Page 100 of By All Accounts
It was only the second time the two of them had been in my house and Sophie eyed it with the same level of wonder she had the first time. The three of us ended up in the kitchen, and I poured Sophie and Daniel some wine, straight whiskey for myself because I didn’t have the interest in mixing something fancier. I had put a chicken in the oven when I got home from work, and it was almost roasted by the time Sophie had nearly finished her first glass of wine.
“Can we talk about the elephant in the room, please?” she asked with a tight smile.
“Unfortunately, I think you’re going to need to be more specific.”
I leaned against the counter and tried to melt the ice in my whiskey with sight alone. I could feel Sophie watching me and I could see Daniel watching her, and it took all my belief in their love for me to not brace myself for bad news.
“Daniel and I are getting married in four months.”
“I know.”
“He told me on the way over he asked you to be one of our witnesses,” she said.
I nodded, and one of the ice cubes clinked against the edge of the glass. I smiled, daring a look at her. She rubbed the stem of her wine glass between the pads of her pointer fingers, eyes on me.
“Is that an issue?” I asked her.
“No. I just…”
The oven timer dinged, and I turned away from both of them, busying myself with getting the chicken out, carving it, and then getting plates out of the cabinet. The two of them sat on one side of my counter and I stood on the other, our plates mirrors of each other.
“What happens after?” Sophie finally asked.
“I think that’s my line.”
“She’s being serious,” Daniel said.
I glanced at him. “So am I.”
Without anything else to say, I used the edge of my fork to cut a roasted potato into smaller pieces. I appreciated the discussion they were after, but they had eight years of history behind them and even though they were feeling secure in their relationship, I didn’t feel secure in the conversation. It wasn’t my place, having known them and loved them for a handful of weeks, to step in and make demands—or even requests—about what their future looked like, and I told them as much.
“It’s not just our future now,” Daniel said back. “It’s yours too. Ours as in the three of us, not just the two of us.”
“You have eight years. You’re engaged,” I reminded them. “What we have is nowhere near that serious.”
Sophie drained the rest of the wine in her glass and shoved it toward me for a refill. “Isn’t it? This feels serious, Finn.”
Letting out a long breath, I refilled her wine and returned her glass to her. She didn’t move to drink it, and I wondered if I was being too hard on them, expecting too much.
“I need you two to drive here,” I said softly, biting the tip of my tongue with my canine teeth until it hurt. “I can’t make demands.”
“Do it anyway,” she said sharply.
It was obvious the two of them were not going to let me off the hook, so I gave Sophie what she wanted.
“What is there to say, Soph? I don’t know what a future looks like because we have separate lives. The two of you have your house, and I have my house. You have your ring and your wedding date and your honeymoon, and I have the two of you, but the playing field is not equal here.”
“Those are not all facts,” she shot back.
“Which of those is an opinion?”
“That the playing field isn’t equal.”
I scoffed, an irritated heat building at the base of my spine. “Would you call off the wedding if I asked you to?”
“No,” Daniel answered before she could.
“But if she asked?”
