Page 63 of Best Kind of Trouble
“Really?” he asks with wide eyes. “It’s a box for pranks?”
Hannah laughs. “Yeah, there’s a teeny-tiny hole in it, because it’s for his?—”
“Hannah,” Travis says in hisoh, Hannahtone, fond and exasperated.
She laughs harder, pressing a hand to her mouth.
The familiar sight sends another wave of guilt through me, because there’s no way she’d be this relaxed if she knew where I’d had my mouth an hour ago.
“What, Hannah?” Ollie asks. “What’s the joke? You know I don’t like not knowing.”
“I’ll tell you when you’re eighteen,” Travis says with an easy smile, then nods to me. “How’s it going at the brewery?”
I glance at Hannah, who’s studying the menu. “I think I’ll take the Fifth.”
“Well, thanks for setting us up with Mick, man. He’s pretty good. It was more fun with you, but I get that you’re too busy to make it work.”
I nod. “Yeah. There’s a lot to do. Going to be busy for a while.”
My sister peers up at me. “Iseriouslyhope you’ve been nice to Briar. But nottoonice. I know how you feel about lazy dating.”
“What’s lazy dating?” Ollie asks before darting a glance at his father. “Come on, Dad, I don’t have to wait until I’m eighteen for everything. I don’t want to waste my whole life away waiting.”
Travis smiles and tousles his son’s hair. “Sure, but I don’t think you’re going to find it that interesting. What Hannah’s saying is that Liam sometimes dates his coworkers because hedoesn’t want to go to the trouble of finding someone he actually likes.”
I lean back in my chair, crossing my arms. “What does hypocrisy feel like? I’ve always wondered.”
Travis gives me the sheepish grin of a man who started fucking my sister while she was, technically, working as his nanny. It’s only because he’s good to her that I let him get away with that.
“It tastes like ice cream,” Hannah says with a grin. “That’s why people indulge so often.”
The server comes by. Ollie’s the first to order, asking for the make-your-own-pizza option and showing the server his design. She pretends to be interested in his complicated drawing. He gets fidgety as the rest of us order our food, probably because Hannah goes last and takes her sweet time.
“Is that box really not for me?” Ollie whispers in a gush, no longer able to hold back.
“Oh, it’s for you, all right,” I say with a grin. “Promise to follow all the directions?”
He casts a sidelong glance at Hannah, his little face dead serious. “You know it’s Hannah who needs help following directions.”
“So definitely work on it with your dad instead of her.”
It’s a kombucha-making kit I got from a friend who runs a small local company. The closest I can get to introducing him to the art of making beer without Travis getting on my case.
“Are you talking about me?” Hannah asks, her eyes sparkling, as the server walks away.
“Yes,” Ollie and I answer at the same time, and then we fist-bump each other again, laughing.
“Dad, can we try the claw machine?” Ollie asks. “I know they’re designed to make people fail, but I think I figured out how to beat the system. Imade a diagram.”
He flashes the back of his pizza picture, and sure enough, there’s a diagram of a claw machine.
Ollie’s seven, doing academic work usually reserved for middle schoolers, but he’s not going to beat that claw machine. No way, no how. From the defeated look on Travis’s face, he knows he’s about to lose twenty bucks to his kid’s mission. But I’ll give the guy this, he goes with grace. I pat him on the back as he leaves the booth with Ollie.
“Godspeed.”
Hannah laughs, then whispers conspiratorially, “I called ahead and bribed the host twenty bucks to reposition the animals so Ollie has a better chance.”
“So instead of Travis wasting twenty dollars on a shitty stuffed animal, you’ll have wasted forty.”
