Page 120 of You're so Bad

She catches sight of Josie half a second after I do.

I expect her to pitch a fit, but she breathes out a sigh of…relief?

“Oh good, she’s here.”

“You invited her?” I ask, the words coming out high-pitched.

Her expression tightens. “She’s going to do another reading for me, Shauna. She told me her readings become clearer the more time she spends around someone. I need her to change her predictions.”

ChapterThirty

Leonard

Champ’s acting like we’re best buds, which isn’t how I’d approach the situation if someone had smacked me in the eye. I don’t like being cornered over here, leaving Shauna alone with Bianca. She can handle herself, obviously, but I’d prefer to have her back.

Champ offers me a swig from his flask, and since this situation feels like a bad memory in the making, I don’t say no.

“That’s Macallan—”

“All I care about is the alcohol content.”

Champ eyes his friends, who have fallen back into a conversation about some athlete’s knee—as if they’re sports analysts and not salesmen and bankers. One of them asked me for “a doctor’s perspective on the matter,” and I told him all high and mighty that it’s beneath my professional integrity to make medical guesses.

The look on his face was pure gold.

Champ takes me by the shoulder and leads me behind a big fall sunflower. Maybe he’s drunk enough to think plant matter is sound resistant.

“Bianca’s been giving me a real hard time about this eye. She made me slap a steak over it last week. Fucking gross.”

“Hey, man,” I say, “what gives? Thanks for blowing some smoke for Bianca, but I don’t get why you’re not more pissed about…” I lift my hand toward my eye.

He waves a hand as if getting punched is an everyday thing for him. Which is when I realize something: he’d never been punched before. It was probably some sort of defining experience for him, and now I’ve gotten roped into it.

“We settled it like men,” he tells me. “You’re honest, Doc. I like that about you. A lot of people are full of bullshit.”

I barely swallow a laugh. I might be honest about some things, but I sure as shit haven’t been honest with him. I almost feel bad for the guy, until I remember he’s the one who screwed Shauna over. Sure, it left her single and available, but it was the worst mistake he’s ever made, and he deserves to feel the burn.

“I get it,” I say.

And that’s when I notice the woman in the dress that’s nearly as loud as my suit.

I whistle. “Are we in for a world of trouble, Champ? Because Josie the Great just joined us, and it didn’t go down so well the last time Bianca came across her.”

“She’s the one who invited her,” he says in an undertone, a dark look on his face. “She’s convinced she can get her to change her predictions. Hell, she even changed the dinner order for the wedding to chicken instead of steak. I love steak.” He frowns. “Cooked steak.”

“Is this reading going down before the photos or after?” If there’s a chance we might not have to sweat our asses off out here waiting for the photos, I’m all for it.

“After,” Champ says, popping my wish like it’s a balloon.

“Well, that’ll be something.”

“It’ll be something, all right,” he says softly, like a man who already knows regret. I’ll bet Bianca’s feeling the sting too, because one thing Champ is not is a Grade-A Thinker.

So we pose for an endless stream of photos. Several as a group—arranged in a color gradient—and individual shots of all the couples too. Bianca also insists on taking a whole series with just me and Shauna, her and Champ, as if we’re the bestest buds there ever were.

“You need your face angled in the other direction, Colter,” Bianca hisses at least half a dozen times. Because that bruise is getting more obvious as the afternoon wears on, the makeup sweating off in the sun.

Champ gets increasingly hostile, too, probably because all of us guys are sweating our balls off in our suits, and he’s been chugging Macallan instead of drinking water. Maybe he and Bianca will ruin each other, like Shauna said, and we won’t have to do anything but take out the marshmallows.

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