Page 18

I opened my eyes, realizing he was beside me.
“I’m good,” I said. “But I will take another beer.” Or three.
He reached into the cooler and got one out for me before opening the box of beer he brought and shoving a few down in the ice. “I can’t believe you’re back in town,” he said. “Feels like my birthday wish came true.”
I raised an eyebrow at him. “You wasted a birthday wish on me? I figured you’d be wishing for strippers to come out of your cake.”
He smirked. “Don’t need to wish for something that’s already happening.”
Chuckling, I shook my head at him. “I like being home, except for the fact that everyone and their mother is trying to hook me up with any single woman in town.”
Rhett drank from his beer. “That’s a problem?”
I rolled my eyes. “Catch me up, Rhett. What’s new?”
He leaned back against one of the support poles of the picnic area, folding his arms over his chest. “Still working at the ranch during the week, riding bulls on the weekends. Eating with the family on Wednesday nights. Same ol’, same ol’.”
“No girlfriend?” I asked, surprised Rhett hadn’t found at least one person to hang around longer than a weekend or two.
“I have a new one every Friday night.” He winked.
I shook my head. “How do you do it? There’s only a couple thousand people in this town.”
“It’s simple math,” Rhett said, holding up his fingers around his beer bottle.
I rolled my eyes at him. “Here we go.”
“Say half the people are men. That leaves a thousand. Another quarter, olds and underage.”
“Olds?” I laughed, already hurting in my stomach. God, I hadn’t laughed like this in a while.
“Right. Olds. That leaves five hundred women. If I sleep with a different one every week, I’m set for five years, give or take, then I can go back through the rotation. And that’s not even including neighboring towns.”
“And they say math isn’t useful in real life,” I said with a laugh.
11
Liv
I felt Fletcher’s eyes on me all throughout dinner, and I couldn’t help but feel shy about the attention. I was a big girl, and part of me wondered if he judged me for that. He was a doctor, after all, and even though Doctor Deb was nice, I still got the spiel about losing weight every year at my exam.
But Rhett kept us all laughing, even Maya, and by the time we finished eating, she was in a great mood. She even seemed excited to have a sleepover at my place.
We packed a bag for her, even though I was right next door, and included several of her favorite stuffed animals, plus a walkie talkie in case she wanted to talk to her dad.
Even though she and Fletcher butted heads, it was sweet seeing how much they loved each other. Fletcher would do anything for her. And Maya? She acted like he hung the moon.
When we came back outside, Fletcher and Rhett were sitting around the fire pit, telling stories and laughing with each other. For the week I’d been around Fletcher, he’d seemed so serious, so heavy. But now, he had a ghost of his fun younger self on his face. And it was refreshing to see.
I put my arm around Maya’s little shoulders and said, “The sleepover is about to commence. No boys allowed.”
“Yeah,” Maya agreed, folding her arms over her chest. “No boys.”
Rhett stuck out his tongue. “That’s good because girls have cooooties.”
“We do not!” Maya protested.
“Yeah, girls rule, boys drool,” I teased.