Page 28 of Good For Me

Deb only put me on the schedule until two, but I stick around through the rest of Brie’s shift since I drove her to work this morning—and because I have no desire to go back to my apartment, where there’s no distraction from thoughts about my weekend. So instead I do her prep work and deal with Lou and the guys so she can concentrate on her other tables and rack up the tips. When her shift ends at four, I wave goodbye to the guys—who are thankfully distracted by a game of poker—and drive us both to her place, only to find the driveway filled with cars.

“Fucking baseball season,” Brie mutters. “Come on, you can say hi to Chris while I change and grab clothes for tomorrow.”

“Wait—we’re doing this at mine?” I ask, trying to push down the swell of panic. River is on the schedule this afternoon and there’s no way to get up to the apartment without walking through the bar.

She gives me aduhlook and gestures at the cars. “My house is full of dudes,” she says. “We’re not having a girls’ night in there.” I bite back a groan. Her fiancé, Chris, is a huge sports fan and their house is pretty much filled with his friends every Sunday, regardless of what sport is in season.

“So you’re spending the night?” I ask.

“Depends on how much tequila you give me.” She gives me a wicked grin. “On the other hand, if the Dodgers play well I might want to go home after all. Chris gets all riled up after a win.”

I mock-shudder. “This is information I did not need.”

She leans across the gearshift towards me, eyes glinting. “For his birthday, I bought myself a pair of panties in their colors and you should have seen the way he—”

I slap my hands over my ears. “Not listening, la la la!”

She cackles. “No fair. You never let me give you my juicy sex details.”

“If you wanted to share about your sex life, maybe you shouldn’t have gotten engaged to mycousin.”

Chris is my uncle Dave’s son. I’m actually currently living in his old bedroom at the apartment over the bar. On one hand, it’s awesome for me that Chris and Brie are together—two of my favorite people being in a relationship means I get to see both of them a lot more. On the other hand, my best friend has been banging my cousin since we were teenagers, which is total nightmare fuel. Especially because Brie has a big damn mouth.

I follow her into the house where not one of the half dozen guys in her living room even look up from the TV when we enter. “One of these days I swear I’m going to come in wearing nothing but a thong and see if any of them even notice.”

“Thong?” one of the guys asks, without looking up. “Who said something about a thong?”

Brie rolls her eyes while I snort. “I guess sex does trump baseball. Who knew?”

“Baby!” Chris calls, grinning at her. “Get that hot ass over here and give me a kiss. The Dodgers are up to bat, we need some good luck.”

“I cannot believe you ended up with a jock,” I tell her, and she sighs.

“I know. It’s a tragedy, really.”

Of course she’s full of shit. I don’t think I’ve ever seen two people more in love than Chris and Brie. They’ve been completely inseparable since the day I introduced them at my thirteenth birthday party—my first boy girl party, the peak of middle school excitement. No one else expected it to go anywhere—who the heck ends up with their middle school boyfriend?—but I knew from that first night that they were made for each other.

Some people really do have a soul mate. And other people bounce from a total dud boyfriend to a notorious player in the space of eight hours.

My cousin doesn’t even look at me until after he’s stuck his tongue down my bestie’s throat and has her settled daintily on his knee. To anyone who doesn’t know them, they must make the strangest pair. Chris is a jock through and through, a total dude-bro. I can probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen him dressed in anything other than basketball shorts, a team t-shit, and a backwards ball cap. Brie is a lot more like me—or at least the way I used to be. Her hair is currently a shocking shade of fuchsia (it was teal last week), she sports a nose and eyebrow ring, and she’s currently working on a full sleeve of tattoos down her left arm. No one would ever look at the two of them and think they make sense.

But somehow, they work. They’re so happy together it almost hurts to look at them.

“You smell like bacon,” Chris murmurs happily, his face buried in her cleavage. “Did you bring food home for me?”

“‘Course I did,” she says, using that soft girly voice I’ve only ever heard when she’s talking to him. “Wings and fries.”

“God I love you,” he moans.

“You’re both disgusting, you know that?” I call.

“Jassy!” Chris says, finally tearing his eyes—and mouth—away from my friend. “Come over to watch the game with us?”

“You’re hilarious,” I say drily, and he laughs. I’m not what you would call a sporty person.

“How you doing, girl? Have a good birthday?” Chris gave me my present the last time I saw him—a vinyl copy of Skrillex’s Bangarang I’ve been dying to get my hands on—because our little family doesn’t really do big gatherings. With Chris’s dad running a bar and my grandfather running a breakfast place, the hours never matched up.

“It’s your birthday?” Tommy, Chris’s best friend, asks. “How did I not know this? You’re the love of my life, I should know when your birthday is.”