Page 54 of The Probability of Us

“You don’t even fully know what my idea is.” I laugh. “It might not even work.”

He shrugs and looks around the table. “I think anyone who has worked with you can back me up when I say, if you have an idea, it’s going to work.”

Sterling, Ali, and Trent all agree and my cheeks flush.

“Do you guys want to know something even Warren doesn’t know about the idea?” I direct the conversation away from me. They nod and Warren looks at me with interest. “The idea came from the final question from that trivia night when we got the top score.”

“How do you even remember that question?” Trent asks.

“Wasn’t it something about some law?” Sterling adds.

“Oh, yeah!” Ali exclaims. “It was some tax law, right?”

I nod and when I look over at Warren, his eyes are wide in realization. “So, that’s why you first thought of the idea at The Dizzy Acorn. This whole time I was thinking my dancing was so underwhelming that you were just thinking about work the whole time.”

I laugh and poke back. “Well, I did think of it while we were dancing, so you obviously weren’t holding my attentionthatwell.”

The table laughs and this all feels so right—all of us here together joking and laughing. It always should’ve been like this.

“Is that a challenge?” He narrows his eyes at me.

“Feeling deficient, are we now?” I smirk and his eyes burn just for me.

“You didn’t think I was deficient earlier.” He doesn’t bother lowering his voice when he says it, and I don’t even care.

Goddamn.How much longer are we going to be here for?

“Have they always been like this?” Will asks, and Ali, Sterling, and Trent all respond in unison, “Yes.”

“Like what?” I ask innocently, forcing myself to turn away from Warren, and Sterling throws an empty plastic cup at me.

When we’re getting ready to head out, Will pulls me aside.

“I’ve never seen you that happy,” he says, and I smile.

He’s right, he’s never seen me like this. I wasn’t miserable every second of every day, but I was missing the glow I have now. He only knew me after Warren left, after my mom died, and my dad was already a drunk. I had lost so much, he really only knew a shell of who I was—of who I feel like I’m closer to now that I’ve had a lot of time to do some healing and Warren’s back. He hasn’t seen me shine so bright before.

“I haven’t been this happy in a long time.”

“You know, I never believed them when they told me what you and Warren were like,” he says. “I always hated him solely because of how he hurt you.”

“What do you mean?”

“They’d always talk about you and Warren like it was some mythic, legendary, untouchable thing, and I’d laugh because it sounded so absurd. It had to be an exaggeration, but seeing you two together today, I got it.” He shakes his head like he’s still grappling with this change in his opinion of Warren. “What you two have is what everyone envisions for themselves back in their fairytale age, back when we believe anything is possible and that soulmates and a one true love are what we’re looking for.”

“Is that not what you and Sterling have?” I ask.

“I love Sterling, and I will love him for the rest of my life, but we will never have what you guys have. That connection, that pull you haveisthe stuff of fairytales. I don’t know what’s going on with you two, but if he’s what you want then don’t let him go again.”

“I don’t plan to,” I whisper, and hug him.

Twenty

AUGUST CURRENT DAY (MONDAY)

As we walk into the office, everything is different from last week.

This time last week, I didn’t know Warren was in the same town as me and now he’s spending his nights in my bed. For us, this weekend changed everything, but to everyone else it was just another normal weekend.

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