Chapter Thirty-Two

BY THE TIME they got to the restaurant, Betty had basically struck out, as far as Joey was concerned.

“I’m not saying I don’t like it,” she said during the drive. “I’m just saying I think we should pick something out that’s a little more me.”

She’d been engaged fewer than twenty-four hours and was already complaining about her engagement ring. Joey had to bite her tongue in the backseat. How could she not like that ring? Joey had loved that ring. It was white gold with a single, round diamond. Not too fancy, but so sweet and so Dan. Granted, it did seem odd that he hadn’t gotten Betty her own ring, but maybe it had been too late to return it.

“I thought maybe we could get something a little bigger for an anniversary one day,” Dan said.

Joey wanted to cry. He had said those same words to her before their tenth anniversary. But she had loved the ring too much to even think about trading it in. And here was her sister, ready to throw it away like a Cracker Jack toy.

“Oh, that’s so sweet,” Betty said. “You’re right. We should save your money for Europe, anyway.”

“Europe?” Joey asked.

“Oh, didn’t we tell you?” Betty said. “Dan’s going to take a year off from school so we can have, like, this year-long honeymoon.”

Joey caught Dan’s eye in the rearview mirror and tried to convey her reaction to the news.

Are you kidding me? What about saving up and finishing school early? Won’t you lose your scholarship? Who even are you?

If Dan could hear her inner monologue, he didn’t react. But Joey was livid. Betty was moving on with the life she’d planned, but this time bringing Dan along to be her sidekick. She knew Betty’s Europe trip was a blur of parties, drugs, sex, and odd jobs here and there to pay her way through. She’d spent a month in Ibiza as a waitress and told Joey she “wouldn’t believe” everything she did there. Joey didn’t ask.

And she didn’t judge her sister for any of it, back then. They were two really different people and where Joey found comfort in familiarity, Betty was always searching for the next big thing.

How could Dan love such different people? Had he built the life they had together because he wanted it, or because he thought she did? What if they had talked more before their wedding and discovered that they both wanted to experience more before settling down. Not like Betty, but maybe a study abroad program? They’d talked about it, but then Joey got pregnant and traveling became a “maybe once the kids are grown” thing.

“Wow,” Joey said. “I think that sounds amazing.”

Dan furrowed his brow. Just like she could tell he was miserable, but too afraid to speak up, he could tell she was lying. It was weird that Betty couldn’t, but Joey chalked it up to Betty’s selective remembering. She could hear what she wanted from the people around her in real time, just as easily as she could play it back after the fact to look how she wanted it.

Well, Joey couldn’t and as she pretended to read her menu, she tried to think through a game plan. First, she had to talk to Dan alone again. Going somewhere together alone was definitely inappropriate, but she’d have to come up with an excuse to get him on his own. Maybe she could suggest that she help him shop for an engagement gift for Betty? It wasn’t something she’d expected when she was engaged, but she had a feeling it was exactly the kind of thing Betty wouldn’t mention but would be secretly pissed he hadn’t done.

Okay, so she could get him alone, but what would she say? She glanced over at him, sitting next to Betty and looking so stiff she wanted to cry for him. That’s what she’d say. She could tell him, as a friend, that he seemed uncomfortable around the person he should be most comfortable with. Maybe she was reading the situation wrong. That would give him a chance to explain it to her.

Betty was beautiful and enigmatic and impossible to ignore. Maybe he really had been in love with her the whole time but intimidated by her then and still. Joey was always the more approachable sister. She knew she was pretty, but not Betty-pretty. And she was so focused on school that she knew she could sometimes be a little nerdy.

Okay, a lot nerdy. But so was Dan. A lump formed in Joey’s throat as she thought through all the things he’d miss if he married Betty. Dressing up for midnight book releases when new Harry Potter books came out (Betty wouldn’t have been caught dead). Costume parties with friends on days other than Halloween. Hosting a party for the finale of Game of Thrones. Then being really mad at the end of Game of Thrones for weeks. Okay, years.

Wouldn’t he miss all of that? Or had he only ever done those things because Joey had wanted to? She tried to imagine Dan in a nightclub in Spain and couldn’t picture it. They enjoyed a drink every once in a while and tried pot when it was legal, but never anything on the level Joey knew Betty was about to. Or what she assumed, anyway.

Dan, in his cargo shorts and T-shirts, with a backward baseball hat, just didn’t belong anywhere other than with her. Betty could dress him up however she wanted to, but new clothes didn’t mean a damn thing.

“So, Joey,” Betty said after they’d ordered. “Tell us about London.”

“Oh.” Joey tried to relax her face so they wouldn’t see how focused she’d been on Dan.

“Have you written anything?” Dan asked.

“Quite a bit, actually,” Joey said. “I’ve written five novels. Almost six.”

She tried not to outwardly wince at the thought of that sixth manuscript, still unfinished.

“That’s incredible,” said Dan. “Can we read them?”

“Oh yeah, can we?” Betty asked.

Joey smiled and let herself fall into easy conversation with Betty and Dan about everything she’d written, and the things she’d seen while she was away. She knew they both would be so excited and supportive of her writing, and it felt good to ease her scrutiny of them as a couple for a bit and just enjoy them as people.

She told them about Liam and Will and their trips to Cornwall and even Paris. She told them she’d made a bet that the Angels would win the World Series and it had paid off big.

“How big?” Betty asked.

“Oh, like a hundred quid,” she said, realizing she didn’t want to share the actual number with her sister.

“So you bet, what, one pound?” Dan said. “Wouldn’t there have been like one hundred to one odds when you did it?”

Damn. He was good.

“Something like that,” Joey said, brushing it off. “Anyway, we saw all the sights and went to a few plays. London is basically the greatest city in the world.”

“Yeah, if you’re boring,” Betty said.

Joey bristled, but she knew it wouldn’t sound appealing the way she was telling it. Not to her sister, anyway.

“It sounds amazing,” Dan said.

Joey smiled and couldn’t help but think of how they’d always dreamed of going to London someday. In fact, they were saving to go in two years, before everything had changed.

“Well, of course it does.” Betty put her arm around Dan and kissed his cheek. “We’ll definitely stop by on the honeymoon. But we’ll see all the fun stuff that Joey missed.”

The food arrived at that exact moment, saving Joey from saying something she might regret. And besides, she had plenty of time to get to the bottom of this relationship. But from what she’d seen so far, Operation Dan and Betty felt more like a rescue mission than reconnaissance.

And she didn’t plan to leave her man behind.