Other than kids, the one thing Cora and I had avoided like the plague was our plans after graduation. Neil and I had talked openly about buying a small financial firm and joining their team once we had our diplomas in hand, but Cora planned to go to grad school—although she hadn’t said where.

“We’re going to have to talk about it at some point, Cora.” I tried to reason with her when she walked in on Neil and me discussing businesses to consider. He politely excused himself, leaving the two of us alone.

“Why ruin the end of our senior year when we don’t have to, James?” She flitted about the kitchen putting away the groceries she’d bought. I loved the way she hummed a song I’d never heard trying to placate me into denial. It was endearing even though ineffective.

“It doesn’t have to ruin anything.” I followed behind her in a perfectly choreographed dance, taking items from her to put them in places she couldn’t reach in an effortless display of teamwork—we worked together like peanut butter and bananas. She was the flip to my flop. The basket to my ball. The nut to my sack.

She stopped and turned unexpectedly, nearly knocking me over. “Don’t make life decisions based on my whims. You and Neil clearly have a plan outlined, which I think is fantastic. I never believed he’d manage to graduate with us—he’s worked hard to pull this out. Regardless of what happens, or where either of us ends up, we’ll figure it out.”

“If you’d tell me what schools you are considering then we can look at investment firms in that area so we can all stay together.” My tone had taken on a plea that verged on whining, and I neared a point I wanted to put myself in timeout.

“You are aware we aren’t a ménage, right?” Her laughter filled the small space.

I pressed her against the counter with my hips, swaying slightly. “Brother husbands—like sister wives in reverse. You into that kind of thing?” Cora was about as modest as they came; the mere question was laughable.

“You know me, the Porn Queen looking for my next poke.” Her eyes rolled, though I couldn’t help but think of her on video.

“Let’s make you my private royalty.” I waggled my eyebrows.

And she blew me off with silly laugher. “You could hang a crown from Neil’s—”

“Don’t you dare finish that sentence.” No matter what the situation, the two of us found a way to make it fun.

Part of our avoidance of this topic was neither of us knew how to approach the truth that we might separate. Even if for only a short time, in the grand scheme of things, two years was nothing compared to eternity—regardless, she wasn’t willing to face the possibility.

Her small hands snuck under my shirt and roamed my chest while she tilted her head up to stare into my eyes. She’d gone from distant to playful to erotic in less than three minutes, and under her touch, I was a goner. As much as I craved taking her right there on the counter, I had to back away and pry her delicate fingers from my skin.

Her lip stuck out, and she pouted in my direction. The problem was, Cora always knew my hand, and she always held the ace of hearts. When I refused to return her affection until we’d had some semblance of a conversation, she took matters into her own hands. And Cora played dirty. She had a wicked poker face and could totally count cards if necessary—she flat out cheated. Her brows rose as if to question my resolve, just before she lifted her shirt over her head.

“What are you doing? Neil could come back in.” I turned between my half-dressed girlfriend and the front door. “Put your shirt back on, Cora.”

Her coy smile toyed with me.

“Fine, if you’re interested in playing this game, then let’s move to the bedroom.”

She gently shook her head in refusal, reached behind her back, and unclasped her bra. I tried to grab the straps before they slipped down her arms, although she evaded my reach and shot it across the room. It hung from a lamp beside the couch, and I couldn’t get past her to retrieve it.

“Cora…” My tone held a warning—and zero weight.

“James…” she mimicked, mocking me.

“Can you be serious for just a minute?”

“Depends, can you drop this and enjoy your girlfriend? Or do we really need to get Neil involved? I’ve heard he’s hung like a—”

“Don’t go there.” The rumor mills on this campus were insane. I had no desire to think about the size of Neil’s junk, and Cora sure as hell didn’t need to be pondering his endowment.

“How about here?” Her hand snuck beneath the waistline of her shorts. “Is this a safe place?”

I growled in response.

She knew I’d give in and not get answers. I was tempted to call her bluff and text my best friend to have him come home. I snickered at the thought of how quickly she would use me as a shield if he walked in the door, or how fast she’d duck behind the counter or try to make an escape to our room. I didn’t want to do it, there was no way in hell I wanted anyone seeing parts of her she reserved for me, but desperate times called for desperate measures.

