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The I’m-all-knowing look she gave him made his gut tighten. He had no idea what was coming next, but it wasn’t going to be good. Still, he couldn’t stop himself.
“And why’s that?”
“Because,” Megs answered, “it’s all about the pigs in our family.”
“Uh-huh,” Cami said. “Grandma met Grandpa at a pig farm.”
Brit added, “Mom and Dad met when she was showing her hog at the county fair.”
“And now you’re going on a non-date with a woman who you are not interested in romantically, and you two just happen to be going to a pub called the Flying Sow?” Roxy shrugged her shoulders. “Might as well start picking out rings, little brother.”
“I better be one of your groom’s women,” Cami piped up.
Megs flashed an evil grin at their youngest sister. “As long as I get to be best woman.”
Brit gasped. “You can’t just call that. Cal gets to pick.” She brushed her hair off her shoulders and lifted her chin imperiously. “And he’s always liked me best.”
God help him when—if—he ever did get married. They were going to turn the whole thing into a drama-fest. Sure, it would be because they loved him, but that didn’t change the fact that his sisters were—and always had been—a lot.
“None of you are the favorite because you’re all equally a giant pain in my ass,” he grumbled.
“We love you, too, Cal,” they called out.
He hung up the phone while they were still debating who was going to be his best woman. It was an outcome none of them needed to worry about for at least the next decade or twelve.
Tonight wasn’t romantic.
Astrid had been clear. It was just two friends hanging out without getting naked.
Therefore, it didn’t matter what he wore. Clothes were just clothes. He grabbed a T-shirt off a hanger and was about to pull it on when the pink sweater caught his eye.
Was it supposed to get cold tonight? The temperature did drop at night in late September. Maybe—
“Oh, what the fuck.”
He pulled the sweater down from the shelf and put it on.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Of all the times for that song to come on the pub’s jukebox, having it happen while Astrid was having a small breakdown over the idea of hanging out with Cal was pretty much the most horrible. As soon as the banjo started, before the first line about being young and in love was even sung, Astrid’s lungs locked down, her heart sped up, and the whole world got too loud, too bright, and way too much.
She was already pushing her chair back from the table where Nola and Thea were hyping her up when she realized the song wasn’t Andy being an asshole again. Two women—one of whom was wearing a bride sash—were arm-in-arm belting out the lyrics like true Swifties while a third woman documented the whole thing with her phone.
Astrid relaxed her hands that had curled into fists, eased back into her chair, and took a sip of her beer as she concentrated on keeping her breathing even. The song didn’t make her cry anymore. It didn’t send her into a tailspin that left her a crumpled mess of emotional wreckage. She’d outrun all of that, and now she just really fucking hated that song. It wasn’t baggage. It was simple preference.
It was.
However, watching the bride and her friends, she decided that she could suffer through this song for true love—someone else’s, obviously. Who knew? Maybe a tipsy bride-to-be singing about saying yes would break the song’s curse.
Nola shot a wary glance toward the bride-to-be who was now standing on a chair and singing into her bottle of Sweet Salvation IPA. “You’re not going to go rip the jukebox cord out again, are you?”
“No,” Astrid said with a sigh, ignoring the instinct to do just that. “But shouldn’t that kind of niceness mean I can go back in time and not ask Cal to hang out? Really, this is the worst idea I’ve ever had, and I went camping once. In a tent. With no running water and leaves for toilet paper.”
“Oh, you poor thing.” Nola rolled her eyes. “How did you ever survive?”
Thea clinked her beer against Nola’s before she said, “Yeah, you’d make it half a day on one of my digs.”
Astrid shivered in disgust. “And that’s why I didn’t become a paleontologist.”
