Happily Never After by Lynn Painter

Author:Lynn Painter [Painter, Lynn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2024-03-12T00:00:00+00:00

twenty-five

Max

SOPHIE STEINBECK.

Sophie was FaceTiming me.

It was only 7:20 a.m. and no one was around yet on my side of the building, so I answered on my Mac instead of my phone. “Good morning, sunshine.”

And . . . there she was in full color. Wavy blond hair, red lips, black glasses, and a pin-striped button-down that was incredibly businesslike.

I was staring at an executive, right down to the leather-banded Apple Watch, yet it was tough to think of her like that when I knew the way she looked after a hot three-mile run.

And what she looked like drunkenly tossing Twinkies from a balcony.

And what she looked like after being thoroughly kissed.

“Are you wearing glasses, Maxxie?” she asked, sounding shocked as she smiled at me through the screen.

“Do I really have to answer that question?”

“Okay, obviously you are, but I didn’t know that you wore glasses, too.”

“And now you do.”

“And now I do.” She picked up her cardboard Starbucks cup and said, “So the craziest thing happened to me on the way to work.”

“Tell me,” I said, and wondered if this was fake, all part of the plan—which would be moot since no one was even near me right now—or if she was about to share an actual event.

“Larry asked me to drive his van today, because he’s going to the barber shop and wanted to borrow Nick. Said he’d like to ‘roll up in a hot roddie.’ ”

I fucking loved Larry, even though the old guy didn’t seem to like me. “Okay . . . ?”

“So I’m driving his full-size conversion van, AKA the creeper van, and the shocks are making a weird noise when I go over bumps. Or the wheels. Something just feels . . . off, right?”

“You seriously agreed to drive a conversion van to work?” That seemed very generous, to be willing to be seen getting out of something like that in public.

“Yes, now pay attention.” She gave me a look and continued. “So something feels off, right? But everything is still going along fine until I go over a speed bump in the Burger King parking lot.”

“You got Burger King?” I asked.

“No, I was cutting through their lot to beat the slow drivers to the Starbucks drive-through.”

“It connects?”

“Yes.” Another look.

“And you use it to cut people off?” I could absolutely see that about her.

“Stop judging and listen.”

“Listening.”

“I go over the speed bump, and I hear this loud noise and then kind of a grinding sound. As I’m freaking out about the noise, I see a wheel roll past me and down the parking lot’s incline.”

“A wheel?”

“A wheel. My wheel. The wheel to Larry’s van came off while I was driving it.”

“Are you shitting me?” I asked, trying hard not to laugh but failing. I looked up, and my dad was in the doorway, his eyebrows raised to ask if he could come in or not.

Well, shit, might as well do this milking thing.

I gestured for him to come in as I said, “Are you okay?”

Sophie said, “Yes. And don’t laugh yet—it gets better.

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