Page 90 of So That Happened

I don’t know how I force the words out. There’s no oxygen in my body at the moment.

“Annie, I—”

There’s another wheezing noise, but it’s not coming from me. It’s coming from Liam.

Is he… crying?

With serious effort, I turn my head towards him.

His eyes are screwed up, his cheeks are red, and he’s trying, and failing, not to…

Laugh.

He holds up his hands in surrender. “Annie, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to laugh but you went down like a sack of potatoes…” he trails off as his body begins to shake with laughter.

The sound is incredible. Deep and musical.

I’m so entranced, so spellbound by his laugh, by the joy on his face, that I forget I’m winded and I join in.

“Ouch,” I groan again. It hurts to laugh, so I keel over in the dirt, lying on my back.

Liam rolls onto his back next to me, and the two of us lie there, looking up at the sunny sky and laughing until our ribs hurt and tears run down our faces.

I don’t think about the fact that we’re going to have to explain our ridiculous outburst. Or about the fact that I’m having feelings I can’t possibly have. Feelings that I resolved to never, ever let myself catch for someone I worked with again.

I don’t think about anything at all.

I just focus on the sound of Liam’s laugh.

And laugh right along with him.

27

LIAM

I feel bare. Naked. Exposed.

And also… elated.

Today was a good day. The best I’ve had in a while.

It was all thanks to Annie. I can’t remember the last time I laughed like that. Can’t remember the last time I forgot about the world and lived in the moment, did what I wanted to do simply because itfeltright.

Of course, lying in the dirt next to Annie and laughing my head off means that my dignity has gone to the dogs.

And right now, Luke and Mindy are like a pair of rottweilers with an extra juicy steak.

We’re in Luke’s car on the way home from the tournament and the happy couple are bugging me relentlessly (a tournament we won, by the way. I won’t say that this was mostly because of me but…)

I roll my eyes, heaving a deep sigh. “It was funny, okay?”

Legs reaches forward from her booster-seated position and pats my shoulder. “It’s okay, Uncle Liam.”

At least someone’s got my back. It was bad enough dealing with Vanessa’s glare, Barb’s wide-eyed, ill-concealed whispering, and Jamal and Todd looking at me like I announced I was uploading my consciousness to the cloud to live forever in AI form. But my brother and his fiancée are the worst of the bunch.

“It wasn’tthatfunny,” Luke says. “Nothing’s that funny.”

“I like her way better than Vanessa,” Mindy adds.

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