“What are you doing?” Her voice was sultry and seductive.

“Dialing Neil.”

She called my bluff, and the hand that was down her pants now assisted the other in removing them completely, along with her underwear. There she stood in all her naked glory in our kitchen with her clothes—minus the bra still hanging from the lamp—in a pile on the floor. “You wouldn’t do that.”

Before I could actually hit send, the front door swung open and in strolled Neil with Hannah right behind him. It all happened so fast. I had gotten too far away from her to actually provide any barrier or coverage, and Neil’s sights landed on her breasts before dipping down to her neatly trimmed landing strip just above her goods.

“Oh, shit. Dude, I had no idea. I thought you two were talking.”

Hannah slammed the door closed to keep outsiders from seeing in, while I watched the scene unfold, and Neil stared at Cora’s baby maker like a prepubescent teen.

“Cora, oh my God. Where are your clothes?” Hannah squealed in hysterical laughter.

In no other situation would anyone find humor in this, but I couldn’t help it. She’d created this by refusing to talk and making jokes about threesomes, and here she had her very own gangbang in the making. When the world started spinning again and time resumed ticking, she ducked behind me and used her toe in an attempt to pull each scrap of fabric close enough to grab without further exposing herself…like everyone in the room didn’t now know what color her drapes were.

My stomach hurt from laughing so hard, and when I bent over to ease the ache, she squawked for me to stand up while she redressed. Hannah and I couldn’t control ourselves, and Neil was the color of a ripe tomato, yet he still hadn’t moved. We all should have been mortified, unfortunately, this was far too amusing to let go.

“I thought you two were going to talk. What the fuck happened?” Neil sounded like his balls had rescinded, which only further spurred me on.

“I tried, dude. This”—I waved my hands at my half-dressed girlfriend—“is what I’m dealing with. It’s always sex with this one. I’m starting to think she’s only after my body.” That comment earned me a playful swipe to the back of the head.

Before I could make the situation any worse, Cora had managed to get dressed—minus the bra—and took her spot next to me. When she tucked her dark hair behind her ear and righted herself as if she hadn’t just been caught naked in the kitchen, I burst out laughing again. I couldn’t stop, and Hannah’s giggles just kept me going.

Cora finally glared at me, shutting me down. That was, until her bra came soaring past my face. I wasn’t sure who’d shot it back to her, Hannah or Neil—they both looked guilty.

“You three are impossible.” She huffed out a loud breath, and I noticed how rosy her cheeks had become when she stepped around me and plopped down at the breakfast table.

When I tried to hug and comfort her, she pushed me off with a fake frown.

Neil sat down, followed by Hannah and myself. “Time for a family pow-wow.”

Cora thought it was adorable that Neil tried to have communal rap sessions between the four of us. Personally, I thought he was a dork who’d lost his cool factor between Geneva Key and Chapel Hill, and we’d never managed to find it again. That first year we were here, he’d become the old man to our youthful antics. When we added Hannah to the mix, it was all downhill. She was the perfect complement to his anal-retentive ways. Yet somehow, together, we all worked flawlessly.

“Cora…” Neil tried to be the voice of reason while Hannah and I continued to giggle like school girls. “You need to give us some idea of what school you plan to attend, so we can make plans with you.”

I didn’t give her the chance to respond before adding, “We’re only like six weeks from graduation. You’ve applied to grad schools. Just tell us which ones you’ve heard from.” I had tried this before and gotten nowhere.

She stared at us like a mute.

“Don’t make me tell them, Cora.” Hannah hated to betray her friend; however, she also wanted me to be happy, and without Cora in my life daily, I wouldn’t be. That, in turn, would make Neil unhappy, which led back to her. It was the circle of life, the days of our lives, as the world turned.

Cora’s shoulders slumped. There was a reason she’d kept this a secret, although, I had no idea what it was until she opened her mouth. “The top two possibilities are both on the West Coast.”

And the Financial District was northeast.

She intentionally waited as long as she could so she wouldn’t have to break the news to me that what she wanted was on the opposite side of the country from what we’d been planning for. Her eyes filled with tears. “It’s like my parents dying all over again.”

