Betting on the Best Friend (Betting on Love #4)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Ruby

I drop my phone like it bit me and hiss like I want to bite it back. It only makes a faint thud as it hits the library carpet since I’m already sitting on the floor.

“You okay there?” Charlie asks as it lands in front of him. He’s my only BFF I don’t live with, but since we’re work spouses, I see him more than my three roommates. We’re picnicking in the rec room for lunch because it’s rainy, and we don’t have an event scheduled in here today.

“It . . . I . . . he . . . gah!” I point at the phone lying face down.

Charlie picks it up, holding it so my face unlocks it, then turns it to look at the Instagram photo of my ex. It takes a couple of seconds, but then one of his eyebrows goes up. “Wait, are you kidding me? Niles is engaged?”

“Yes. My ex that I was with for five years, who I barely broke up with, is engaged. And get this.” I grab the phone and stab the picture, right over my ex’s dumb face as he smiles next to a woman holding up her hand to show a respectable solitaire.

“This is at the restaurant where he proposed to me.”

“And where you dumped him when he asked you.”

“I remember. I was there.” I scan the caption. It was posted by Niles’s fiancée, who tagged him. “Did you read it? ‘When you know, you know! Can’t wait to make my soulmate my sole mate.’ Ew.”

Charlie rubs his smooth-shaven chin. “I’m conflicted. That pun is both clever and cringe.”

I shudder. “Can we normalize not calling people our ‘mates’?”

He nods. “Fine. It’s strictly cringe. But why are you even following Niles?”

“I’m not. I check in every now and then to make sure I’m still winning at life. It’s called, um, monitoring?” I barrel on when Charlie gives me a skeptical look. “It’s called monitoring, and all Gen Z-ers do it to their exes.”

“I’m a Millennial. Thank you for explaining the thing you just made up.”

Charlie is only three years older than me, but since my birth year starts with a two, he likes to point out this “massive” generational difference.

“Anyway, the creepy algorithm puts Niles content in my feed as a recommended follow sometimes. And now it’s offering me his fiancée.

As if. Just proves people are smarter than algorithms.”

“Are they?” Charlie has raised an eyebrow. He has reached peak skepticism. “Because it sounds like your feed is serving you exactly what you go looking for.”

“Stop being on the side of the nonhuman algorithm.”

“Right, sorry. So, based on your monitoring, who is winning life?”

“Since he only posts golf pictures, I am, obviously. But now he’s going to think he is. Look at this post again. ‘When you know, you know’? That’s some serious shade.”

We’re facing each other, cross-legged on the floor with our lunches between us, so he leans across them and cranes his head to read my screen. “Why? Do you know this Tally-Day-Go?”

“No.” I’ve never seen the pretty blonde.

“Then how can she be shading you?”

“He’s doing it. I bet he told her to put that as a dig at me.

” It took Niles five years before he brought me to the fanciest steakhouse in Austin and said he felt like it was time for us to get married.

He followed it up over the next few minutes by informing me that he’d give me a budget so I could buy myself a ring, and that we’d be moving to El Paso in a few years when his parents retired.

Informed me. Not consulted me. Just laid it out like a done deal.

Sadly, that wasn’t the moment I dumped him. That happened when he ended his proposal—no, his informational session—by saying he was glad I was finally mature enough for marriage.

So, yes, meeting and getting engaged to someone this fast? Captioning it When you know, you know? Very much a slap in the face.

“Wasn’t the breakup six months ago?” Charlie asks.

“Ish.”

He pushes some noodles around his lunch container. “I’m surprised this bothers you.”

“It wouldn’t if it didn’t feel like he got engaged fast to be petty.”

“Is it that fast? It’s felt like a long six months.”

“I haven’t even gotten around to going on one date, and he’s engaged.”

Charlie frowns at his pasta, chasing a meatball that keeps skittering away from his fork. “I thought you were over him.”

“I am.” It hadn’t taken long after we broke up to realize that being with Niles had become a habit. It had been easy, that was all. Or easy as long as I didn’t disrupt his placid existence.

“Then why haven’t you started dating?”

I take a bite of my egg salad sandwich and chew aggressively, glaring at Charlie, but he only watches me, unbothered. He is perennially unbothered. “Charlie, you are being too chill right now.”

He doesn’t change expression. “And the reason you haven’t started dating is…”

“I’m tired of hearing that question,” I say.

“The girls have been getting on you?”

The girls would be my three besties and roommates: Ava, my childhood best friend, plus Madison and Sami, who Ava and I collected in college. “You’d think after I found them all boyfriends they would be too loved up to harass me. But no. ‘It’s time, Ruby. You need a man, Ruby.’”

