Page 36 of Betting on the Best Friend
“I didn’t win,” Sami says as Madison and Oliver settle into the love seat.
“She didn’t win by so much that she had to bribe her way back into the competition,” I say.
“This is the tea I’m here for.” Madison snuggles into Oliver’s side. “Tell me.”
“Sami accidentally set up Ruby with her first stalker,” Josh says.
“Ruby does make a great first impression,” Oliver says.
I snort. “Josh means I went on a date withSami’sfirst stalker.”
Oliver nods. “That makes more sense.”
“I’ll catch y’all up on that part later,” Sami says. “Ruby was about to tell us about Charlie’s date.”
“The library patron,” Oliver says. “Cindy? Charlie was stoked to go out with her.”
“Sydney,” I correct, ignoring a prickle of irritation. Josh gets stoked. Joey gets stoked.Stokedis a dumb way to describe Charlie about doing anything except rock climbing.
“They’re still out,” Sami reports. “We’re getting the details on the bowling part.”
“They looked like they were having a good time,” I say.
“Like how?” Madison asks. “What was the body language? Could you hear what they were talking about?”
“She found reasons to touch him. Leaning into him, congratulating him if his ball didn’t go in the gutter. Couldn’t hear them much. The music was loud.” This is how we’ve always debriefed first dates with each other. I could give them more details, but I’m annoyed. Why are we talking about Charlie? This is supposed to be aboutmydate.
“Did Charlie reciprocate?” Sami asks. “Sending signals, being touchy and stuff?”
I remember how many times I saw their heads close together, smiling and talking. “He looked like he was listening to her a lot and they seemed to have a thousand inside jokes.” Which is also annoying.
“But he didn’t have his hands all over her?” Madison asks.
“Ew,” I say before I can filter myself. “Charlie’s not like that.”
This statement meets with dead silence. Everyone in the room exchanges looks with at least one other person except me.
“What?” I demand. “He’s not.”
“He’s like that with you,” Josh says.
“You’re constantly in his lap, or going piggyback somewhere,” Madison says.
“Or wrestling in the pool or he’s tousling your hair,” Sami adds.
Oliver throws in his two cents. “You do that thing where you drag him around by the belt loop when you want him to follow you somewhere.”
“But that’s. . . us,” I say. “We’ve always been like that.”
“Kind of?” Sami says. “More since Niles.”
Are they trying to imply something here? “Yeah, because it would have been disrespectful to Niles to sit on another guy’s lap.”
Oliver shrugs. “It’s just Charlie.”
I blink at him. “It wouldn’t bother you if Madison sat in Josh’s lap?”
“I doubt it,” Oliver says, “but let’s not find out.”
