Page 24 of Betting on the Brainiac

“No, Madi. He’s only the bailiff so he’ll stop pacing,” Josh says. Joey makes an annoyed noise, but he goes to lean against the door. “Ruby, how long have you dated the defendant?”

“Five years.”

“And when did the subject of marriage first come up?”

“Senior year,” Ruby says. “We decided it would be good to get established in our careers before we got married.”

“And what is the defendant’s profession?”

“You don’t know this?” I ask Josh.

“No,” he says, “because the dude never wants to have a conversation.”

“He’s a CPA,” Ruby says.

“Has he been settled in his career for at least a year?” Josh asks.

“Yes.”

“And you? Would you say you’re settled at the library?”

“Yes.”

“Prior to tonight,” Josh continues, “when was the last time the subject of marriage came up?”

As far as I know, as an attorney, Josh works behind the scenes on contracts and deals, so he doesn’t ever have to question witnesses. I suspect this has nothing to do with “helping him think” and everything to do with distracting Ruby, and for that, I give him another million brownie points. He’s a good guy.

“Maybe around Christmas?” Ruby squints her eyes, like she’s looking into the actual past for the answer. “Christmas, yeah.”

“And what was the context of that discussion? Who brought it up?”

Ruby’s nose twitched. “He did. He said it would be nice when we got married because we wouldn’t have to do every Ramos family birthday dinner anymore.”

Joey growls and Ava gasps. “Howdarehe? Bailiff, beat him up,” she says.

Josh makes a settle-down gesture, but when we do, he looks at Ruby and gives her a kind ofSorry, I triedlook. “I can’t do this. There is no way to defend that dude.”

For a split second, a half smile curves Ruby’s lips. “Fair.”

“Sweetie, tell us what happened tonight,” I say, giving her shoulder a soft squeeze, “but pause a lot so we can do outrage and name calling.”

Ruby rubs her hands over her face and drops them back into her lap. “We order our meal. We eat. When he finishes his steak, he says, ‘It’s time to get married.’ Like that.”

Sami sucks in her breath through her teeth, and it sounds like a hiss.

“Even that probably wouldn’t have been so bad,” Ruby says. “Part of what I like about Niles is that he’s very low drama.”

One woman’s low drama is another woman’s bored to death . . .

“But he starts laying out all this other stuff like I’d already agreed to it,” she says. “He tells me that we’ll save for a year and have a small wedding”—Joey starts laughing, but Ruby talks over him—“and we’ll request cash donations instead of wedding gifts. Then we’ll move to Lockhart—”

“Absolutely not,” I say. It’s fine. It’s also far and kind of boring.

“We’ll move to Lockhart because it’s the Austin suburb with the cheapest rent,” she continues. “We’ll get a one-bedroom apartment for two years and save. Then we’ll buy a house, and after that, we can start a family.”

Ava wrinkles her nose but says, “I can’t fault him for his financial planning, but—”

“He says we’re buying the house in El Paso.”

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