Page 33 of Only Fate

“God, he’s such an asshole,” I groan.

“I can deal with assholes. It’s part of the job. But the shirts? Those are what I’m struggling with.”

I throw my head back, laughing.

Rhett is dressed in another one of his Hawaiian shirts, this one a neon green.

I’m never one to knock someone’s sense of style. I’m all about self-expression. But he always looks like he’s ready for someone to shove a margarita in his hand and a lei around his neck. It makes him look fun, and he’sfarfrom fun.

“I’m telling Brielle to ask for all the flower shirts in the divorce,” I tell Adrian before motioning toward the table. “Jot that down somewhere.”

“He’d probably give her the house before sacrificing the shirts.”

“Thank you for that inside information. Please tell Rhett he has twelve days to vacate the premises.”

“Nope, I told you, we don’t speak legalities at parties.”

I cross my arms. “What do we talk about, then?”

He drums his fingers along his chin. “How about what you’re doing later tonight?”

“Eh, probably burning yourinside jokesnote,” I say more teasingly than I should have. I gulp, realizing my mistake, and grab the cup. My lips pucker at the sweet strawberry lemonade when I take a sip.

He smiles in amusement. “Why would you do that?”

“Ava read it and ratted me out to my friends, and now, they want to read it.”

“It’s pretty much written in code. They won’t understand it.”

“Do you honestly think they won’t decode a Taylor Swift lyric?”

“Fair point.” He looks around, draping his arm along the back of my chair. “What was your favorite birthday party growing up?”

There’s a brief silence before I answer. I didn’t walk into this party expecting to have a conversation with Adrian. Though this is how it was in the past too.

We’d spend hours asking each other question after question.

“When we were ten, River let his friend use my video game controller. It was decked out and hard to find, and I’d spent days gluing rainbow rhinestones onto it in a specific pattern. His friend ended up being a sore loser and threw my remote into the pool, ruining it. I refused to speak to River for a week, and our party was that weekend. I insisted we have separate ones. With that short of time, my parents decided the only thing they could do was hold parties on opposite sides of the yard.” I laugh and can’t stop myself from grinning at the memory.

“River convinced my friends to ditch my party and go to his side. I was furious, but when I stomped over to pour punch over his head, I found it was all a setup. He’d put up a table with adecorate your own controllerstation. And that year, his gift to me was a controller, the same as I’d had, with the same rhinestone design. My mom said he had stayed up all night working on it.”

Sure, as twins, River and I fought, but we never stayed angry with each other for long. One of us would end up sliding a goofy note under the other’s door, or my mother would help us bake the other’s favorite dessert as anI’m sorry.

“I’m a little disappointed you never showed me your rhinestone skills,” Adrian says. “I had plenty of stuff we could’ve decked out in my dorm room.”

I chuckle. “My brother definitely would’ve known something was up then.”

“The rhinestone artwork would’ve confirmed we were dating.”

I wince at the worddating.

We never used the term, but our actions fit the definition in every way. It was nice having our hangouts and conversations in secret sometimes. It was something that only belonged to us.

We were too busy and didn’t want to put a label on anything between us.

We were Adrian and Essie.

No labels. No devotions. No expectations.

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