Where You Least Expect by Lydia Rowan Read Free Book Online Page A

told you about sneaking up on people. I coulda been packing heat.” Then she looked down at the wineglass that had broken at the stem but thankfully hadn’t shattered, and grumbled, “And you made me drop my fuckin’ wine.”
    After looking at the glass with a final disapproving huff, she reached between two deck chairs, a bottle in her hand when she lifted it.
    “But the joke’s on you, MFer. I don’t need a glass.”
    And with that, she lifted the bottle to her lips and took a healthy swig.
    “Stop swearing at me. And I think you’ve had enough of that,” he said, dislodging the bottle from her fingers.
    She narrowed her eyes and then reached for the bottle, which he easily kept out of her grasp. Two quick steps and he placed the bottle on the deck railing before walking back over toward her and then plopping in the chair beside her.
    “So you don’t want me to be happy either, huh? No surprise there. But fuc”—she glanced at him guiltily—“screw you. And everyone else, too.”
    “Delightful as always, Verna,” he said, to which she glared. “What’s gotten you in such a mood?”
    “Don’t you listen? I already said it’s my birthday, and it’s been quite revealatory. Wait, re-ve-la-tory.” She spoke slowly, her enunciation precise, as if she either struggled with the pronunciation of the last word or thought he was the babbling drunk and not her.
    “And usually birthdays involve cake and presents and friends and, you know, happiness, which seems conspicuously absent.”
    “Happiness!” She flopped back in the deck chair and threw an arm across her eyes, the dramatic motion making him laugh out loud. “It’s my thirtieth birthday, one that has only proven the truth of most of the shit I’ve always believed but could never fully accept. How can I be happy?”
    “Christ, Verna, you’re not that old,” he said, and she took her arm off her eyes long enough to glare at him riotously. “What? You’re not. Certainly not old enough to warrant these theatrics, not that any age is, but still,” he said.
    “Why am I not surprised that you don’t get it?” she asked, still looking at him hard.
    “Explain it to me,” he said as he leaned forward and pinned her with a hard glare of his own.
    After a moment, she looked away and then waved at him dismissively.
    “Never mind. It doesn’t matter. And besides, you don’t even like me, so why would I share anything with you?”
    “To be fair, Verna, you don’t like me very much either.” She shrugged at the statement, and he continued. “But I’ll admit, I’m intrigued.”
    And he was. Verna was annoying as fuck, but she was almost always in good spirits, so he was genuinely curious about why something as innocuous as a birthday had her resorting to getting drunk alone.
    “Intrigued like, ‘Let’s laugh at Verna and the shitshow that is her life’ or some other kind of curious?”
    Odd comment, but he let it pass.
    “Some other kind of curious; we’ll call it something like reconnaissance.”
    She looked at him again, her expression still skeptical and her eyes surprisingly clear for someone who’d consumed what looked to be more than her fair share of wine.
    “Fine,” she said, huffing out a breath. “I’m thirty.”
    The words were spoken with the same misery with which one would deliver a piece of particularly devastating news.
    “I gathered,” he said, shaking his head.
    “Do you have any idea what that means?” she asked, her eyes slightly bugged out with incredulity.
    “That you were born thirty years ago today,” he said slowly, not quite catching her drift.
    “No.” She paused. “Well, yes, it means that, too. But more importantly, it means that as of today, I am officially, unequivocally, a failure.”
    “I’m not following.”
    She quirked a smile then, one that said she wasn’t surprised that he wasn’t keeping up.
    “Stop smirking and connect the dots, Verna,” he said sharply.
    She smiled a bit