Page 27 of Betting on the Best Friend
Twenty minutes later, we’re at a small wooden table with our taco remnants in front of us. Katie had told Sydney about Ruby’s matchmaking last year, and how the girls have flipped the bet on her. Sydney wanted to hear my plan to get Ruby before they do, and I’ve just finished laying it out for her.
She takes a sip of horchata, her face thoughtful. “You’re going to Ruby Ruby.”
“I what?”
“You’re pulling an elaborate scheme with her specific psychology in mind to make her see what she really needs.”
“Uh, no. Ruby’s ideas work, but she does them on hard mode. I’m in the keep-it-simple camp.”
She gives me a deeply skeptical look. “Doing a deep sociological dive, compiling research, then distilling patterns into a list of actionable steps is thesimpleway of handling this?”
“Compared to Ruby? Yeah. If Ruby had been in charge of getting us to the moon, she’d have figured out how to contactalien life first and asked them to come to NASA to build us a rocket instead of just building the rocket.”
“If you’re just building the rocket, why not tell Ruby how you feel? Wouldn’t it get her thinking about you as more than a friend so she could decide if it’s what she wants?”
“It might. But it also might make her see me as a tidy solution. She’d get to prove she moved on from her ex, and since he never liked me, it would be a bonus.”
“You don’t think she’d want to be with you even if her ex was a nonissue?”
“I do, but I couldn’t be sure unless this is driven by Ruby. If I bring it up, she could slip into autopilot girlfriend mode because I’m already integrated. Nothing would have to change, and she doesn’t like change.”
Her forehead wrinkles, and she watches me for a couple of seconds before it smooths out.
“Gotta say, maybe pulling a Ruby is the smart thing to do. Let me see your list again.” I hand her my phone. “Put the first two steps together. See if you can get her to agree to double, and I’ll be your date. She’ll see you as Charlie the Hot Commodity.”
“You’re saying you want to be my wingman but let Ruby assume we’re dating?”
“It keeps me from wallowing, it helps her, it helps you. It’s a good plan.”
I tap the tabletop. “Hmm. It’s a very Ruby plan.”
Sydney holds up her water for a toast. “To contacting alien life.”
I snort and tap my Coke against her bottle. “To becoming a rocket scientist.”
Sydney drops me at the library with a smile on my face that lasts until I get to my cubicle where Ruby wipes it away with a single sentence.
She beams at me. “Iloveher for you.”
Not the intended result. Great.
Maybe Iamdoing this on hard mode.
Chapter Eleven
Ruby
When I come homefrom my Tuesday night date with Glenn, Oliver and Madison’s veterinarian, the debrief panel is Madison and her sister Katie, Oliver, Sami, and . . . Mrs. Lipsky, our elderly next-door neighbor? This is the third date I’ve gone on, and there’s no question someone will be waiting on our sofa to interrogate me. It’s only a question of who. Mrs. Lipsky is a curveball.
“Hi, Katie,” I say, slightly surprised to see her. She usually drops in on the weekends. “How are you doing, Mrs. Lipsky?”
She waves her arm to dismiss the question, the sleeve of her electric pink muumuu fluttering. “Don’t change the subject. How was your date?”
Katie and I exchange an amused glance acknowledging that there was no subject to change from.
I plop into an armchair and point at Madison. “You did not win the bet.”
Madison flops back against the sofa with a pout while Sami breaks into the chorus of her song, “Dumb Boy.”
