Page 61 of Wilde About You

My phone rang. I snatched it off the nightstand like an anxious, lovesick teen. It wasn't Sadie.

"Hey, Ro, aren't you supposed to be working?"

"I'm on a break, and I got a text from Nate that said you fucked up with Sadie, so I'm calling to give you my twin cents. Get it? Instead of two cents." He laughed. I didn't. "Shit, I've been watching too many cartoons. Nate just said that Sadie caused you to crash last season, so you stomped out of the house like a crybaby."

"Well, fuck Nate and fuck you, too. I don't want to go into any details, but there were no tears. At least not on my side."

"Wildes don't cry and all that crock of shit. I assume since Dad told me this girl was the one, that you are already getting spiffed up to go after her and let her know she's the one."

"Nope. Sitting on my bed doing nothing."

"Crybaby," he said.

"Gonna hang up now."

"Nah, wait. I called to let you know that you should go after her because she's the one. Or is she? Maybe Dad and Nate are reading it all wrong. Is she just a good time friend?"

Leave it to Ronan to put the whole thing in simple black and white terms. The answer was easy. "She's the one, Ro. I love everything about her."

"Well then, my favorite twin⁠—"

"I'm your only twin."

"Yeah, guess so. Go after her, dickface. I've got to get back to work. See ya later."

"Bye." I typed Family Portraits into the search bar on my phone. It was about seven miles from the ranch. Her interview was at eleven. I didn't want to throw off her focus by showing up before the interview. I smiled thinking about the irony of that thought. I'd get there at eleven and wait for her to finish.

I had just enough time to shower and change. I grabbed my keys. "Remember the truck is dry as a bone," Dad called as I stomped through the house.

"Thanks for that." I tossed my keys on the counter. "Where's Nate? I need to borrow his car."

"He just left," Dad replied.

"What the hell? I guess that leaves me without transportation."

"Seems like we've got three good dirt bikes in the shed," Dad suggested.

I sighed. "Guess I'll take one of those. Or did you burn all the gas out of those, too?"

"Nope. Should be fine. Just don't get a ticket for riding one on the street."

"If I do, I'll send it your way for draining my gas tank." I walked out to the shed and pulled out Zander's bike. It was the newest and the least likely to break down on the road. I fired it up and climbed on. Something about this whole thing felt futile. There was a very good chance that Sadie wanted nothing more to do with me. She was my one, but what if I wasn't hers? Sadie had been all over the world. I'd traveled but only to snowy mountains for competitions. She'd experienced so much in her short life, but I'd hardly gotten past the partying stage in mine.

It was midday, so traffic was light through town. I kept my eyes peeled for the local police. There was nothing they liked better than to see a Wilde breaking some kind of law. There was a time in our late teens when Dad was called to the sheriff station every other night. He finally put an end to our lawless escapades by declaring that the next kid to get arrested was going to stay in jail. He was done bailing us out.

Family Portraits was in a strip mall between a Dollar Store and a nail salon. It was close to eleven. A woman was pushing twin toddlers out in a stroller. One was bawling his head off, while the other sucked hard on a bottle of juice. He tossed the bottle far and wide in the parking lot as the woman pushed them across to the car. The second toddler, realizing his drink was gone, started crying, too. The mom looked harried and flushed and done with her twins. I parked my bike, got off and picked up the bottle. She looked up from putting the screamer into the car. At first her expression showed alarm, then she saw the bottle in my hand. She sighed and flipped a loose hair back off her forehead. "Thanks. Twins," she said flustered.

I nodded. "I'm a twin and yes, we're stinkers."

She smiled. "Thanks again."

I walked over to a bench under the awning at the market on the corner. It was shady and out of view of the photo studio. I waited for fifteen minutes but never saw Sadie. Maybe Dad got the time wrong, or maybe she'd decided not to bother with a crummy family portrait job. In that case, I was back to square one.

I gave it another five minutes, then walked into the photo studio. The photographer, a young man, was hanging up a new backdrop, a beach in Hawaii, in the far corner of the shop. He stopped to look me up and down and smiled as I walked inside. A stern-looking woman was working on a ledger at the front counter.

"How can I help you?" she asked.

"Uh, I was actually looking for someone. Sadie Rivers. I thought she might be here interviewing for a job."