“Of course. Top honors, brah.”
For several minutes, we sip our beers and watch as the kid in the other boat takes photos of himself with his monstrous fish, his whoops of laughter wafting to us on the breeze.
“Remember when Colby caught that huge fish that time?” Keane says.
“I’m surprised you remember that. You were only like five or six.”
“I don’t remember much except the look on Bee’s face when he pulled that thing out of the water. Oh, and I remember Kum Shot puking on Dad’s shoes that day in the boat. Ha! That was awesome.”
“Poor Kat,” I say, memories of our poor seasick sister flooding me. “Half my childhood memories of her involve her puking.”
“Half my adult memories, too,” Keane says, and we both laugh. “Man, I truly thought Colby was Superman that day.”
“So did I.” I take a sip of my beer. “Still do.”
Keane looks at me. “Hey, Ry, seriously—I really think you should respect Superman’s intuition about this Olivia chick. Just, for all our sakes, do a serious gut-check before you fall fast and hard and start bringing her to family dinners.”
“Who do you think I am? Zander Shaw? I never fall ‘fast and hard’ for anyone—you know that. And you know I’d never bring anyone to a family dinner unless I was one hundred-percent sure she was The One. Now shut the fuck up and catch yourself a fucking whale, Ahab. I got this.”
“Oh, you got this, baby doll?”
“I got this, sweetheart.”
“Then perhaps you won’t mind putting your money where your mouth is?”
“What do you have in mind?”
“Twenty bucks says, within three months, So-Far-So-Good-Olivia turns into What-the-Fuck-Was-I-Thinking-Olivia—the worst fucking nightmare-shit-show-bunny-boiling-loon-catastrophe of your entire dating career.”
I laugh. “You’re on, fucker. But, just to be clear, the bet isn’t whether Olivia and I break up within three months from sheer apathy, it’s whether she’s turned into an epic nightmare of staggering proportions.”
“Precisely.”
We shake on it.
“You know what?” I say. “Fuck it. Let’s make it fifty bucks, just to make things interesting.”
“Oh, Mr. Fancy-pants wants to up the ante, does he? Okay, High Roller. You got yourself a deal.” He shakes my hand again and chuckles to himself. “Oh, man, I can’t wait to profit off your misery, you cocky fuck. You committed the cardinal sin of disregarding Superman’s advice, and now you’re upping the ante on me? Ha!” He throws his head back and lets out a demonic laugh that reverberates across the quiet lake. “Let the bunny-boiling begin!”
2
Tessa
“Hey, Tessa,” my best friend, Charlotte, says, answering my call.
I’m sitting at a small desk in the corner of my brand-new bedroom in Seattle, surrounded by stacks of still-unpacked moving boxes, gripping my phone in one hand while massaging my forehead with the other. “Josh just called,” I say into the phone. “He and Kat are back from their trip to South America and you’ll never guess what’s happened—not in a million years.”
“Miss Perfect is having Josh’s quintuplets?”
“Even more shocking than that. Josh just flat-out said to me, ‘Theresa, I’m gonna ask that woman to marry me.’”
“What?” Charlotte blurts, sounding as flabbergasted as I feel. “Have aliens captured the real Josh Faraday?”
Charlotte’s never met my boss, actually, or his perfect, pregnant girlfriend of mere months, Kat Morgan; but after listening to me babble and drool about Josh “The Playboy” Faraday for years, including listening to me throw major shade at the insufferable string of heiresses and supermodels he dated before finally falling in love with regular-girl-from-Seattle Kat, we’ve both just sort of gotten used to chatting about Josh like Charlotte knows him personally.
“Oh my God, Tessa,” Charlotte sputters. “When’s Josh gonna pop the question?”
“As soon as he can ‘find a ring worthy of her.’ He’s going ring shopping on the down-low with Kat’s mom tomorrow.”