His eyebrows shoot up. “Someone at Girl Power Central said you need a man?”

“Not in those words, no. But it’s what they mean.” I huff, knowing news of Niles’s engagement will make them worse. “You haven’t gone on a date in at least that long. Why isn’t anyone bugging you about it?”

He pokes at his meatball. I swear, if he doesn’t spear it soon, I’m going to snatch it up and handfeed him.

“Just haven’t,” he says. “Been focusing on other things.”

“Like rock climbing.” It’s not a question.

He got super into it a few months ago. He’s always been a hobby climber, but I swear if he’s not at work or hanging out with me, he’s climbing at his gym or outdoors somewhere.

His shoulders have gotten bigger, and when summer hits in a couple of months, I bet his swim trunks will reveal legs as chiseled as the rocks.

I feel weird about noticing, but it’s hard not to lately. Probably a symptom of living like a hermit since dumping Niles and being around Charlie all the time, but these intrusions of Charlie is looking good are distracting. Maybe if he did less rock climbing . . .

A suspicion strikes me. “Is there a hot lady climber you haven’t told me about? Is that why you’re so into it lately?”

Charlie finally stabs the meatball. “No.”

“You can tell me,” I say. “You don’t have to spare me, even if you are my last single friend. I’ll be happy for you.”

He gives a small sigh. “No, Ruby. I’m not hiding a lady climber from you.”

“You should find one.” It wouldn’t be hard. Women don’t always notice him at first glance, but the minute he flashes his easy smile, they turn to putty. And there’s those shoulders now.

He squeezes his eyes shut like he’s summoning patience. “I’ll take that under advisement. Right now, the sneakers are taking my free time.”

Madison’s boyfriend is a sneakerhead, and it got Charlie interested in flipping sneakers as a side hustle.

It’s kept him busy, so I get why it would be hard to fit in dating.

“As a victim of the same nagging, I’ll drop it.

Let’s talk about something else. Pick anything besides Niles, dating, or love. ”

“The May movie night,” he says, not missing a beat. “It’s time to choose.”

Our shared love of movies led us to a regular movie night a couple of years ago.

We’re almost through the wildly wrong New York Times list of best movies of all time.

We’ve even talked our manager, Sandy, into letting the library host a classic monthly movie night this year as long as the films have a connection to Texas.

It’s perfect, because our building started life as a single-screen movie theater before being converted into the Sandra Day O’Connor branch of the city library system almost thirty years ago.

Technically, Charlie has seniority. We’re both full librarians, complete with a master's in library science each, but he’s been here three years longer than I have.

He could make the film choice, and I couldn’t override him, but we always choose the fun way: for the last fifteen minutes of our break, we debate early indies—Bottle Rocket, which is a total bromance, versus In Search of a Midnight Kiss, an actual romance. I win and we choose Bottle Rocket.

When lunch is over, we stand and clean up our picnic.

I used to hug Charlie all the time. I’ve been doing it less lately because of my Charlie is looking good wiring misfire.

Don’t want him to notice and have it get awkward.

But today, before he opens the door to the main floor, I fling my arms around his waist and squeeze him tight.

He closes his arms around me, and a puff of laughter stirs my hair. “You don’t have to hug me because I let you pick Bottle Rocket.”

I tighten my arms for a second. “It’s not for that. It’s because you were trying to distract me from spinning out over Niles getting engaged.”

Charlie squeezes back. “He doesn’t deserve your energy. He never did.” He releases me and holds up his empty container. “I’m going to wash this out. See you at the desk.”

He leaves, and I peek at Instagram again. I know I shouldn’t, and when Niles’s face smirks at me, I shake my head.

Charlie leaves two hours before me today. How will I survive the most tiring part of my shift without Charlie there to remind me that Niles doesn’t deserve my attention?

Or worse, talk me out of the impulse to make a snotty comment on the engagement post? Something low-key only Niles and I would know is snotty. Like . . . I thought you were a golf guy, but look at you rebounding!

My lips twitch thinking about it. But that’s more like a dig at his fiancée, not him, and I have no issue with her. If anything, I have sympathy. Poor thing.

Maybe, He actually looked for a ring himself! Must be true love. A nice dig about Niles’s “setting a budget” for me to pick out my own.

Oooh, I know: That restaurant is perfect! Congratulations!

Ha, there’s no way he told her that he proposed to me at the same spot. It will look gracious and unbothered, but Niles will know I’m calling him out.

I pull out my phone and type it.

It’s perfect.

Send.