Her words crushed me. She’d told me countless times that we were her only family. She’d welcomed Hannah like a sister, and she adored Neil. The truth was, we were all tightly knit. During our sophomore year, her grandfather had passed away from cancer, leaving her grandmother—whom she never spoke to—as her only living relative. I felt sorry for Gwendolyn. She was lost without Owen and often tried to connect with Cora, but Cora was unable to forgive whatever grudge her dad had passed down as a family heirloom.

Neil hadn’t said more than about ten words to his parents since he’d left Geneva Key and hadn’t spoken to Natalie at all. And I only went home at Christmas. I still talked to my parents, although Geneva Key seemed like a lifetime ago, and we’d all forged our own way here. Granted it had been with our parents’ money—except Neil who’d worked his ass off—nevertheless, the fact still remained…she’d be alone.

“Oh, honey, don’t say that.” Hannah grabbed her hand across the table and held it tightly with her own. “We can figure something out; we just need to talk about it. Right, guys?”

There was no reason to break up the Breakfast Club; we’d just have to find a way around detention.

***

The compromise ended up with Cora picking Cornell Tech in the heart of New York City to pursue an engineering degree. She’d taken math and science classes, but I didn’t believe that was what she’d intended to do on the other side of the country. It had been a possible path she’d tossed around, yet unlike everything else she did, this was the one thing she’d never had a firm grasp on. Cora had floundered with career choices, and in all honesty, I believed her desire to go to grad school stemmed from her inability to pick a direction. If she continued with school, it bought her more time to be indecisive.

Even with her concession, she didn’t seem the least bit upset with her choice. Hannah had decided to go to culinary school at The Michelin Institute on Long Island. She and Neil were getting their own place, and Cora and I were going in search of one ourselves. Neil had become a miser since his parents lost their fortunes—he’d give Scrooge a bad name. Somehow, he’d managed to pay for college as he went, helped with rent and utilities, and squandered away money to keep them afloat. I prayed to God he hadn’t taken after his old man and started gambling—albeit, if he had, he was clearly better at it than the previous generation. I wasn’t sure how long he could manage, but I assumed he would figure it out. Either way, I was ecstatic we had a plan and multiple businesses to look at investing in.

Graduation came and went with little fanfare. The four of us walked in the ceremony, although since my parents had been out of the country, and Cora’s grandmother hadn’t been invited, that only left Hannah’s parents. They had invited us all out to dinner, and we enjoyed an evening with them. At the end of the day, it was just that—the end of the day. One that simply marked the end of one chapter of our lives and the start of another.

And the following week, the four of us took off on the road trip of a lifetime meandering our way up the East Coast and into New York. The trip included every stop we could find from the capital to the largest ball of yarn and the tiniest rocking chair. If there was a place of interest, we pulled over. We weren’t in a hurry to get anywhere and had a blast on the open road—even when Neil got lost in a corn maze and scared in the World’s Largest House of Mirrors. I had no idea a grown man could have such an aversion to clowns. It had taken us well over an hour to retrieve him from the tangled web of reflections. Although our strangest stop had been one closest to home at the Cryptozoology & Paranormal Museum. We’d gotten thrown out for making fun of the Bigfoot and Loch Ness paraphernalia. Apparently, there were people who believed the displays were scientific artifacts.

“Oh look, The Awakening!” Cora cooed as if she’d just uncovered some fantastical exhibit we had to see.

“Isn’t that a Robin Williams movie?” Hannah asked from the back seat.

“This is a sculpture that comes out of the sand. It’s a giant hand.”

“And why do we need to see a huge hand?” Neil jabbed at Cora.

“For the same reason you insisted on seeing proof of Bigfoot, you oaf.” She turned to me in the driver’s seat for the final call. “Come on, we’ve stopped at way stupider things.” Cora wagged her eyebrows and bounced in the seat next to me.

“Fair’s fair, guys.”

The groans from the back seat weren’t really in opposition. Cora was right; we had stopped at some inane places, and every one of them, even the most basic, had ended up being fun because we made them that way.

