Page 122 of The One I Love
“Smitten, huh?”
“Yup,” he says as he kisses my temples. “He’s a goner.”
I laugh and look away, wanting to not be the creepy mom who stares at her kid and his girlfriend.
“So, we’re all here,” Betsy says. “And everyone knows everything, right? No other surprises? Things we forgot to mention?”
“All good here,” Wes says. “Football is good. Kids are good. We’re good. Everything is good.”
“You know about us,” Oliver says, wrapping his arm around Izzy. “And now she’s back where she belongs. And, we have an announcement.”
“You’re already engaged, Oliver. And married. You can’t keep doing this.”
“Shut your face,” he says to Simon. “What I was going to say is that we’re going to be holding a reception, and a vow renewal, hopefully next month. Of course, I want everyone to be a part of it.”
“Hell yeah!” Simon says. “I want to DJ.”
Oliver gives him a confused look. “You want to DJ? You can DJ?”
He shrugs. “How hard can it be?”
Everyone just laughs as Izzy leans into Oliver. “Actually, Amelia or Betsy, I need to talk to Whitley. I’d love to hire her to put it together for me.”
“Easy enough,” I say. “She should be here any minute now. A friend of hers was coming into town tonight because she was going to look at a piece of property tomorrow. Actually! Betsy, it was the caterer from her wedding. You remember her, right? I think her name is Charlie.”
It’s then that I see Simon stiffen in his chair. I watch him for a second and happen to catch him looking over toward Shane. What the hell is this about?
“Simon?” I ask. “Is everything okay?”
“Yup,” he says a little too quick.
“Simon,” Shane says, leaning a little closer to him. It’s then that I notice the look Shane is giving him. It’s his “I know you’re full of shit look.” He’s given it to Simon no less than a thousand times. “Anything you want to share with the group?”
“Nope.”
“Nothing at all?”
“I said no.”
“So if I say the word ‘bug’ it isn’t going to make you irrationally angry?”
“Wait! Bug!” Wes says. “You mentioned that when we were making sure Shane was alive. Who the hell, or what the hell, is Bug?”
A hush falls over our circle. All eyes are on Simon. What the hell does a bug have to do with anything?
“Simon? Everything okay?”
“Fuck this!” Simon shoots up out of his chair and storms off toward the house. He doesn’t pass go. He doesn’t collect two hundred dollars. He doesn’t even tell his own mother goodbye. A minute later, we hear a car peel out of Wes’s driveway.
“What was that about?” Wes asks.
“I’ve never seen Simon act like that,” Oliver says. “And that includes the time he lost a bet to me and had to come read to my first-grade class.”
“Oh there’s a story,” Shane says. “I don’t know what it is yet, but I have a feeling it’s going to be a doozy.”
Everyone starts talking among themselves again, and I lean over to Shane. “What do you know, and why haven’t you told me?”
Shane smiles and nods his head, signaling for us to step away.
