Page 65 of The Plus Ones
I look over at Chase and Aimee. Aimee is beaming, and Chase’s eyebrows are furrowed. “Tied!” I say to them. “We’re tied.” I look over at Matt and Bernadette. “We beat you. No bigs. Just sayin’.”
“I put Warhol in there, by the way,” says Bernadette. “So I kind of helped you. Just sayin’.”
When Keaton and I sit back down on the sofa, we’re sitting closer to each other than we were before. He stretches and puts his arm around me. Don and Debbie are eyeing us because they’re up next.
“So,” I whisper to Keaton. “You some kind of kung fu movie nerd?”
“Big-time. I can’t wait to watch them with Finn.”
“Yeah? Well, what if I want to watch them too?”
He grins. “I will send you a list of my favorites.”
I nudge his arm with my elbow.
“And I will watch them with you and Finn anytime.”
“I mean…” I lean in to whisper in his ear. “I never said we can’t be friends.”
He turns to whisper in my ear. “I never thought we weren’t friends.”
Don and Debbie end up kicking all of our asses, but really, they need the couples massages more than we do. They’ve been together forty-five years.
When we’re about to head back to the cottages, Aimee and Bernadette tell the guys to go ahead, and then they drag me into the ladies’ room. They have this intense expression on their faces but like they’re trying to seem all easy-going. I feel cornered and trapped, and I have a feeling they’re either about to try to sell me Tupperware or vitamin supplements or they’re going to try to convince me to join a cult. “What is happening?”
“You guys are so cute together it’s not even funny,” Aimee says.
Ah. They’re going to try to sell me on joining their married-person cult.
“You know, Matt and I were very different too when we first met,” Bernadette tells me, as if this is a shocking revelation.
I give Aimee a look.
“I didn’t tell her—she guessed and asked me, and I couldn’t lie to her!”
“Okay, first of all,” I say to Bernadette, “you and Matt are still very different, and secondly, Keaton is not Matt.”
“But Keaton’s amazing. He’s so cute with Harriet.”
“He’s so great with Finn.”
“I’mgreat with Harriet and Finn!”
Bernadette’s head jerks back. “Nobody said you weren’t.”
“See, that’s your problem right there,” Aimee says. “You’re competitive with him. You don’t have to be competitive with him. It’s not like there’s only ever been room for one single friend in this group.”
“Okay, that is not true. What about the times when Chase couldn’t make it to a work event and you could only pick one plus-one, and sometimes you’d choose Keaton instead of me?” I don’t even care about this stuff so much right now. It just feels like I need to keep acting the way they expect me to. That’s the thing about being a part of a group. It’s not easy to change how people see you.
Aimee waves her hand dismissively. “That only happened when Keaton knew people at the event and it made sense for him to go instead of you. And anyway, if you’re still mad at him for being such an ass to Chase and me when we first got together, I appreciate how loyal you are, but you need to get over it. Chase and I did. I love Keaton.”
“I loooove Keats,” Bernadette says with her hands over her heart.
“Really? That much?”
“One day last year, we needed a backup babysitter really fast, and he literally dropped everything to come look after Harriet.”
“Why didn’t you ask me to babysit?”