It hadn’t taken Cora long to bound out of the car and down the beach toward the sculpture. It was more than a big hand—it was an entire man trapped in the sand as though he were grasping for life while being sucked down. It was magnificent in itself, but the photo ops were even better. We’d gotten there late in the afternoon as most of the kids and their parents were leaving, and soon, Cora hung upside down, suspended from a finger, while Hannah had jumped into the palm of the hand. People probably thought the four of us were drunk when Neil and I started making inappropriate gestures to the dude’s mouth but whatever—it made for good Facebook fun before we called it a night and hung out in D.C.

Thus far, we’d turned an eight-hour drive into three days with zero desire to hurry along. “Anyone down for The Tattoo Museum in Baltimore tomorrow?” We all sat in the hotel room on our iPads searching for places to stop the following day. “They do tattoos and piercings.”

Neil high-fived me expressing his vote. However, the girls weren’t as easy to convince. “You two realize if we stop, we’ll end up spending the entire day there and only make it forty-five minutes farther than we are right now?” Hannah seemed to think she made a valid point, yet Neil and I just shrugged and started looking for designs to get inked.

“I could go for a piercing.”

My head whipped toward Cora, leaving me dumbfounded by her pronouncement. I gave her the stink eye and forgot anyone else was in the room. “Yeah? How about your nipples? Or better yet, your clit.”

She threw a pillow at me. “How about I’ll pierce whatever you do?”

I shrugged. “I’ll get my nipples pierced.”

She didn’t say I had to keep them; she just said I had to have it done. I could endure a little pain to see bars through her perfect peaks that would give me something to suck on while I teased her. Fuck, yes. That I could do.

“Deal. You get yours done, and I’ll do mine. Still want that clit ring?” The humor in her voice left me wondering if she was playing or not.

“Hate to tell you, girly, your man doesn’t have a clit.” Hannah giggled thinking Cora had misunderstood.

“No, but he does have a penis. And from what I’ve read, a Prince Albert is quite the treat.”

Before I could object, she and Hannah had launched into a discussion of their own. “So you’d let someone stick a needle through your clit if Carp got a ring in his dick?”

“Hell, yes. In the long run, it’d be worth the pain.”

“I’m not piercing my dick, Cora. Forget it,” I interjected.

“I’ll pierce mine.” Neil was a moron.

“You realize you can’t have sex for like six weeks while that shit heals. And have you ever seen pictures of what that looks like infected?” Nope, nope, nope. Not me. Dick rot was a hard limit.

“I’m not going for six weeks without sex, Neil. Not going to happen.” Hannah laughed at her boyfriend.

“Cora, I think you and I got mix matched.”

“Eww, gross, Neil.” Cora had as much sexual attraction to Neil as I did Hannah. We were like family, and the two of them were like siblings to each of us. The notion itself was repulsive.

He hadn’t even realized what he’d said when the pillow came flying at the side of his head, nearly knocking him over.

“Can you not think about Cora’s vagina and your penis in unison?” Hannah couldn’t get the words out without cackling.

The next day, we got to the museum an hour before it opened, hoping to beat the rush. We bypassed the actual history of tattooing in favor of the tattoo parlor itself. All four of us managed to get in, although we spent the entire day sitting around waiting between people who had appointments and those who’d gotten there before we had.

I had no idea what Neil and Hannah were up to when they headed back together to get matching tattoos. They went before Cora and me, and then reappeared approximately two minutes later both having been permanently branded.

“So what’d you get?” Cora bounced in her seat with excitement and anticipation.

Hannah came over to where we were sitting and started to unbutton her pants.

“Whoa, what are you doing?” I shielded my face from accidentally viewing her lady bits.

She just rolled her eyes and pulled down the right side of her jeans to expose Neil’s name in black with a red heart for the E. I glowered at the inscription and then stared at my best friend.

“I thought you two were getting matching tattoos?”

Before I realized what he was doing, he revealed her name in the same spot with the same black writing and prissy hearts for As. Where she had one heart, he had two.

Leave it to Cora to point out just how redneck she believed the mark of the beast was. “You got each other’s names tattooed on you? Please tell me you got married before we left Chapel Hill and you just forgot to mention it.” Her face was priceless. She was mortified, and there was no denying it in her expression.

Luckily, Hannah was too enamored with their little hearts to notice, and all Neil cared about was Hannah’s happiness. Dumbasses.

“Cora Chase?” The girl behind the counter called her name.

