Page 69 of It Should Have Been Me

Dylan and I are still chuckling as we walk back to the front door. We don’t say anything about it because we’re saving all our words for when we get Peter alone. He’s grumpy as fuck when he joins us ten minutes later and says nothing when he gets into the backseat of Dylan’s Lamborghini Urus.

As soon as he slams the door shut, Dylan starts singing as he backs out of the driveway. “Peter and Lia sitting in a tree.”

“Shut up, Dyl.”

Shifting in my seat, I look back at him. “You brought her home...to your house? Not even the beach house. Your actual house.”

He shrugs. “Yeah, so? What’s the big deal? I do it all the time.”

“K. I. S. S. I. N. G.”

“Pete, we’ve been friends since the second grade. You have done that exactlyzerotimes.”

“First comes love. Then comes marriage.”

“That’s real mature, Dylan.” Peter groans and throws his head back against the seat. “I swear to God, Scott, today’s the day I donate him to charity. I don’t want him anymore.”

“Then comes baby Peter in a tiny carriage.” Dylan makes a right, then starts the song again.

I refuse to let the background commotion detract from my line of questioning. “And she looked familiar, too. Wasn’t she the model that you hooked up with on the night of Dylan’s bachelor party?”

“You went back for seconds?” Dylan asks in astonishment. “One time wasn’t enough for you? You had to go back and smash that again. I don’t blame you, Pete. Use her for what she’s good for, then kick her to the curb.”

Dylan is such a wholesome soul that he physically cringes just saying that, but Pete wasn’t lying about the lengths Dylan will go to just to prove a point. He said that to get a reaction, and that’s exactly what he gets.

“Yo, don’t talk about her like that,” Peter snaps, and that releases the loudest howl of laughter from Dylan.

Eyes wide, he looks over at me to see if I’m just as shocked as he is. “Fuck me! You do like her. You like her a lot!”

“I don’t.” Pete immediately goes on the defensive. “I don’t...like her. We’ve just been hanging out. Is that a crime?”

“I’m not as good at math as Scott is, but I do know that hanging out plus making out equals dating.”

“I’m not dating her!”

My friend is in denial and in dire need of some perspective. “Okay, how often do you guys‘hang out’together?” I ask.

“Well, she’s...she’s sort of been staying at my place since the bachelor party, so...every day.”

“Wait! What!” Dylan meets his eyes in the rearview mirror. “That’s almost a week. She’s been staying with you for a week? How did I not know about this?”

“Because you’re never home, Dyl. You’ve been sleeping over at Isabella’s house every night since you proposed. You only come home to shower, change, and have breakfast.”

“So, how did you go from a one-night stand to her just...living with you?” I ask as Dylan parks the car.

Peter lets out an irritable breath, reluctant to answer. ‘It’s a long story, but her dad kicked her out, so I told her she could stay with me until she gets a new place.”

We hop out of the car and walk toward the entrance of the dance studio. I exchange looks with Dylan because that’s a very weird situation, and it seems like Pete’s been blinded by beauty because he’s not seeing any red flags. “Not gonna lie, that sounds a little sus to me,” I say. “I don’t know her, but I’m picking up some low-key forty-niner vibes. That’s definitely a sob story a gold-digger would use to manipulate an unsuspecting victim. Are you sure she’s not lying about her dad, playing the sympathy card to...I don’t know...exploit you for your money?”

That comment pisses him off. “She’s not trying toexploitme, alright? She’s a model, for fuck’s sake. Besides, you know I don’t hook up with chicks who are...poor. She comes from money, too. Her dad owns the Bayview Country Club.”

This sounds even more suspicious to me. “My dad and I go there all the time. We know the owner. I don’t think he has a daughter.”

We walk past the reception area across the shiny wooden flooring and stop outside the entrance of a large room, waiting for the group of seven-year-olds to finish their ballet class. I get a text from Tommy saying he’s going to be ten minutes late, and Pete waits for me to reply before resuming the conversation. He’s adamant about proving me wrong.

“Of course, he has a daughter.She’shis daughter. Remember that day you left to pick Cat up from the airport?” He waits for me to nod. “About ten minutes after you left, he chewed her out in front of everyone. It was brutal, so...after we hooked up the night of the bachelor party, I offered to let her stay with me. And she’s not trying to exploit me because she made it very clear that she is utterly repulsed by the thought of dating me.”

“Yeah, it definitely looked like she can’t stand you,” Dylan quips.

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