me and making me feel like I wasn’t good enough that’s making me so crazy. Whatever it is, I need to figure it out fast.

I get out of the car and start for my apartment, food in one hand and keys in the other. I don’t acknowledge anyone on the way. I’m in a fog, and I plan to stay this way until I have to face the world again tomorrow morning.

I put my key into the lock and open the door. It’s days like this that I wish I had a dog, someone to greet me when I come home. I head for the couch, my typical eating spot, but I stop short when I see Nate.

He doesn’t say a word. Just stares at me, waiting for an explanation. An explanation I’m not sure I can give him.