Calling His Bluff

Ms. Obey the Rules. He’d have to bring her to the awards ceremony, since he’d invited her, but otherwise she could park herself poolside for the weekend for all he cared.

No kissing. No salsa. No big money poker.

Piece of cake.

* * *

By the time they were checking in at the Bellagio, standing under a canopy of Chihuly blown-glass flowers, he was ready to throttle the woman.

Not that she wasn’t being nice. Oh, no. You could never meet anyone nicer than Sarah Tyler, her little act seemed to be proclaiming. Pleasant and helpful and so chatty that he could hardly get a word in edgewise. But this Sarah was running the show, and she had no intention of allowing any uncomfortable topics of conversation to pop up of which she did not approve.

And he’d remembered her as such an easygoing girl.

Not so much these days, it seemed.

He’d never forgotten Sarah, the same way that he’d always remembered the smell of her mother baking peanut butter cookies, the kind with the grid scored on top by the tines of a fork. Visceral memories. The Tylers had subtly taken him in, never pushy or condescending, but always there with a casual invitation to stay for dinner or come by early for breakfast on the way to school. For a year, for the worst year, when his dad was spiraling out of control and his mom was focused on trying to save him, J.D. had practically lived with the Tylers. He’d stop at his family’s house occasionally, for clean clothes or to reconfirm his continued existence and good health, but home had become the Tylers’ house.

And although he and Tyler were best buddies, there was also no avoiding the Tyler daughters. The Tyler women, as they took to calling themselves shortly after puberty overtook Maxie, the youngest.

Addy was the bossy one, the older sister who was more than happy to have a second younger brother to order around. Maxie was creativity personified, a never-ending stream of crazy ideas, strange clothes, weird hats and goofball plans. And Sarah…well, Sarah was the calm in the eye of the storm.

Tyler was his brother-in-arms, his coconspirator in everything from concealing mirrors on the high school grounds—it was a surprisingly scientific effort to use the principles of light refraction to peek into the girls’ locker room—to cutting school to attend the Chicago Cubs’ home opener every spring, a tradition adopted by Tyler’s father as a boy, which they’d heard about and were determined to continue. In his first true act of courage, J.D., who still considered the sight of blood a personal affront and a deliberate attempt to make him nauseous, stabbed his index finger with a distressingly dull penknife when he was ten years old to become blood brothers with his best friend, Christopher Robin Tyler.

He’d made Tyler confess to his real name before agreeing to the bloodletting. It seemed a fair bargain and was useful for a lifetime’s worth of blackmail material. Tyler was his best friend, his brother. But when J.D. had been angry and frustrated at the world, as only a young man can be, he would wander the Tyler household, looking for the quiet slim girl with long dark hair, hoping to round a corner of the staircase and find her sitting on the steps with a hardcover book in her lap. She was always so focused that he could take a dozen pictures of her before she noticed him. Then she’d look up with an open smile and a ready hello

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