Page 53 of Betting on the Best Friend
And I wish it didn’t.
Chapter Eighteen
Ruby
I spend my Sundayoff by sleeping late, then indulging in one of the huge omelets Josh often makes everyone on the weekends.
By noon, everyone has left, busy with plans. It leaves me with the whole condo to myself, which is rare.
I enjoy it for the first hour. Then it’s too quiet. When I curl up to read a new release I brought home yesterday, the silence is distracting.
I give up and start wondering what my parents are up to. Maybe I should go over there. Or see if Madi and Oliver need the cats entertained. Or if Charlie is out with Sydney, and if not, maybe we should do a debrief onhisdate, so I can compliment his improved PDA. No doubt now that he likes her.
It’s kind of weird I’ve never seen Charlie on a date before last week. Part of me thought he would be awkward, but it shouldn’t surprise me that he wasn’t. He doesn’t talk to hear himself talk, but he does talk to people easily. He can throw down when things get outrageous in the condo, usually at Madi’s instigation.
I grin, remembering a party they threw right after my breakup, trying to distract me. They’d made up a ridiculous premise,saying it was for Sami’s birthday, and chose the theme “S for Sami.” We could only drink or eat foods that started with S and we had to dress in S clothes. Oliver and Charlie came, pretending they were there for Sami when they were there for me. Charlie always is, even when it means he’s wearing a Super Mario shirt with seersucker pants to a made-up party and doing a dramatic reenactment of a terrible movie calledSoul Survivors.
I’d been doing a lot of post-breakup crying, but that night had made me cry tears of laughter.
I pull up a picture Madison posted that day and text it to him.
Was thinking about this day
lol
Alton wouldn’t have survived it
Alton who
Don’t know. Forgot.
Exactly
Done with shoe stuff. Need to touch grass. Walk?
Treehouse?
Yeah. Be there soon.
Park in Josh’s spot
I slip on some sneakers, check the weather on my phone, and skip a sweatshirt. It’s seventy degrees at Nap O’Clock in the afternoon, that sleepy time when you barely have energy on a regular day and don’t need to have energy on a Sunday.
I sit on the patio to wait for Charlie, enjoying the spring air until it’s disrupted by a rude shout.
“Kiss me, hot stuff!”
I turn to glare up at Ahab, who is birdcalling me from Mrs. Lipsky’s balcony. “At least buy me dinner first, you peeping pervert.”
“You tell him, sweetie,” Mrs. Lipsky says. “He won’t listen to me. I’ve been trying. Watch this.” She holds up a treat in front of him. “Say ‘hello, friend,’ Ahab.”
“Bossy!” he squawks.
Mrs. Lipsky scowls, and I giggle.
“Manners,” she says.
Ahab makes a flatulent sound, and I laugh harder. Finding it funny must be the stinky fruit of growing up with only brothers.
