Page 1 of Betting on the Best Friend
Chapter One
Ruby
I drop my phonelike it bit me and hiss like I want to bite it back. It only makes a faint thud as it hits the library carpet since I’m already sitting on the floor.
“You okay there?” Charlie asks as it lands in front of him. He’s my only BFF I don’t live with, but since we’re work spouses, I see him more than my three roommates. We’re picnicking in the rec room for lunch because it’s rainy, and we don’t have an event scheduled in here today.
“It . . . I . . . he . . . gah!” I point at the phone lying face down.
Charlie picks it up, holding it so my face unlocks it, then turns it to look at the Instagram photo of my ex. It takes a couple of seconds, but then one of his eyebrows goes up. “Wait, are you kidding me? Niles is engaged?”
“Yes. My ex that I was with for five years, who I barely broke up with, is engaged. And getthis.” I grab the phone and stab the picture, right over my ex’s dumb face as he smiles next to a woman holding up her hand to show a respectable solitaire. “This is at the restaurant where he proposed tome.”
“And where you dumped him when he asked you.”
“I remember. I was there.” I scan the caption. It was posted by Niles’s fiancée, who tagged him. “Did you read it? ‘When you know, you know! Can’t wait to make my soulmate my sole mate.’Ew.”
Charlie rubs his smooth-shaven chin. “I’m conflicted. That pun is both clever and cringe.”
I shudder. “Can we normalize not calling people our ‘mates’?”
He nods. “Fine. It’s strictly cringe. But why are you even following Niles?”
“I’m not. I check in every now and then to make sure I’m still winning at life. It’s called, um, monitoring?” I barrel on when Charlie gives me a skeptical look. “It’s called monitoring, and all Gen Z-ers do it to their exes.”
“I’m a Millennial. Thank you for explaining the thing you just made up.”
Charlie is only three years older than me, but since my birth year starts with a two, he likes to point out this “massive” generational difference. “Anyway, the creepy algorithm puts Niles content in my feed as a recommended follow sometimes. And now it’s offering me his fiancée. As if. Just proves people are smarter than algorithms.”
“Are they?” Charlie has raised an eyebrow. He has reached peak skepticism. “Because it sounds like your feed is serving you exactly what you go looking for.”
“Stop being on the side of the nonhuman algorithm.”
“Right, sorry. So, based on your monitoring, who is winning life?”
“Since he only posts golf pictures, I am, obviously. But now he’s going to think he is. Look at this post again. ‘When you know, you know’? That’s some serious shade.”
We’re facing each other, cross-legged on the floor with our lunches between us, so he leans across them and cranes his head to read my screen. “Why? Do you know this Tally-Day-Go?”
“No.” I’ve never seen the pretty blonde.
“Then how can she be shading you?”
“He’sdoing it. I bet he told her to put that as a dig at me.” It took Niles five years before he brought me to the fanciest steakhouse in Austin and said he felt like it was time for us to get married. He followed it up over the next few minutes by informing me that he’d give me a budget so I could buy myself a ring, and that we’d be moving to El Paso in a few years when his parents retired.Informedme. Not consulted me. Just laid it out like a done deal.
Sadly, that wasn’t the moment I dumped him.Thathappened when he ended his proposal—no, his informational session—by saying he was glad I was finally mature enough for marriage.
So, yes, meeting and getting engaged to someone this fast? Captioning itWhen you know, you know? Very much a slap in the face.
“Wasn’t the breakup six months ago?” Charlie asks.
“Ish.”
He pushes some noodles around his lunch container. “I’m surprised this bothers you.”
“It wouldn’t if it didn’t feel like he got engaged fast to be petty.”
“Is itthatfast? It’s felt like a long six months.”
