Chapter 14 #5
“Ha!” Erin’s shocked gasp of laughter drowned out her brother’s protests.
Shocked, but shocking too, because she swiped a finger beneath her tortoiseshell glasses and under her eyes, snorting now with evident amusement and shaking her head.
She slapped Adrian on the arm. His own lenses clattered to the ground.
She said, “Damn. I’ll admit I didn’t see this coming.
But after that Friday, when Ethan told me he’d given out our beach-house address?
God, I should’ve. Shouldn’t I? And. . . I have questions, Wes.
So many questions. Obviously. First, though: Isabel—”
She tensed again, reflexively.
“—are you going to use our name? Because if not, the Mr. and Mrs. Wright jokes write themselves.”
“Jesus, Frizzy.” Answering laughter shook Wes’s shoulders.
And: Isabel Monaghan?
She liked it. She did. She liked it too much. Her hand in Wes’s spasmed, contracting into a second and tighter fist. Of course, he felt her twitch. An eyebrow lifted in concern.
I’m fine.
She’d promised. She had to do this. But still: after a pause so brief that she might have imagined it, Wes gave a tiny nod.
He snagged Adrian’s sunglasses and hooked them crookedly over his brother’s ears, then meandered out of retaliatory range toward a churro stand.
He changed the topic. “Who wants to make the Giant Dipper ride more interesting by fueling up with some fat and sugar? Or are you two cowards?”
Neither Erin nor Adrian resisted his challenge.
“Four churros, please,” to a cashier. Wes distributed the paper-wrapped sticks of fried dough, and bit into his with a crunchy puff of cinnamon. “Thanks, man. Adrian, how’d your Tuesday meetings at the Cal Academy go?”
Peace restored—at least temporarily—with sweets and shop talk, Adrian discussed water-reduction percentages, carbon sinks, urban cooling methods, and the investments he aimed to lock in with his pitches this week, before his next round of meetings in Washington, DC.
They wandered past height signs for carnival rides and a vintage mechanical fortune-teller, to a condiment kiosk.
Isabel’s hands were slick with grease from her churro wrapper, so she extracted a fistful of napkins from the dispenser.
Erin grabbed mustard. Lightning-quick, she squirted a pungent yellow ribbon over Wes’s snack.
He just grinned. Without hesitation, he took another bite of the violated churro. He chewed noisily. “Delicious.”
“Ew!” Erin ducked out of reach before he could reciprocate, only to run into Adrian’s wicked smile and a bottle of ketchup. “No—”
“Yes.”
Tabasco sauce entered the mix. Gulls perched on the boardwalk’s seaside railing inched closer to the siblings’ protests and elbows and crumbs.
Only when a brazen bird dove straight at Adrian and snatched the last of his churro did the Monaghans turn on a common enemy, attracting attention up and down the carnival row with their manic laughter and mad rushes after the winged rodents.
Then they collapsed together onto a bench overlooking the rattling Giant Dipper roller coaster, continuing to laugh while scrubbing their mouths with napkins to purge the intermingled aftertastes of vinegar, tomatoes, and cinnamon, kicking their heels into the sandy planks, breathless and smiling.
“So gross.”
“You deserved way more than one shot of Tabasco.”
“Next round.”
“Yeah. . .”
“In the meantime, anyone want to cool down with frozen lemonade?”
Isabel offered to buy it. After a quiet moment spent studying the single-item menu at another kiosk, she passed out their icy desserts while Wes summarized his work in Monterey Bay, and then her own shifts at MORI: “She’s getting a fish-eye view of the institute’s research by volunteering in the wet lab.
They’re lucky to have her. But I can barely get her away from the rockfish to try a new restaurant, or watch a sunset instead of sardines, or—”
“Wait, hold on.” Adrian balanced his lemonade cup on Erin’s knee. He stood, pointing between Wes and Isabel. His gaze tracked to Isabel’s bare fourth finger, to the bitten fragments of her yacht club manicure. “You’re both still at Frizzy’s beach house.”
She fumbled her spoon.
“Yes.” Wes calmly licked his own utensil clean and caught hers. “We are. Thanks again for the couch, Frizzy. I’ll pay you back when I’m good for it. Next year, or something.”
“And you—you’re really engaged. The two of you. Not Isabel and. . . Ethan’s brother. This isn’t a prank?”
“Have I ever pranked you?”
“I’m serious, Wes.”
“All business? Fine.” Wes wiped mustard and sweetness from his mouth.
He squared his shoulders. “This isn’t a prank.
We met on that Friday night at the bungalow and got suckered into a whirlpool romance.
It happens sometimes to people who feel their feelings.
So I asked Isabel to marry me, and she said yes.
We’ve got a tentative courthouse date scheduled in late September, and we’re even on standby for something earlier.
But that’s just the legal part, so we don’t need a big—”
“No.” Adrian raised a hand. “Stop. Do you think Mom will care if this is just the legal part? She’s still going to kill you if you get hitched without—”
“Yeah, I know. But she’ll have us for the holidays.
Everyone’s busy right now. Frizzy’s headed to Cape Canaveral this weekend, you’ll be back in Manhattan in a couple days, and Mom and Dad have builders in the house.
We’re going to do our own thing in our own time, before I’m away on another contract.
If it somehow works out that people can be here when we register our license, great.
If not, we’ll have a party later. Maybe. ”
“But it’s so—”
“—fast? When have I ever lived life in the slow lane? Plus, I bet you wouldn’t blink twice if this was happening in Las Vegas.” Wes took another monster slurp of his lemonade. “So shut up, Adrian.”
“Wes—”
Erin elbowed Adrian in the ribs. His next protest was expelled as a harmless wheeze.
She gave him no time to catch his breath or gather his arguments, but hauled him off the bench by the collar of his jacket while pointing to the Giant Dipper and demanding a front seat on the coaster.
She cut a glance back at Wes and Isabel while she dragged her brother away, though.
She winked.
Wes groaned and rolled his eyes. “Shit. . . Sorry about that, Buttercup. But at least they’ll be off trying to make each other vomit from g-forces and sugar until we meet Ethan and Bunsen for dinner in Monterey.
Frizzy will look under Baby’s hood after we eat.
Then they’ll drive Bunsen back to Palo Alto in the hatchback.
We’ve got a few hours free to ourselves. ”
He was right.
Adrian was, too: This isn’t a prank?
Not a funny prank, anyhow.
A real couple was locked in a kiss by the boardwalk railing nearby, oblivious to the world; when Wes slapped his knees and stood, Isabel followed him past the tongue-wrestlers with averted eyes while he meandered by a caricaturist’s display, arcade games, and binoculars pointing out into the bay.
Maybe he wasn’t as casual as he seemed, though, because he fumbled his quarter for the binoculars.
It bounced between the planks and vanished.
He ducked after it anyway. Were his ears red?
He dredged a hand through his hair before she could assess them.
“Damn. But—uh, should we take some pictures? I didn’t bring a polarizing filter for my camera, so the glare’s going to be bad and the shadows will be weird. Since we’ve got the time, though. . . if you want to?”
She stepped back. “I—”
“Hell nah, man.”