Page 18 of All Our Nevers

“Oh, sorry that our peasant alcohol is below you, Daddy Warbucks. I’ll raise you to Rubinoff but that’s the best my debit card can handle.” I try to load a bottle into the shopping cart, but he blocks it with an arm.

“Begone, shrew. I’ll pay for the alcohol, just please for the love of all things holy, don’t bring Rubinoff anywhere near me.”

I shake my head as I place it back on the shelf, muttering, “Mr. Ivy League thinks he’s too good for Rubinoff with his suits and his corporate sala—”

“Do you guys drink wine?” Owen interrupts.

My eyebrows rise involuntarily. “Andy almost exclusively drinks wine. You genuinely don’t know your brother at all, do you?”

“Fine,” he snaps. “Great. And I’m sure you have your highly distinguished taste set on pink moscato, but once again I’m going to insist we get something that’s actually drinkable.”

I feign confusion. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand the joke. Are you saying I only drink pink moscato because I’m a woman or because I’m poor?”

The clench in his jaw says it's because I’m a huge bitch, but he keeps that remark to himself, shoving the cart into the next aisle. And by the time we’re done, between the alcohol, the decorations, and the goodie bags, we’ve amassed a frankly absurd quantity of things.

“I’ll do the posters and you can do the balloons,” I say as I climb back into the passenger side of his fragile-masculinity-mobile.

“No way,” he says, seatbelt clicking into place. “You don’t just get to steamroll the poster making. I’ve got ideas too.”

“I’ll give you one chance to impress me. What ideas?”

“Okay. Right off the back we need to mock them for everything about their relationship. I’m thinking a poster that says something like: This Engagement Was Four Days in the Making.”

A cackle escapes me against my will. They did get engaged after dating for four days, after all. “Pretty good. What else you got?”

He smirks as he turns left out of the parking lot. “I’m just getting started. I trust you know all the people Andy dated since college? I’m thinking we can cyberstalk them and print out pictures to glue on a poster with a title like: People Andy Pretended Were Sophie.”

I’m laughing in full now. “That’s horrible. Keep going.”

“And then something for the nine years he was in love with her. It was nine, right? Maybe like: Andy’s Been in Love With Sophie Since… and then a list of pop culture things. Like ‘since “Despacito” was #1 on the charts’ or whatever.”

I’m clapping and kicking my feet. “Okay, okay! We can work on them together. These are golden. I’m sorry I ever doubted you.”

"You would live here,” I say as I enter Owen’s apartment. The place is—and I cannot stress this enough—exactly what I expected.

“What does that mean?”

“It means some people have more money than taste.”

He lives in the Seaport, which is already a no from the jump. When I think of the archetypical resident of Boston’s Seaport neighborhood, it’s a frat-bro-turned-“entrepreneur” who says things like synergize while secretly missing the pizza from his college dining hall, or a divorced dad with a flatly shiny bald spot to match his flatly shiny mid-life crisis Corvette.

Owen’s unit is on the 24th floor, and I’m sure it costs $6,000 a month in rent. That’s not hyperbole, that’s a genuine guess.

The decor might as well be a corporate lobby: white walls, gray marble kitchen counters, a living room with a beige suede couch and a big-screen TV mounted on the wall. Oh, and of course there’s no art to be found anywhere—although there is a bowl of lemons neatly stacked on the kitchen island. It makes me wonder if he has some kind of paid service come to set new ones out when the old ones rot.

“Oh yeah, and I’m sure your apartment is so tasteful,” he quips, following on my heels as I invite myself to snoop into each and every room.

“Maybe it is. You’ll never know.”

“You say that, but if we don’t finish all this today I expect you to host round two.”

“Oh, we’re finishing it today. Hand me the bags.”

We lay the supplies out on the coffee table: matte paper in bright white and blush pink, a kaleidoscope of colored pencils sharpened to needle-fine points, folded foil balloons in shining silver.

Once we’ve settled onto the couch, I note, “Didn’t think you’d be so big on celebrations.”

It’s true—I genuinely expected Owen to find this kind of thing beneath him. Before today, I couldn’t possibly picture him blowing up cheap balloons with the same arrogant, erudite mouth that says things like Objection, your honor! or whatever it is lawyers do.