"Tell Tami the truth."

"Look," I whispered soothingly, "under the circumstances I know I'm probably the last person in the world you'd even think about taking relationship advice from—but you need to tell her. If she's really your friend, she won't push you away. You need to trust her to do the right thing."

"What if everything changes?"

"Of course everything will change. There's no going back from an 'I love you.' But look at what's happening to you—This is tearing you up on the inside, and it's only gonna get worse."

After a few more deep breaths, Claire finally got herself together and withdrew from my arms, apologizing for the wet spots her tears had left on my shirt. She looked hard into my eyes and managed to quirk her lips up into a bittersweet, twisted smile.

"I don't get you, Michael. You're, like, a stupid asshole and a really nice guy all at the same time."

"I really am sorry I hurt her. And I'd really, REALLY like to be friends with you two."

"Please don't say anything to Tami."

"Hey, it wouldn't be my place."

That seemed to reassure her, and for the next forty five minutes the two of us waited for our laundry quite amicably. We chatted about nothing particularly important, just being friendly with each other. Neither of us mentioned Tami.

When Claire went about folding her clothes from the dryer, I caught an eyeful of several pairs of skimpy little thongs and panties, in all shapes and sizes.

"You have some sort of fascination with my underwear?" she teased.

I just shrugged my shoulders, caught:

"Honestly, I'm trying not to think about how they look when you're wearing them."

She rolled her eyes.

...

When I got back to my apartment, I saw that I'd missed a v-chat invitation from Sonya. She wanted to talk to me! Praying that it was good news that awaited me and not bad, I clicked respond and waited for her face to appear on my computer monitor. When it finally did, oh man did she look beautiful. She had just gotten back from a run was still all disheveled. A tiny band of sunburn ran across her cute little nose. Sonya was a knockout when she got all dressed-up, but there was something adorable about the way she looked when she was a sweaty mess that just melted my heart.