Chapter 10
Luke hadn't meant to start trouble, but watching Keana scold Cole was both funny and touching.
She was clearly exasperated, but also genuinely fussed about his health.
Of course, she was also fairly obviously not at all hungover herself, which made it all funnier, especially since everybody else except Luke—everybody, even Sabrina—was wincing occasionally when light bounced off a glass or silverware clattered together.
They all talked at once, somehow managing to hear and respond to each other.
Luke was surprised how easily he followed it, but then, he had six siblings, two parents, and a variety of in-laws at this stage, so he was used to the chaos of a large group of close-knit people.
He liked the idea that he would someday belong to this one, although he wasn't sure how to make the transition from fake boyfriend to real boyfriend.
Just tell her you love her! his rabbit said. She loves you too! It'll be great! You can ask her to marry you! Live happily ever after with lots of kits! Go on! Ask right now! GO LUKE GO!
Luke tried not to laugh aloud at the rabbit, although with all the noise and good-natured ribbing going on around him, it would probably go unnoticed.
I'm pretty sure lots of babies are not on Sabrina's agenda, and I'm even more sure that Mindy would not like it if I proposed to Sabrina on Mindy's wedding weekend.
And also fake boyfriends don't do real proposals.
But you're not a fake boyfriend! his rabbit protested. You're the realest real boyfriend ever! It's fate! It's perfection! It'll all work out! You just gotta tell her!
Later, Luke promised, and didn't mention that 'later' was going to be weeks or months or even years from now, when he finally had a chance to explain about shifters.
Seriously, dude? his rabbit asked incredulously. Years? YEARS? She'll be furious if you wait YEARS. That's living a lie! You can't live a lie! Not with your fated mate! Go on! Tell her! TELL HER RIGHT NOW. GO LUKE GO.
By the end of that, his rabbit sounded more than a little threatening.
Luke didn't expect it to suddenly trigger a shift in a hotel restaurant, but its intensity was getting to be a little much.
He glanced at Sabrina, wondering what she would think if—when—he told her the truth about himself, and found her watching him with a sweet smile.
She looked happy, in a gentle, quiet, content kind of way, with her brown eyes sparkling, albeit a little sleepily.
She murmured, "Hey," when he looked at her, and for some reason, that soft greeting made his heart seize up with joy.
He whispered, "Hey," back, and her smile brightened even more.
Luke, on impulse, leaned over to kiss her, only realizing that wasn't a pre-arranged agreement as he got within a few inches of her mouth.
But Sabrina gave the tiniest nod, and even though he told himself she was just playing along with the fake relationship charade, his heart leaped again.
Her mouth was soft and warm and inviting, and unlike the performative kisses on the Ferris wheel, everything about how their lips met felt very, very real.
It was only the briefest of kisses, and if Luke had thought about what their first real kiss would be like, it sure wasn't that it would be in a noisy restaurant, surrounded by friends who were all shouting cheerfully about something called 'padderbee.
' He also would never have imagined that all that noise would fade away until there was really nothing in the world but Sabrina's smile and the shy thrill in her gaze for that little kiss, or that he would feel an expansive delight filling him because of it.
Sabrina whispered, "We could bail on padderbee," and Luke couldn't help laughing.
"I'm sorry," he said out loud, not just to Sabrina but the table at large, "but what is 'padderbee…?'"
Half a dozen voices chorused, "Paddleboat derby!
" along with several variations on, "Weren't you listening, man?
" and at least one, "No, he was gazing soppily into Sabrina's eyes," which made Sabrina turn pink and smile.
Luke straightened up, smiling too, until he actually thought through what 'paddleboat derby' might mean.
"Wait, oh no. This isn't like roller derby, is it? We're not going to…what, try to crash-drown each other?"
"It's exactly like roller derby," Mindy said gleefully. "Last boat standing gets the victory crown until next year's pad-derby race."
Now he could hear the separation between 'pad' and 'derby,' if only just. "Victory crown? Next year?"
"You haven't told him about the Great Annual Paddleboat Derby Competition?" Mindy gasped at Sabrina. "The sacred tradition of our ancestors?"
Sabrina groaned and put a hand over her face, pulled it down, and smiled at Luke, her expression somewhere between amused and apologetic. "It's Tom and Gina's fault—"
A huge, unified protest met that claim. Sabrina put her head down on the table. "Fine, you tell it, then!"