She grabbed my hand and pulled me with her behind the curtain. I’d promised to go first, and at the time, I hadn’t really thought Cora would follow through, yet here we were with needles on trays and barbells and antibiotic ointment, and a woman I didn’t know encouraging me to take off my clothes.

Suck it up, Carp. Your girl isn’t the least bit concerned or scared…stop being a fucking pussy. The mental pep talk did little for me, and even less when we were joined by another member of the staff. The man was poised to pierce Cora’s nipples at the same time the ginger did mine.

I was so caught up in watching how he handled her peaks that I hadn’t paid the least bit of attention to what the girl in front of me was doing to my own…until she stabbed a needle through the center and left it there. I jerked and almost backhanded the bitch without warning. Jesus, she must have a death wish. As close as I’d come to knocking her out, my attention raced back to Cora who now had a matching silver spike through her pink nipple that was erotic as fuck. While I was gasping for breath, trying to regain my composure, she was perfectly serene and chattering away with the dude in latex gloves. And then the next needle slid through. Holy fuck, this woman sucked at warnings.

Cora licked her lips, sucking the bottom one between her teeth. I’d seen her do it a thousand times just before I sank my dick into her warm center, though seeing her do it now made me realize she liked the pain. And that was hot as fuck. Until the redhead in front of me tugged on the needles to replace them with barbells. I winced, and from the other seat, Cora laughed at my discomfort. Just before she winked. Fuck, I wanted to take her off that chair and have my way with her. I didn’t even care if Johnny and June here watched.

“No saliva on the piercings for six weeks or until fully healed.” The guy directed his comment toward me.

“Dude, she’s the nipple sucker.” I pointed back at my girlfriend whose mouth hung open.

“Yeah, does she bite, too?” The banter with the piercing peeps had gone too far when the girl appeared aroused by the thought of Cora biting my tits.

The laughter died instantly on my lips, which they all thought was a joke. Whatever. I needed my girl to get her boobs covered and us to get the hell out of Dodge before someone tried to ram a rod through my cock just to see what kind of rise they’d get out of me. Fuckers.

The fabric from my T-shirt rubbed my sensitive piercings in the oddest of ways. It was almost sexually arousing at first but then quickly turned to irritation. I wondered if putting Band-Aids across them would ease the sensation, yet when I mentioned it, Cora laughed. She didn’t have to worry about it, she had a bra keeping hers from feeling what mine did. Since she thought it was so funny, I stopped in the middle of the museum and tugged my shirt over my head.

I didn’t brag about how I looked—I’d left that shit behind in high school—but I was well-aware women stopped to stare. Being on the basketball team kept me in top physical condition, my muscles were well-toned, and I maintained a healthy tan playing skins in the park. Add the new piercings, and it was a sight the ladies wouldn’t resist.

Cora didn’t insist I put my shirt on. Instead, she came to my front, put her hands on my biceps and ran them up to my shoulders. Standing on her tiptoes, she secured her fingers behind my neck and jumped up to wrap her legs around my waist in a daring show of ownership. Not only did she ride my waist with my hands firmly on her ass, but she made love to my mouth as though no one was watching…or everyone, depending on how I looked at it. When the catcalls and the whistles started, she jumped back down, having proved her point.

I was hers.

And she was mine.

There was no way in hell there was a woman around who hadn’t seen her claim me. It took everything I had not to throw her into the back seat, rip her clothes off, and fuck her like we were in high school again. Sadly, I think had I been gung-ho, Hannah and Neil would have taken the front and gone at it themselves. We’d gotten entirely too close over the last few days. Sharing hotel rooms and tiny spaces, we’d given up having any privacy and just tried to enjoy our partners quietly. Although, I hoped they tried to block out the noises as much as I did the two of them. God knew, I didn’t want Neil and Hannah getting off to the sounds of Cora and me.

The moment we found a hotel and checked in, both couples forgot about the other in favor of each other.

***

By the time we finally made it to New York, we needed a day in the hotel to recoup before embarking on housing and businesses. The plan had been for Cora and Hannah to enroll in courses for the fall while Neil and I looked at a handful of companies. Until we saw where the physical locations of these places were, it didn’t make sense to find a place to live and end up two hours away because we hadn’t planned well.

