someone a few times doesn’t mean you just crawl into bed with him, call him your boyfriend, and consider taking him home to meet your parents a week later.”
“Worked for me,” she says, grinning deviously.
“You’re a sleaze,” I squeal. I say it with love, though. She knows this.
“You can’t call me a sleaze if I married him,” she argues. I’ll leave out the fact that he knocked her up before they got married, but as much as I want to argue with her on this, I do actually think they would have ended up together whether it was for Tyler or not. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone more heartbroken in my life than when she thought Tango was gone for good.
“Look, I know you don’t see life the way I do, and I try my hardest to respect that, but you gotta live a little, Miss Piggy. You have no idea how much more fun it is to just stop thinking and start acting. Yes, you get in trouble sometimes but isn’t that what makes life fun?”
Rather than snapping back at her with another argumentative statement, I let her words soak in, considering the possibility of there being validity behind what she’s saying. I do sort of live life by a rule book, but only because it gives me some weird kind of comfort. “I don’t know.”
“Fine,” she says.
I don’t know what she’s agreeing to, though. “Fine?”
“You can sell your house and stay with me.”
“Oh, can I? Thank you for your permission.” I open the car door and step outside, looking around at what will most likely become my new home for the next few months. I can’t believe I’m really going to do this.
Cali walks over to her mailbox and pulls out a stack of envelopes and advertisements. “It’s fate,” she yells over.
“What is?”
She walks back toward me and tosses a big fridge magnet into my chest. A realtor selling their services. “It’s a sign,” she says.
“This is all moving a little fast. I should really think this through first,” I tell her.
She pulls a sleeping Tyler out of her booster seat in the back of the car and flops her over her shoulder. “Stop thinking and start doing,” she tells me again. “I wouldn’t steer you wrong. I just wouldn’t do that.”
I look down at the magnet again. The quote beneath the woman’s name says, “I’ll sell your house in two weeks, or you keep the commission.” That’s ballsy. Although, houses are flying off the market right now, which means if I make this rash decision, the outcome will probably be lying in my lap within days. I love my house. Not that I really have many memories in there that I’d like to salvage, considering I bought it a few months before I met Landon, but it’s still my house.
“I have to go gather some clothes and bathroom stuff for Tango that he needs. Any chance I can convince you to watch Tyler for a couple of hours this afternoon so I can get this stuff to him?”
“Of course,” I tell her. “You know, I haven’t exactly quit my job at the restaurant. I’ll have to tell them I’m still sick, even though I’m lying, which I hate doing.”
“I’ll call for you and tell them you’re so sick you can’t even pick up the phone.” I just stare at her. We used to be so alike but now I can’t even understand how her mind works. “Oh, by the way, Jags is staying here tonight too. I meant to tell you. I guess the motel he was staying in had a dead body in it so he’s crashing here.” She jitters her eyebrows and gives me a cunning grin.
This is so frustrating. “Cali, why are you doing this to me? You can’t force two people together. And when did you take up matchmaking? It’s not becoming of you.”
“Okay, in all seriousness, I’m not trying to match the two of you up. I mean, I don’t think it would be the worst thing in the world if you two got together, but it’s just the way things are falling into place right now. Tango wants Jags staying at the house while he’s not there, and I couldn’t exactly fight Tango in the situation he’s in. On top of that, I think we both know you shouldn’t be staying at your house by yourself, so what other choice is there? You want to go rent a hotel