"It's true they rented the paddleboats," Keana put in gleefully. "We were out on a camping trip, this was before anybody got married, but it was a group thing. And the paddleboating was their idea. But Sabrina is the one who turned it into a derby."
"I didn't mean to," Sabrina howled into the tablecloth, and Luke, not even knowing what exactly to anticipate, started to grin.
"She didn't mean to," Gina, Jan, and Tom all said to each other, as if they'd said it hundreds of times.
"It turns out Sabrina is a very bad paddleboater," Tom went on. "She kept running into us, and then she dumped Jan in the lake. I hadn't even known it was possible to overturn a paddleboat until then."
"It's not my fault," Sabrina said without lifting her head. "Those paddleboats are made for people who are taller than I am! I couldn't get to the pedals, steer, and look where I was going all at the same time!"
Luke's grin got bigger. "I see."
"Those little legs are really strong, though," Mindy said through her own grin.
"She could really build up a head of steam.
Just not steer while doing it. Anyway, so Jan went in and the next thing we knew she'd flipped her boat back over and was back in it and going after Sabrina, who was trying to get away, and… "
"Chaos," Tom said. "Sheer chaos. I'm the only man left after that particular incident. All the other boyfriends at the time understood they couldn't face the magic produced by these ladies and bailed."
Sabrina lifted her head. "So then the next time we got together, they conspired against me."
"That's true," Keana said blissfully. "We chose a place with paddleboats on purpose and all just went at her and dumped her in the lake. By the next time it was a tradition, and the year after that, Gina made a crown for the winner, and we've been trading it around since."
"I've never won it," Sabrina said with exaggerated sorrow. "They continue to conspire against me. Everybody gangs up on me and dumps me in first, and then they go after each other."
"Also true," Derek said. "It was one of the first things Jan told me when we started dating seriously. 'When it comes to the padderbee, we take Sabrina out first.'"
"Funny, Sabrina didn't tell me that…"
"How strange," Mindy said blandly. "I'd have thought it would be a top priority for her, given that we play padderbee every time we get together, now. How long did you say you'd been dating?"
Something that landed between an alarm bell and a sense of aggravation flooded Luke.
It was a little absurd to be offended that Mindy doubted they'd been dating for months, since they were not in fact dating at all.
Even so, somehow he didn't feel it was Mindy's business to doubt them.
"We met at the Fourth of July parade in Virtue," he said as lightly as he could.
"So a couple of months, if you want to count it from then, but really more like six weeks?
Not long. But really, I wouldn't tell a new boyfriend he was expected to dump me in a lake, either. "
"I might go so far as to tell the new boyfriend he was expected to not dump me in the lake, in fact," Sabrina said sourly, which made everybody laugh.
"Well, I guess we'll find out whose side he's on in about an hour," Mindy said dryly enough that Luke wasn't quite sure she was kidding. "Everybody got their SPF50? I am not having a bunch of sunburned faces in my wedding photos. I don't care what they can do with image editing these days."
Luke himself was the only one who didn't actually pull a bottle of sunblock out of a pocket or bag, and his eyes widened. "I'm unprepared."
"I'll share," Sabrina promised, and forty minutes later the whole crew of them were down at the Las Vegas Wash, squinting into a brilliant blue sky that reflected just as beautifully off the water.
Within minutes they were all smeared with sunblock and, to Luke's surprise, climbing into individual paddleboats.
Luke sidled up to Sabrina as they waited their turn and lowered his voice. "I thought we'd be paired up?"
"I wish, because with your weight in the boat it'd be harder to overturn me.
And you've got much longer legs, so you can probably navigate and paddle and everything better.
But no, we do our own boats, mostly…" She trailed off, then gave him an awkward, almost pained smile.
"Honestly, mostly because I'm usually single so the ones with partners figured it's not fair to leave me on my own when everybody else is paired up.
Sometimes one of the other Girls has also been single, so I guess it's a weird kind of thoughtfulness. "
"But it also feels kind of pointed," Luke guessed, and Sabrina sighed.
"Yeah. It's not meant to, or at least, it wouldn't be if at least one pair of them didn't always complain about having to split up."
"I didn't hear anybody complaining this time?"