Page 4 of Betting on the Best Friend
I have to redirect her to save her from herself a couple of times when she’s short—er, terse with a patron, and before I leave work, I swing by the desk with a small gift.
“What’s this?” she asks when I hand her a wadded ball of packing tape the size of a grapefruit.
“Improvised explosion deterrent. Set it on the desk and every time you feel yourself getting mad again, pound it. Quiet and nondestructive but satisfying.”
She hefts it. “Not big enough to be Niles’s ego.” She sets it on the desk and thumps it with her fist. “But not bad. Good idea, Charles.”
“Text if you need anything else.”
She grunts. “I’ll be fine.”
I leave her in irked chipmunk mode. I know she’ll be fine because I know what’s waiting for her next: me.
I spend the drive to Oliver’s place listening to my Ruby playlist and thinking. I’ve titled it Gems so she won’t guess it’s about her, but the songs have tortured me and comforted me as I curated it.
I skip right to “Golden Hour” by JVKE because that’s what loving Ruby feels like. Like a perfect late summer afternoon as it’s close to sliding into fall, drenched in warmth but with that snap in the air that says new adventures are coming.
It’s sitting on her back patio, taking my orders for her next ambitious plan, whether it’s a new library program or a matchmaking scheme. It’s watching her eyes sparkle as she dreams of possibilities, then draws up their blueprints. It’s arguing about movies but knowing when we love the same ones that she’s the only one who gets them like I get them.
I let the playlist play through “Earned It” and play “Vapor” three times, because that’s also the experience of wanting Ruby. Needing to breathe her in. Needing more of her all the time.
Only now that she’s coming out of hibernation, I need to make sure it’s me she sees when she opens her eyes, so I skip to “Ruin the Friendship” by Taylor Swift. It’s time to actively change my footing with Ruby. I’m done waiting for her to figure out on her own that we’re meant to be.
By the time I knock on Oliver’s door, I’m planning my own Romeo-level monologue except full of real, earned love and more than a list of reasons she’s pretty.
“Just in time,” Oliver says as he opens his door. He used to live in the apartment across the hall from me, but he moved into the Grove last summer at the opposite end of the building from Ruby. Maybe I’ll stop by after the game, see if she’s processed the engagement, if she’s ready to figure out that I’m her next step.
I amble in behind Oliver, thinking about the possibilities, when I stop short. Oliver’s girlfriend—no, fiancée now—Madison is sitting on the sofa. She’s usually here when I am, but Ruby’s other two roommates, Sami and Ava, are with her, all of them perched on the sofa like they’re ready to pounce.
I sniff the air. “It smells like pepperoni and dirty tricks in here.”
Sami reaches for the pizza box on the coffee table and tilts it toward me, a coaxing expression on her face. “Just pepperoni.”
“Y’all here to watch the game?” I ask without any hope. The TV is off.
“Spurs suck,” Madison says.
“Who are they playing?” Ava asks. She will cheer for the team with the mascot she thinks could win in a fight. Like if the Raptors play the Nets, she’s taking the Raptors, but if it’s the 76ers versus the Heat, she has an existential crisis because “how would they even fightwithout corporeal forms?”
“You’re going for the Rockets,” I tell her.
“A rocket would beat a spur.” She nods, looking satisfied.
I give Oliver a considering look. “And yet the game isn’t on.”
He takes one of the armchairs. “It doesn’t start for another half hour. You might as well sit and get this over with.”
I take the last open seat, the armchair facing him, which puts the sofa—and the women on it—between us.
Ava’s regarding me like I’m a specimen in her lab, Sami ignores me in favor of the cat on her lap, and Madison—well, Madison’s smile is working so hard to be innocent that it can only mean trouble.
“Niles got engaged,” she announces.
When I only lift an eyebrow, she looks disappointed. “You already knew?”
“Ruby told me,” I confirm.
The roommates exchange a glance like I’ve answered a question.
