When apprehension hits you like a ton of bricks, the only way to combat it is with some good food for the soul. And nothing screams remedy like a wheatgrass shot or two, although looking at the face Makayla is making as she finishes hers, I think she begs to differ.

San Shi Go is a Japanese restaurant located in an avocado-green building not that far from where we live, which is why I insisted we walk, and that I meet her just beyond Ryan Gerhardt’s house. Ryan is the famous mystery novelist who lives in the large, ultramodern beach house next door to me with his wife and two Yorkies.

Even though Keen is staying with Makayla and Cam, who live on the other side of me, I didn’t want to chance her asking me to swing by and get her, or running into him outside. Or anywhere, for that matter.

It was the safest way. I just can’t see his face or that “Maggie, I’m right here” look without letting my wall down a little.

You know?

It seems so easy to say I hate him, but then I see him, and I don’t. I don’t hate him. I miss him. I want him. I just want him. And I shouldn’t. Not after what he did to me.

“I’m not really understanding the problem here,” Makayla says around a mouthful of the plain chicken and rice she special-ordered.

Yesterday she was gone all day. And this morning she and Cam took Keen out to breakfast, so tonight is the first chance I’ve gotten to talk with her, and even so, she can’t possibly understand because I have yet to speak the whole truth, which is why I take a moment to sidetrack the conversation. “And how could you when you look so cute with rice falling out of your mouth,” I tell her.

She laughs and dabs up the fallen pieces with her napkin. “It’s hard to eat.”

Before dipping a piece of spicy broccoli into the wasabi mixture, I point my chopsticks at her. “That’s because it has no substance to it.”

“It’s sticky,” she protests, pouring one of the sauces all over her food and stirring it around on her plate.

“That’s way too much,” I laugh and then get back on track. “How do you not get it?” I ask. “He and me. Him and I. We have to spend at least the next two weeks together. Just shoot me.”

Pointing her chopsticks at me, which by the way are stained with so much soy sauce that I have to wonder how she will taste anything, she tries to understand. “And that is a problem because he’s an arrogant ass and you want nothing to do with him.”

I stop with a piece of vegetable halfway to my mouth. “See! You do understand.”

There—I didn’t have to tell her about our night, and how he led me on, and how I let him when I never do that, and then how he dumped me afterward. I was able to omit that whole part and she still came to the same conclusion—that he’s an arrogant ass.

She sets her chopsticks down and fixes me with a typical Makayla stare—raised brows, narrowed eyes, and pouty lips. She got that from me, by the way. “You talked to him for what, all of about fifteen minutes almost two months ago, and maybe ten minutes yesterday morning, and you got that opinion from not even thirty minutes of conversation?”

Not quite, but it has to work for now. I made a promise and for some reason I can’t break it, even though I owe him nothing. “Yes. And don’t tell Cam,” I add, with another point of my chopstick.

She laughs so loud the other diners turn their heads and stare. “Uh…no, I don’t think I’ll tell him that. He’s more of a fact guy, you know. Like if I were to tell him Keen made a move on you and you said no, but he won’t let up, and you won’t give in since you aren’t interested in him because you’re still hung up on Brooklyn, and now he’s making your life miserable, Cam might see why you’d think the way you do, but from a conversation, not so much.”

“Wait. What?”

“Sorry, but I had to get that out. I saw the men’s clothes in your room New Year’s morning. And when I knocked on Brooklyn’s door, he wasn’t in there. I know he stayed in your room. I’ve been waiting for you to tell me, but obviously neither of you is going to come clean.”

Shocked, I stare at her. I want to laugh. Really I do. Life would be much easier if I’d fucked the other brother because these feelings I have wouldn’t be there, and I’d be able to move on.

Just then my cell buzzes with a message. The number is unfamiliar, but the message is crystal clear.

Unknown Caller: I’ll pick you up at 7 a.m. sharp.

Me: Who is this?

Okay, so I know who it is, and I’m being a little immature.

Unknown Caller: Maggie, it’s Keen.

Me: Oh. Sorry, the number is unfamiliar. But since I’m showing you around tomorrow, I’ll pick you up at 7 a.m. sharp.

Unknown Caller: No, I’m driving.

Me: No, I am.

Once there is no further response from him, which isn’t unexpected, I put the Brooklyn conversation on the back burner and hold out my phone for Makayla to see. “Here, proof of what I’m trying to tell you. He is an arrogant ass.”

She takes it and after she reads it with a smirk on her face, she starts tapping the keyboard.

“What are you doing?”

“Adding him to your contacts.”

Reaching for it, she holds it tighter. “You don’t have to do that,” I tell her. “I don’t plan on talking to him much.”

Besides, Keen Masters isn’t the name I’d be assigning him.

Her laugh is loud enough to garner the attention of the whole restaurant—again.

“It’s not funny. I’m not going to let him drive tomorrow.”

She hands me back my phone. “Okay, then you drive. But you always say how much you hate the commute, which is why you stay at your mother’s, so why not let him drive?”

Horrified, I look at her dumbfounded. “Because then he wins.”

“Bingo.” She winks, setting her napkin on her plate of mostly uneaten food.

Flabbergasted, all I can do is sputter my lips as I covertly change his name to Asshole, for the second time in my life. At least he got a new phone number or Asshole would have popped up when he texted me minutes ago, and then I’d have had some explaining to do.

Makayla raises a brow again. “Maggie, you know I love you, and that I am always on your side, but it really isn’t that hard to figure out what is going on here.”

“And what do you think that is?”

“I’m going to be honest with you. Keen is the male version of you. You are the female version of Keen. You clash because you’re so much alike. That’s why I don’t think you have anything to worry about. Besides, he’s a really great guy going through a hard time.”

Hard time?

“What kind of hard time?” I interrupt.

She shrugs. “I don’t know everything, but apparently he was fired from his job and kind of went off the deep end.”

My entire body starts to shake. His job was his life. “Why? When?”

“All I know is it happened just a couple of days after we left New York. No one realized it for weeks. Then late last week his mother got a call that he was in Vegas, and sent Brooklyn to get him. I told you that yesterday.”

“You did?”

She laughs. “Well, you were in your own world over the party details. Anyway, Cam truly respects and trusts Keen. I have no doubt that he will be professional, and that you will too. At the end of each day you can both go home to your own places and that will be that. Or maybe, just maybe, you’ll like each other enough to go for a drink and talk about all your conquests. Like I said, I just don’t see the problem.”

Reaching for a second wheatgrass shot, I don’t know what concerns me more: the fact that my best friend thinks Keen Masters and I come from the same mold, or that she doesn’t see Keen Masters as a problem…

Because honestly—both terrify the hell out of me.