I Take You by Eliza Kennedy Read Free Book Online Page B

shot.”
    Our pink squirrels arrive. We clink glasses. We drink.
    “Hey!” She kicks me under the table. “You bailed on us last night.”
    “Sorry. Work was …” I shake my head. “Crazy.”
    “Was your boss there?”
    “No,” I say quickly. “Definitely not.”
    She scrutinizes me over the rim of her glass. “Is that right.”
    Time to change the subject. “Get this!” I tell her. “I’m not even on vacation yet. I have to prep a witness.”
    “You have to what a what?”
    “It’s for my big environmental case, the one about the oil spill in the Gulf a few years ago? There’s this accountant who’s going to be deposed, and—”
    Freddy holds up a hand. “Stop. I just died of boredom. Also, why are you pretending to be outraged? You love this. You’re totally delighted.”
    I sip my drink. “I like my job. That’s a crime now?”
    “It should be.” She gestures for another round. “You know who gets to love their jobs? Scotch tasters. Zookeepers. Elvis impersonators. Lawyers? It’s not natural. There’s something wrong with you.”
    “Probably.” I check my phone. Nothing from Will. I text him:
    —where u
    He writes back:
    —Javier just arrived. We’ll be there soon.
    —hurryup!!
    —I will.
    I toss my phone back in my bag. “Freddy?”
    “Yes love?”
    “Do you ever think Will seems a little too good to be true?”
    She sets her drink on the table. “Nope.”
    “He’s so perfect, he’s so wonderful, he’s so this and that and the other thing.” I tilt my head back to catch the final pink dregs at the bottom of my glass. “He can’t be all that.”
    “Yes he can,” she says. New drinks arrive.
    “You marry him, then.”
    “He’s not my type. And anyway, he wants
you.
He’s crazy about
you.
You walk into a room and his eyeballs fall out of their sockets and start rolling around on the floor like spastic little puppies.”
    “He met the moms at lunch.”
    “How did that go?”
    “Amazingly well. I was sure he was going to get all nervous and dork out, but he was super charming.”
    “Will isn’t that dorky, you know.”
    “Sure he is.” I smile. “That’s why I love him.”
    “A minute ago he was too good to be true,” she says. “Now you love him?”
    “God, Freddy, I don’t know! Can’t I not know? Who among us can say, with absolute certainty, that they love,
truly
love, the person they think they love?”
    “Most people,” Freddy says promptly. “No, wait. The vast majority of people. No, wait. Everybody.”
    I poke my straw around inside my glass. “They ambushed me afterwards. They think I should call off the wedding.”
    “Let me guess,” she says. “That only made you more determined to do it.”
    I don’t answer. She hails a waiter and asks for another round. Somewhere close by, a creature starts shrieking in agony. I look up to see a father hauling a flailing toddler out of the pool. “Cute,” I say.
    Freddy looks appalled. “The child?”
    “Jesus, no! The dad.”
    “You scared me for a minute.” She watches him, head tilted appraisingly. “Nah. Too skinny.”
    “They all talked as if it’s
so
easy. Just,” I snap my fingers, “stop the wedding.”
    “It is easy,” Freddy tells me. “I’ve done it three times.”
    “Twice,” I correct her. “Norman dumped
you
, if I recall.”
    “Only because he caught me with Zoe,” she reminds me. “That makes it a tie.”
    “Why do you keep getting engaged to men? You can marry whoever you want now.”
    “Doctor Boog thinks I’m still seeking my parents’ approval,” Freddy explains.
    “Interesting. Doesn’t he know your parents are dead?”
    “That doesn’t matter, apparently. I have a general idea of what they’d like. He also says my efforts are doomed because I’m unrealistically optimistic about my capacity for change.”
    “He sounds fun.”
    A breeze rustles the palms above our heads. A waiter arrives with more pink squirrels. He sets them down. We watch him walk