“It’s not fair! I always have to do everything, and Jonah doesn’t have to doanything.”
“Yeah, bruh, I’m living on easy street over here. Who had to take out the trash?”
“I hate you!” Ethan shouted like a small child, reverting to grammar-school behavior. It was as baffling as it was embarrassing.
“What is all the shouting?”
“Oh God,” she murmured. Her humiliation was complete because now Ryan had entered the maelstrom that was her life. “Hang up,” Amy muttered to her mother. “Hangup.”
“Hi, Ryan,” her mother said. “Sorry to disturb. I just wanted to check on the kids while Amy is out of town.”
“No problem, Barb. But why is everyone shouting?”
“Ethan wants to go to Connor’s house, and he was asking Amy since you said no.”
Her mother could stir up trouble without lifting a finger, and so damn blithely, too. It would almost be admirable if it wasn’t so maddening.
“Amy?” Ryan paused. “Where is Amy?”
“In the car. With me.”
“You’re with Amy?” Ryan sounded terribly confused.
“I’m driving her and her friend.”
“Wait, what? I thought she was at the lake doing some art something.”
Some art something! Proving once again that no one listened to her. Amy hunched down farther in her seat.
“She is! So am I,” her mother said.
“You’re doing the art thing, too? But I—”
“I don’t have time to explain right now,” her mother said. “Kiss the kids for me.”
“Barb, wait. She’s therewithsomeone?”
“Good night!” Barb clicked off. She looked at Amy and giggled. “That was fun. That man could never read a room.”
Oh, the irony. Amy let the weight of her humiliation bury her for a moment.
“How was your dinner, H?” her mother continued, oblivious to her daughter’s consternation, and looked at her other passenger in the rearview mirror.
Amy couldn’t stand it. She risked a glimpse of him, turning slightly in her seat to see him behind her mother. The poor man looked shell-shocked. He was probably going to pack his bags the moment they were back at the lake house.
“It was good. Had a burger.”
“I love a good burger myself. But you missed a very good taco casserole. I have made more taco casseroles than any human alive, and can you believe that Carol had the nerve to critique it? Too much chili powder, she said.” And then she launched into an explanation of all the ingredients in her taco casserole, why she had chosen them, and in what amounts.
Amy wanted to die with embarrassment. This was not how she’d wanted this night to end and privately feared how much worse it could get.
It did not feel good.
21
Harrison really did like the Bossy Posse, even if he felt like there was only so much more he could take.
When he and Amy returned from the café—and what a ride home that had been—they were hardly given a moment to breathe before they were roped into playing a game of Cards Against Humanity.That’s when he began to feel like he was surfing on a sea of estrogen. But as much as his head hurt from so many women talking over each other at once (the pitch of their voices had reached a level not known to man, he was certain), he realized that deep down, this was the sort of thing he wished he could come home to after tournaments. To warmth and laughter. To good times and good food. It wasn’t a crowd he would ever have imagined for himself, but it was the crowd he needed just now.
