The Love Wager by Lynn Painter

            Jack looked at the buffet, and sure enough, his sister was filling her plate. “Dear God, if they have pancakes, you’re missing your flight for sure.”

            Olivia and Colin were leaving for a two-week Italian honeymoon once brunch was over.

            “She’s bottomless, right?” Colin said, smiling, and Jack was too hungover—and suddenly too single—to sit there and listen to Colin get gooey about his sister. He was glad they were happy, but that didn’t mean he wanted to soak that shit up when he had a throbbing temple and an apartment to move out of.

            “Hotcake junkie for sure.” Jack got up and went to the buffet, careful to keep his head down to avoid conversations with cousins and aunties. There were far too many family members milling about the restaurant for his comfort, so he grabbed a plate and headed straight for Olivia.

            “I cannot believe,” she said, somehow knowing it was him without turning her head, “that you’re this late and Mom hasn’t said a word yet. If I’d been thirty seconds late, every relative would’ve heard about it.”

            “True.” It was a well-known fact that Jack was the favorite child of Nancy Marshall.

            “You smell like whiskey,” she said, narrowing her eyes and finally looking at him. “Wow—and you look like you slept in a dumpster. What the hell happened to you?”

            Jack raised a hand to his hair; did he look that bad? “Nothing.”

            “Seriously, though,” she said, tilting her head a little. “What did happen to you? After Vanessa lost her shit, you kind of disappeared. Where’d you go?”

            He wouldn’t have told anyone else, but he’d always been able to be completely honest with Livvie when he screwed up. “Got hammered and had a sleepover with the bartender.”

            Her mouth dropped open. “You did not.”

            He shrugged.

            She looked at him like he’d just declared himself a cheeseburger, and then she took his plate and set it beside hers on the buffet table before grabbing his arm and pulling him toward the back of the restaurant.

            “Livvie—”

            “Just come on.”

            She led him to a spot right beside the kitchen door, and when they stopped, she blinked up at him and said, “Jack, you were ready to propose twelve hours ago. How in God’s name were you able to sleep with a bartender?”

            “Do you mean, like, the mechanics of the act?”

            She growled and said, “No, I mean that I know you were upset about Vanessa last night. I saw your face after you came back in from the parking lot.”

            He didn’t want to think about that, dammit. “So?”

            “So a random hookup is a terrible idea that isn’t going to help your loneliness.”

            “I’m not lonely, for fuck’s sake.”

            “Really.” She crossed her arms and gave him a bullshit look. “You didn’t rush everything with Vanessa because you were sad and didn’t want to be alone?”

            “Shut up, you nosy little shit,” he muttered, giving in to a smile when she rolled her eyes and pinched him.

            “Listen, you tool,” she said, dropping her hand and looking serious. “We both know you loved the idea of a relationship so much that you forced it; you admitted it to me when you were drunk at Billy’s a couple weeks ago, remember?”

            He wished he’d never shared that little morsel.

            “Well, it sucks the way things went down, but I think this is a blessing,” she said, taking her phone out of her jeans pocket and looking at the display. “Now you’re free to find someone you actually have something in common with. Someone you have fun with.”

            Just to mess with her, Jack said, “Well, I had a lot of fun with the bartender last night.”

            “Spare me the details and let me give you the log-in for the dating app for which you’re now a paid subscriber.”

            “What?” He groaned and glared at his sister. “What did you do?”