“Anyway,” Anna Grace says, and I take a deep breath.
“Anyway, I’m not completely unjustified for being suspicious,” I say.
“No,” she agrees, perfectly mild, and I sigh.
“But?”
“But—and not to go defending men or anything, God forbid—that was over a decade ago and during what I understand was a particularly difficult period in Silas’s life,” she says. “I think it’s very possible that he was a raging asshole then and bringing you ulterior-motive-free flowers now.”
“Do you think it’s likely?” I ask.
She grabs the final ball from her own bucket, and looks at my golf setup, on the other side of the rail where I’m currently lounging.
“Are you gonna hit any of those?”
“I hit a couple,” I say.
“Might do you good to hit some more.”
This isn’t the first thing Anna Grace and I have worked out at the driving range. Two years ago, when I was still living in Fairfax and dating Evan, I came down because her ex-boyfriend got engaged to her ex-girlfriend, and I think she went through about twenty buckets of balls in a weekend. I like to think my excellent insight and copious swearing on her behalf also helped.
“I can’t tell if that’s a yes or a no,” I tell her, and she leans back on the opposite railing, crossing her arms while still holding her golf club in a very rakish way.
“I don’t really know him that well,” she starts.
“Now you tell me.”
“And he’s kind of an asshole, but in a charming, do-stuff-first, ask-permission-later kind of way. Not in a calculated-cruelty-to-a-specific-person kind of way.”
She gives me a very pointed look at that last part, and I’ve at least got the decency to glance away.
“So you think they’re just flowers and not a sign that he’s plotting my social downfall?” I say, still not moving.
“I think if Silas wanted to do you harm, he’d toilet paper your house and fork your front yard, not embark on an elaborate weeks-long ruse to emotionally ruin you,” she says.
This time I meet her eyes.
“Not that I disapprove of emotionally ruinous ruses,” she says, a glimmer of amusement finally coming into her eyes. “But he wouldn’t think of it.”
“Thanks,” I say, and she picks up her empty bucket.
“C’mon,” Anna Grace says, plopping her golf stick on her shoulder. “The bartender who makes the amazing sidecars is working tonight, and we can put it on my parents’ tab.”
“We should stop doing that someday,” I point out, following her.
Anna Grace laughs.
“Never,” she says, and we head to the bar.