One drink turns into a second round, then a third. Music plays from the beat-up jukebox in the corner, a Dolly Parton song switching to Diana Ross. Someone cues up a game of pinball, mozzarella sticks get delivered, and Mia tells me about the new keyboard she bought. She switches halfway through her story to show me a picture of the cat she’s trying to convince Richard to adopt, and an hour later, my sides hurt from laughing. I shake my head when Harlow tries to offer us another drink.
“I’m tapping out.” I nudge my empty glass away. The world is starting to sway. I’m happy, savoring that buzzed feeling that comes right before tipsy when everything is funny and lovely and sparkly. “I have to be up early to do some work before my show, and I’m getting too old for a night out that involves more than a few drinks.”
“Me too,” Mia adds. Her phone lights up on the counter, and she drags her thumb across the screen to open a text message. Her eyes widen. They move to me, then back to her phone, and her face falls. “Oh.”
I frown. “What’s wrong?”
“Everything isgreat,” she says, but her voice is an octave higher than before. Laced with the most obvious trace of bullshit I’ve ever heard. “Peachy, really. Nothing to worry about.”
“Mia.”
“Quincy.”
“Mia.”
She huffs. Flips her phone face down and huffs again. “It’s my brother.”
My blood turns cold.
Sebastian Dunn.
My long-suffering academic rival and the bane of my existence.
There’s always been a string tying the two of us together, a gossamer thread of dislike that stretches back to when we were teenagers. Back to overlapping friend groups and assigned seats next to each other in chemistry and calculus. The days when we were experts at the game ofanything you can do, I can do better. Masters ofthere’s no way you have the right answer, andyes, I do, read it and weep, you impossible show-off.
There have been high school pranks.
Sarcastic barbs.
When he followed me to the University of Central Florida and sat beside me in Introduction to Climate Science, never giving me a second of peace.
The year he won the WxChallenge, a collegiate-focused meteorological competition that measures weather forecast accuracy, then publicly shared his win as the top individual forecaster in a video.
Good effort, he said, smirking at the camera during the victory speech he posted to social media.But not good enough, he added, holding a trophy while feeling like he was speaking directly to me.
The only saving grace is the fact he’s currently living in New York, thousands of miles away. Blissfully out of sight and thankfully out of mind.
“No one’s pushed him off the Empire State Building yet?” I ask, wanting to think about anything but him. Life is much better when his arrogant, my-data-was-accepted-to-a-research-journal-and-yours-wasn’t-despite-you-doing-double-the-work ass isn’t in the picture.
“I think you’d be the only person to push him, but you don’t have a bone in your body that would resort to physical violence,” Mia says, and it’s a good thing she can’t see the ideas running through my head. She’d be so disappointed. “He’s checking in.Asking about what’s new in town. He’s so busy with work, we don’t talk as much as we used to.”
“Tell him everything is great.”
“I’ll pass it along.” Mia pauses. I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop: He won the Nobel Prize in Physics. He’s found the secret to solving world hunger. Maybe he’s going up in space to colonize Mars. A girl can dream. “He said he has a surprise for me.”
“Hopefully he’s moving to Antarctica. I’m sure the sea life would adore him,” I draw out, hating that it’s true.
Everyone loves Sebastian Dunn.
He’s always been the loudest and most enthusiastic person in any room. He found internet fame and earned a cult following a couple years back, winding up inPeople’s “Sexiest Man Alive” issue underhot weatherman we wouldn’t mind getting wet forafter a clip of him chasing a tornado in a cowboy hat and translucent shirt nearly broke social media. The thirst trap edits and innuendos aboutsoakinganddrenchedhaunted me for months.
Dubbed thegolden weather boyby his admirers, he works on the ABC nightly news as the senior meteorologist with a follower count five times mine. His entire feed is photos of him in a field, leaning over the window of his Jeep and staring off into the distance. Hundreds of thousands of likes and comments sit under the sepia-toned pictures, and blocking any mention of his name was the smartest thing I’ve ever done.
“When I find out, I’ll let you know.” Mia interrupts my daydreams of watching him mess up his lines on-air and in front of eight million televisions every night. “I’m sure it’s nothing important. I bet he’ll come down to visit at the end of summer.”
“Perfect time to plan a trip up north. What a bummer we won’t cross paths,” I say.
“That wasn’t sarcastic at all.”
