Page 157 of Forever

Nigel started laughing too. “Close call. Someone moved all my valuables out of the way. Lucky day for me. Good one, Robert.” He patted Rob’s chest and then peered into the hole again.

Rob shook his head. “I mean, yeah. It was a good prank. But…” his voice trailed off again.

“Good one, Young Robert,” Tanner agreed.

“I sent your dining room table through your floor, man,” Rob said. “Into your weird storage room down there. It’s complete chaos.”

“But you moved all my things out of the way first,” Nigel said. “Very respectful prank.”

“Indeed.” Tanner nodded. “And you didn’t even ruin my favorite portrait.” He pointed to the one of him on the horse. “Everything else is replaceable.”

Rob stared at it and then turned back to Tanner. “I caused hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage, man.”

Tanner laughed. “Who cares? It was funny.”

Rob just gaped at him.

“That’s like pennies to me, son.”

And I couldn’t help but laugh too. Tanner not caring about the carnage was more hilarious than the prank itself. And my laughing made Brooklyn laugh. And soon everyone was laughing as they wiped chocolate pudding off themselves. The news of it being pudding must have traveled quickly, since so many of us were there during that original chocolate pudding prank.

“You’re seriously not mad?” Rob asked.

Tanner kept laughing.

“Au contraire,” Nigel said and peered down the hole. “Master Tanner has been wanting to replace this table foryears. And my schedule was very busy and I had no time to figure out how to get it out of here. You saved me some time. I’ll leave it in the storage room. Thanks for the assistance.”

Rob shook his head. “I don’t believe this,” he said. “You’re not supposed to be thanking me. Look at your Christmas tree.” He pointed into the living room.

“The foam actually looks a bit like snow,” Tanner said.

Brooklyn laughed. “It really does.” She turned to Rob. “Feel better now?” she asked.

Rob smiled and shrugged.

I wasn’t sure what that was about, but Rob exhaled slowly and it looked like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders.

“Speaking of foam, we all need to clean off,” Nigel said. “Let’s go to the pool. I’ll put bubbles in it. It’ll be like a huge tub!” He looked so excited before he turned around and ran down the hall to their indoor pool.

This was the most ridiculous rehearsal dinner ever.

Brooklyn slid her hand into mine. “Race everyone to the big tub!” she yelled and started running, pulling me with her.

I couldn’t help but laugh

“What favor was Rob referring to?” I asked as we ran down the hall. We’d gotten a good head start on everyone else.

“Remember that party at your house sophomore year? Rob bet me I would scream his name. I had no intention of ever doing that. But then he pushed me into your bedroom. Which was dark. And I didn’t know you were there. I was scared and banged on the door, calling his name to let me out.”

I shook my head. That was such a cheap bet by Rob. And to hang it over her head 16 years later? Actually…that sounded just like him. “And the asking him if he felt better thing?”

We ran in silence for a moment. “He wanted to undo his wrong 16 years ago. With another prank. To erase the prank 16 years ago from our memories.” She smiled to herself. “It looked like it helped. I hope it did. Because we’re not doing that again.”

I laughed. Yeah, we were all trying to undo a lot of wrongs. But I did feel bad about all the damage to Tanner’s place. It was a good thing he’d just thought it was funny. “It definitely looked like it helped him.”

I pulled Brooklyn to a stop and opened the door to the pool. It was already overflowing with bubbles.

“This is so cool,” Brooklyn said. She looked up at me. “I don’t have a ton of great memories of you and pools. It seems fitting that we make that right tonight too.”

---