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She clasped her hands together like she was making mental plans for brunch dates involving stupid overpriced food and matching cashmere scarves or something else equally cliché. Her smile could make a cavity throb. “You know, I thought Stella was too good for me too.”
“First of all, Dylan Gallagher is not ‘too good’ for me. Second of all, no.”
Joni’s nod conveyed entertained agreement. Agreement with Olive.
Olive flushed with excitement.
If it hadn’t been Olive’s last shift before she left for her big trip, Derek would have called out of work for the first time in ten years. He even managed to get up early enough to pick up her cake from the bakery. Before the bakery, he’d had to walk Gus during the time Carol—aka HOA Karen or Parakeet Karen, depending on how Derek was feeling that day—went to water aerobics at the YMCA. He was too exhausted for this absurd interrogation. But he also couldn’t tell Olive that or she would know he’d fibbed about getting permission for Gus to stay in his building.
This lie was only the third he’d ever told his best friend in their twenty-plus–year friendship, and compared to the first two, it was laughably small.
It was as if Olive’s new relationship with her hot pilot girlfriend, Stella, had injected her with love radiation serum, and she was hoping its effects were contagious. Somewhat infuriating, but also… sweet? Really it was just so essentially Olive to want everyone in her life to be as happy as she was.
“So while Dylan fixes everything… it’ll be Dylan living with you. Well, you living with Dylan. So… Dylan and Derek sharing that tiny apartment. Dylan… Derek… Derek… Dylan.”
Derek glared. “Don’t make the joke.”
“But I want to make the joke,” she whined.
“Do not make the joke.”
Olive straightened. “I’m gonna make the joke.”
He gently hammered his fist on the charge nurse desk. “Goddamn it, Olivia—”
“Not my name. And… ahem.” She affected the voice of a smarmy stand-up comic, holding the end of her stethoscope like a microphone. “Sure seems like there’s a lot of D in that apartment.” Olive made a tiny drumming and cymbal crash motion.
Joni burst out laughing.
Derek covered his head with his hands and lowered his forehead to the table. “I hate you. And him. I’m not going to sleep with him.”
Dylan Gallagher was objectively good looking, but in that boy-next-door who’s a regular in a Dungeons & Dragons gaming convention kind of way.
“Why do you hate him? Like, you’ve always seemed like you hated him, even when he just moved in. He seems pretty inoffensive. What did he do to you?”
Derek winced into the table where Olive couldn’t see his face.
So…
Corollaries to the original lies count under the umbrella of first lies, thus Derek was not telling more lies when he answered. The truth would dampen Olive’s glow. Any mention of her brother did.
Uh, so he went out with your brother once, and Jake was really into him but then the dude went off on him and made him feel like shit.
Nope. He would not be saying that. It was her last day here, and Derek loved seeing her carefree and happy.
“Well, for starters he walks around his apartment at weird hours, and oh yeah…” Derek’s voice rose with indignation. “Can we get back to the fact that he fell into my bedroom?”
Joni offered a teasing smile. “I didn’t realize it was your bedroom he fell into. Darn, I was going to say this was a rule thirty-four situation, but honestly, it’s almost too easy.”
Olive’s mouth pouted upward in confusion. “What’s rule thirty-four?”
Derek groaned. “It’s a stupid internet saying that if something exists there’s a porn of it.”
“Out of curiosity, what were you both wearing when the fall occurred?” Joni said in the same sweet but clinical voice she used when asking octogenarians what creams they used for their hemorrhoids.
“Whose side are you on, Joni?” Derek asked.
Joni blinked her eyes looking like a mix of angel and Bambi.