The girls hadn’t been on their own longer than an hour before Cora called, hysterical about Hannah refusing to get on the subway. Cora had grown up in White Plains, so where being in the city wasn’t unfamiliar to her, Hannah was a small-town girl from Idaho. I swore it was the lost state. No one was from Idaho. Other than potatoes, I couldn’t think of a single thing Idaho had. Whatever it was hadn’t prepared Hannah for the city.

“James, she won’t go back down the stairwell to the subway.”

“Why? What happened?”

She didn’t have any phobias I was aware of.

“Some guy peed on her shoe.” Even though Cora was exasperated, I could hear the giggle in her tone. She thought Hannah was ridiculous, even if she hadn’t come out and said it.

The laugh that erupted from my mouth startled Neil who was already worried about his girlfriend being without him. He’d traveled the world before his parents’ bankruptcy. Hannah had not, and he only let her go because Cora was familiar with the city.

“What’s going on?”

He was worse than any girl. I shooed him off.

“Sweetheart, just take a cab. She’ll learn and get used to being in a new place. And keep her away from men with their fly open.”

I spent the next ten minutes calming Neil’s ass down. Jesus. He acted like Hannah had never made it a day on her own. She might have been sheltered, but she was a survivor, resilient.

We had an appointment with a business broker in Midtown, and the girls were going to have to figure this stuff out on their own. My concern wasn’t Cora. She could pacify Hannah by taking a cab—hell, she could afford to take them all over Manhattan if she chose to. The person who couldn’t afford that luxury was Hannah, and if she were smart, she’d use Cora’s knowledge as a resource while it was available to her.

My mind was swimming by the time we got back to the hotel. The girls hadn’t returned, but after the urination incident, they were only approached by a handful of other people asking for money or creeping Hannah out. All while Cora laughed at her naïveté. I had to give my girl credit—while she found humor in Hannah’s behavior, she was patient and grateful for her friendship. Those two had the kindest hearts of anyone I’d ever met. They made perfect friends.

“Neil, do you realize we have weeks’ worth of financial information and company history on three businesses that might potentially be ours?” It was mind-boggling. And even more so, that we were doing this without the help of our parents. Although, we weren’t dumb enough to sign anything without having a lawyer look at it.

This trip was for exploration. We had three viable options in front of us and now had locations to begin looking at housing.

“Do you think we’re making the right decision?” He’d gone back and forth. Not because he thought we were making a poor choice but because he stood to lose everything. And he was afraid Hannah had put her faith in him to provide for her while she went to culinary school.

“Dream big. You never thought you’d graduate from UNC without tons of debt. You didn’t believe you’d walk onto the basketball team. You did both…and you managed to do it while saving money and maintaining a job.”

“Yeah, thanks to you and Cora.”

“Cora and I didn’t go to work for you, or practices, games, or classes. We didn’t manage your money or your homework. Take credit for what you did, man. It’s fucking impressive. I’m not at all worried about our success. You shouldn’t be, either.”

I knew that was easier for me to say. If the business bombed out or we sucked as investors or financial planners, I had the resources to start over again. Neil didn’t have any mulligans.

Before he could respond, the hotel door burst open. I didn’t think I’d ever seen something so cute in all my life. Cora was decked out in Cornell Tech garb, and Hannah had on a chef’s jacket and a big hat on her head. Their arms were loaded down with bags, but it was obvious it wasn’t all from the schools.

I kissed Cora and took her things. “Where all did you two go?”

They glanced at each other and giggled. It appeared wherever they’d been, they had fun. I’d been worried this morning by the subway incident.

“Shopping,” they said in unison.

“How did your meeting go? Any businesses worth considering?” Cora’s enthusiasm made me happy. No matter what I did, she always supported me with her whole heart.

Neil and I started chattering away about all we’d learned and the information we had to go over in the next couple of days. Even though it was daunting, we had to go through all of it before we could move ahead with any of the ventures. And even if we identified one we wanted to proceed with, we would have to review it with an attorney. And the only attorney I knew was the one my parents used in Geneva Key—one of the few professions able to survive on the island.

I dreaded telling them anything about what we were doing. Not that I thought they’d be against the idea, because I didn’t. I just wasn’t interested in their advice or opinions. They’d been absent most of my life, and I’d be damned if they started involving themselves now.