Page 25 of Eligible Best Friend

I’ve heard a lot about Samuel over the last year and met him only briefly, but we’re worlds apart. He has blue blood, lofty ambitions, and connections I’ll never have—and that I don’t care to have. When I left a career as a physician and signed up with Fargo EMS, I never would’ve guessed that the desire to save lives doesn’t rank very high with some people.

I pull up to the curb in front of Lia’s place. The drapes in Mrs. Rosenthal’s windows twitch. I can’t see her, but I wave anyway. Lia’s out the door before I come to a stop, wearing a simple black cocktail dress that hugs all the essentials and hints at the rest. I barely have time to put the vehicle in park before she gets in.

“They’re there already.”

“But we’re not meeting for a half hour yet.” It takes ten minutes to get to the country club from Lia’s place. I’ve never been late in my life, but Lia’s said before that on time is late in her parents’ world.

“They got to town early and figured we’d just magically arrive because we obviously have nothing else going on.” The exasperated bitterness in her voice is a thousand times worse than any other time she’s talked about her parents.

“It’s a test?” I ask as I pull away.

“Probably.” She clutches her hands in her lap, the rest of her body also rigid.

I reach the corner and, on a whim, I take a turn in the opposite direction of the country club.

Lia frowns and points behind us. “Um, that’s the road we need to take.”

“We’re playing this different.” The more I think about it, the more I like my plan. “They already don’t like me. I’m not Samuel. So we’re not going to kill ourselves trying to please them. We stroll in on the hour, or even five minutes late, and we pretend that it’s no big deal.”

“I told them we’re on our way.”

I take another turn down a tree-lined boulevard. We pass more houses just like the one on Lia’s street. Neutral tone, white trim, with an occasional twin home between them. “We are.”

She stares at me, but I only glance at her before turning back to the road. A strangled noise turns into a chuckle. She relaxes and cracks the window. “I’m going to pay for it, so you’d better make sure I enjoy it.”

That’s a challenge I want to rise to in the worst and most wicked way possible. But that’s not what she means, so I kick my mind out of the gutter and cruise town.

I leave the residential streets and we enter a more industrial section of town. We pass a large warehouse and she says exactly what I’m thinking. “Remember the guy that fell off the roof?”

“That was a bad call.” I wasn’t sure we’d get him to the hospital in time for him to be life-flighted to a trauma center. Both of us worked our asses off to keep him with us.

“Did you see the last note his wife sent?”

“That he took his first steps?” The doctors didn’t think he’d walk again.

“Yeah.” She rests her head against the seat. “I rush to please my parents and get all worked up when I really just need to remember the cookies we get every month because a family still has their husband and dad.”

“Five minutes late then?”

Her grin is sly. “Make it ten.”

* * *

We stroll into the country club like we just came back from the lake, well vacationed and reluctant to enter the hectic fray of everyday life.

We’re five minutes late on the dot and Lia’s phone has been blowing up for the last twenty. I took her mind off our tardiness by showing her a few of the places I ran around when I was growing up.

The park on my end of town where I coached boys’ soccer during high school. The pool I used to lifeguard at. My old elementary school. I didn’t think she’d be so interested, but for the last half hour, she’s been laughing at stories of me running and getting dunked at the pool by the first team of seven-year-olds I ever coached. She only paused once to send her mother a text reassuring her that we were on our way.

As we stroll into the country club dining room, I have no problem picking out Lia’s parents in the crowd: the mutinous couple with flat lines for mouths and eyes pinched with worry and aggression.

Lia looks more like her mom, and if she’d stayed in the world of politics, she might’ve developed the same fan of lines around her eyes from either scowling when things didn’t go her way or forcing a smile on those she thought could advance her career. The demeanor of the woman, even from across the room, is nothing like her daughter’s, but I have no trouble picturing a younger Lia mimicking her mother in that world. They’re doubles, but only one version is correct, and it isn’t the rubbing-elbows Lia.

Her dad, with his thinning hair trimmed short and wire-framed glasses, wears such a frown I wonder if he ever smiles. He definitely doesn’t when he spots us entering the restaurant. His brow drops further and he looks like he’s ready to give Lia a good scolding for worrying her mother.

She stiffens against my side. I squeeze tighter for a second, still marveling at how she fits next to me, and murmur, “Relax,” moving my lips as little as possible.

She does, but it’s so infinitesimal I can only tell because she’s tucked into my side.

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