Page 1 of The Fantasy League
ONE
SCARLETT
I’d been caught red-handed.
The pool house door creaked open and closed in the distance, and heels clanked against the hardwood floor, making their way toward where I was standing in the kitchen.
Click-clack.
Click-clack.
“Have you ever been so in love you couldn’t breathe?”the male narrator’s voice boomed from my computer speakers.
“Scarlett, I swear to fucking God! If you’re listening to those cheesy romance novels again, I’m going to throw youandyour computer into the pool,” Mae called down the hall to me. The sound of her heels quickening their pace drowned out the sound of the latest audiobook I was listening to.
No, no, no. Not again.
There was absolutely no way that I was going to be able to set down the pan in my hands, take off my oven mitts,anddive for my computer before she made it to me.
Shit.
In my peripheral vision, I saw Mae turn the corner and charge her way past me, swiping my laptop off the island and dramatically slamming it shut. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” Her lips pressed together in a tight line and her eyebrows raised an inch on her forehead. I didn’t tell her that though. If I had, I had no doubt she would’ve booked an emergency Botox appointment with her dermatologist. “You’re already on what, your fourth book boyfriend this month?”
She said that like it was a bad thing.
And… it was the fifth, but who was counting?
I didn’t know there was a problem with havingtoo manybook boyfriends. So what if I coped with my lack of a love life by living vicariously through fictional characters?
There were worse crimes.
“Put it down!” I shouted, setting down the pan in my hands onto a trivet before attempting to grab my laptop, which was now raised over Mae’s head, with oven-mitt-covered hands. I refused to let the fact that she stood well over six feet in her red-bottom stilettos stop me.
“Fine.” I ignored her eye roll as she reluctantly handed over my beloved laptop. Walking over to the opposite side of the kitchen, she opened the utensil drawer and pulled out two forks. “Scarlett, babe. I say this with love, but we need to get you laid.” The disappointed look she threw my way while she plopped down onto the barstool directly across from me didn’t go unnoticed.
Over the last twenty-four years, I’d mastered the art of deciphering Mae’s microexpressions. The look she was giving me right now might’ve fazed those who didn’t know her well, but I’d gotten this look precisely once a day for… well, twenty-four years.
That had given me plenty of time to master the nasty habit of purposely zoning out of the conversation when she gave me that look which annoyed her even more. Much like I was doing now.
Mae and I had been sisters since diapers. And while wetechnicallyhad different parents, they purposely raised us together like we were siblings, so it was really just a matter of semantics.
My mom and Mae’s dads had been roommates in college their freshman year. Throughout the years, they’d grown to be inseparable. So, as good friends do, they made a pact that they would continue to do life together no matter where life took them.
And they did just that.
After Desmond and James got married and my mom got settled into her career, they bought two houses right across the street from each other in a quiet neighborhood in Sarasota.
A year later, when Mom was considering getting a sperm donor and starting a family, Mae’s dads decided they would begin the adoption process. Just over a year and a half later, Mae and I lay side by side in our cribs, attempting to squirm our way out of our matching swaddles.
To the outside eye, our family might not have been conventional, but our lives were filled with unwavering love from three parents who would have moved heaven and earth for us.
And that was all either of us could’ve ever asked for.
But two years ago, our family was rocked when Mom passed from cancer and Mae’s dads decided that they were retiring to the Keys. The four of us video called and visited as often as our schedules allowed, but an overwhelming sense of loss lingered among us now that Mom wasn’t around.
Although our family looked different now, Mae and I had stuck to the promise that we made as kids, to keep up the tradition that our parents had and to never stray too far from one another in life.
We went from school night sleepovers to college roommates. And even as we grew into grown adults with bills and careers, we still held tightly to the vow we made as children. Mae had stuck by my side as Mom’s cancer peeled her away from me and she helped pick up the pieces when I thought that all was lost.
