Page 156 of Forever

“Fire!” someone shouted.

The kids were far away from the mayhem, but they started screaming and running around. Tanner picked up Jacob to make sure he didn’t get anywhere near the fire. Everyone else started running toward their kids, slipping in the pudding. I heard someone gagging, but I could barely see. I wiped more pudding out of my eyes.

“Robert Hunter!” Brooklyn yelled.

Nigel sprinted toward the fire with a fire extinguisher, blasting the spreading flames in white.

A crunching noise made me turn my head. Half the table started to fall through the floor. It tilted, sliding all the food, pudding, and any remaining decorations down into the apartment below Tanner’s. The candles that teetered over immediately went out though, being snuffed by heaps of pudding. The table looked like the fucking Titanic, sinking into the ocean.

And then the rest of the floor started creaking.

I pulled Brooklyn farther away as the floor beneath the table collapsed, sending everything through with a deafening crash.

Bee almost slipped into the hole, but Mason grabbed her waist, pulling her to his chest as they both toppled backward into more lights. He reached behind him for purchase, and grabbed the corner of a cloth. He pulled downward and the cloth fell from the portrait, revealing Tanner in some kind of old-fashioned military uniform riding a horse.

The music stopped and everything was eerily quiet.

“My relics!” Nigel screamed, breaking the silence. He tossed the fire extinguisher to the side and ran to the edge of the broken floor. He stared down into the hole. I’d never seen Nigel so upset before.

I didn’t know what to do. I blinked and looked around at the carnage. All the beautiful lights were flickering off and on. The fire was out, but the tree was still smoking. People were helping each other up off the slippery floor. Everyone was covered in pudding. And there was a fucking hole in the middle of Tanner’s dining room floor.

“Good one, Sanders,” Rob said.

Brooklyn shook her head.

There was no way Brooklyn had been a part of this…

“Rob, you didn’t,” Daphne said. She looked so disappointed in him.

“Yeah I did,” Rob said. “Best prank ever. A classic Hunter Sanders mess around.” He lifted his hand for Brooklyn to high five.

She pushed his hand out of the way. “I did not help with this! You could have killed someone!”

“James?” Rob held up his hand even though James was on the other side of the hole in the floor and couldn’t possible high five him.

“You know perfectly well that I had nothing to do with this,” he said. “We both tried to stop you.”

Brooklyn turned around. “I’m so sorry.” She looked back and forth between me and Tanner. “I did try to stop him. But he kept saying I owed him a favor from 16 years ago and he wouldn’t listen to reason. And then he gave me puppy dog eyes.”

What favor?

“And he said if I told you that he’d do the prank on our wedding day instead,” Brooklyn said.

So Rob blackmailed Brooklyn the day before our wedding? Seriously? And did all…this? What the hell was wrong with him? I turned to look at Tanner. I was expecting him to freak out. But a smile slowly stretched across his face. And then he started laughing. Jacob looked up at him and started laughing too.

“What are you doing?” Rob asked. “You’re not supposed to be laughing.”

“It was a prank, was it not?” Tanner said.

“Yeah but…it was on you.”

Tanner laughed louder. “Hilarious.”

Rob just stared at him. He didn’t seem to know what to do with Tanner’s reaction. “But…” Rob’s voice trailed off. “I set your Christmas tree on fire.”

Tanner waved his hand through the air and laughed harder.

“And broke your couch. And blew up all your pumpkin decorations. And ruined your speech. And got chocolate pudding on everything and everyone.”

---