Made for You (The Best Mistake 2)

“Not true, Lil,” he said with a self-deprecating grin. “I pride myself on working as little as possible. Sort of a professional slacker, ya know?”

“Oh, I do know,” Brynn chimed in, giving him her sourest smile. “Still, this month must have been a new record for you. It was what, three weeks without a new girlfriend?”

She was walking on dangerous territory, and she knew it, but she’d be damned if she’d sit here and listen to him blather on about how he’d been thinking about Lily in the time he and Brynn had been together.

“Well, actually, there was someone,” he said, letting his voice go low and almost sad.

Brynn’s eyes narrowed on him. He was calling her bluff. He wouldn’t dare.

He arched an eyebrow at her and she took a quick sip of wine, angry that she’d taken them this direction. Of course he would call her bluff. He had nothing to lose.

She had everything to lose.

Well, at least her reputation. And her dignity…

“Lily, did Will tell you that he moved in next door to Brynn?” Marnie asked when Will failed to finish his sentence. “It’s so lucky for us to have our daughter and close friend so close together. Not that either has invited us over, of course…”

Lily gave her a bright smile. “I think it’s so great that you have been good friends for so long. High school, right?”

Marnie gave a nervous laugh. “Well, actually, it’s our younger daughter, Sophie, who’s always been thick as thieves with Will. But Will and Brynn were closer in age, so they’ve also been…”

Her voice trailed off as she gave an absent wave of her hand, before busying herself with passing the salad around. Apparently even Marnie’s obsession with social niceties wouldn’t extend to outright lying and pretending that Will and Brynn had ever been friends.

“So what do you do, Brynn?” Lily asked politely.

“I’m an orthodontist.”

Will pretended to suddenly fall asleep before jerking himself upright. Brynn ignored him but didn’t miss the fact that her dad was hiding a smile.

“And you?” Brynn said, stabbing a piece of cucumber and giving Lily a bland smile.

“I’m a website developer,” Lily said. “It’s actually how Will and I first met. He hired my firm a few years ago to build the Airamore microsite.”

“Airamore, that’s the virtual travel agent company you sold for an obscene amount of money, right?” Chris asked.

“That’s the one,” Will said.

Brynn’s stomach felt oddly hollow, although she didn’t know if it was from the fact that she’d wrongly assumed that Lily’s profession would be along the lines of a “dancer,” or if it was because she clearly didn’t have the faintest clue about what Will had been up to all of these years.

And apparently she was the only one.

“So an orthodontist, that’s so cool,” Lily said.

Brynn swallowed a sip of wine and gave a tight smile. Lily apparently had noticed her discomfort and was trying to draw Brynn back into the conversation. Could she be any nicer?

“It’s, um…it’s…”

Tell her that being an orthodontist is thrilling. Fulfilling. That it’s everything you ever wanted.

“Being an orthodontist is actually a little bit boring,” Brynn heard herself say.

Lily gave her a sympathetic nod, but the rest of the table had fallen silent. Brynn didn’t have to look at her parents to know that they were stunned. Brynn had decided she wanted to be an orthodontist when her recently removed braces had revealed a row of perfectly straight teeth. She had been sixteen. And never once since that day had she wavered from that course as she carefully ensured she was taking all the right classes and all the right internships to lead her in that direction.

Nobody had been surprised when she’d graduated at the top of her class. Nobody had been surprised when she’d opened her own thriving practice.

They apparently were surprised to learn she didn’t like it.

But nobody was as surprised as she was.