Page 50 of Last Night Was Fun

“Yeah. Same,” he said, and sank onto the bench where she’d been sitting.

Emmy felt so raw and exposed. She wanted to burrow into a hole and never come back out. Gabe Olson of all people knew things about her—intimatethings—no one else knew. The shock might never wear off. She couldn’t even look at him. “I’m so embarrassed,” she muttered and held her face in her hands.

“You’reembarrassed?” Gabe said with a note of incredulity. “I’mthe one who was given a fake number that started all this!”

Emmy popped up out of her hands. “That’swhat you care about right now? How about the fact I’ve poured my heart out to you, not knowing it was you!”

“Same for me!”

They were arguing like they might at work. Like someone had flubbed an equation and threw off everyone’s projections. The linesbetween work and personal and reality and cyberspace had blurred into disordered chaos. It was enough to make Emmy’s head spin. She desperately wanted to go home and lie down.

“Look,” she said. “Along with the baseball bruise, the bachelorette party, and the seasickness, how about we pretend this never happened?”

He turned to her with a pained look that was at once tortured and pleading. “Yes, I think that’s for the best.”

“Okay,” Emmy said in relief. “Although—shit. I still need a date to my sister’s wedding.” She palmed her forehead again. All her plans were falling apart in such spectacular fashion.

“Your sister who had the party on my cousin’s boat three nights ago?”

“Yes.”

He shook his head with a small laugh. “This is all so obvious in retrospect. Like,embarrassinglyobvious.”

Emmy glared at him. “I’m glad you think this is funny, Olson.”

“I’m not laughing at you, Jameson. I’m laughing at how fucking obtuse I’ve been—we’ve both been. It was right there in front of us the whole time. Think about it.”

Even if he was right; even if all the pieces had been right in front of them, it was notobvious. Because never in a million lifetimes would Emmy think she could get along with Gabe Olson the way she did with Axe Murderer. She didn’t even want to think about it. She didn’t want to think about how she’d been flirting with her co-worker from mere feet away, because she knew she’d most certainly texted Axe Murderer in Gabe’s presence more than once. The idea of it was simply too mortifying to dwell on.

She popped up from the bench, suddenly unable to be in his presence for a moment longer. She was going to expire from humiliation. “I have to go.”

“Emmy, wait—” he said, but she was already walking away.

She beelined along the lily pond, heading back toward El Prado soshe could get to a parking lot and into a rideshare as soon as possible. She summoned a ride but at least waited until she was out of his line of sight before she lifted her phone to call Beth.

Beth answered on the first ring, having been on standby in the event of an emergency. “Oh god, you’re calling me. Why are you calling me? Please don’t tell me this means you’ve been kidnapped.”

“Worse.”

“Worse? Like, mom’s-basement-catfish worse?”

“Like, ‘Meryl Streep just pursed her lips inTheDevil Wears Pradacatastrophe’ worse. I’m coming over.”

“Oh no. What do I need to uncork: white or red?”

“Tequila.”

“Shit, Em. Okay. What happened?”

“I’m still in too much shock to explain it. I have to tell you in person.”

“Okay. I’m here.”

Twenty minutes later, Emmy sat on her best friend’s couch staring at a Princess Leia Funko Pop figurine perched on a busy bookshelf draped in houseplants. Beth sat next to her in leggings and a hoodie, jaw unhinged.

“Gabe. As in, Olson. As in, Gabe Olson,” Beth said for at least the tenth time.

“Yes!Saying it over and over isn’t going to change that fact, Beth!”