The Most Fun We Ever Had Read Free Page A

man. He’d told her his name was Carson and she’d actually laughed but when he looked hurt she passed it off as nerves and yanked him down the hall by the lilies.
    The man-boy’s sweaty hand had adhered itself to her nipple in a way that wasn’t specifically pleasant. He kissed her neck. She rubbed her leg a little harder against his groin. Maybe early to mid-twenties. He seemed pretty sure of himself.
    “I didn’t get your name,” he said. Wendy stiffened a little, thought of Jonah across the table from her at lunch that afternoon, the blank innocence of his face, his bald confusion when they both realized Violet had fled. What if this guy wasn’t even legal ?
    “How old are you?” she asked, and he pulled away and grinned at her.
    “Twenty-two.”
    She nodded and slipped a hand down the waist of his pants. Just cocky, then, pun acknowledged. An heir, perhaps, of someone who’d invented something that seemed like it had already been invented by someone else. Or maybe the son of a record executive or a spray-tanned Fox correspondent. A boy who would live a life of inconsequence, who would, one hoped, not kill anybody with his car and get away with it. He wasn’t a terrible kisser.

    “How old are you ?” he asked.
    “Seventy-eight,” she said, unfazed.
    “You’re funny,” he said.
    She was suddenly irked. “What does your father do?” she asked him, removing her hand from his boxers.
    “Huh?”
    “Your dad. What’s his job? Why are you here tonight?”
    “What makes you assume that I’m here with—” He stopped, rolling his eyes. “He’s an engineer. Medical software development. Robotics.”
    “Ah.” She’d check the guest list tomorrow, ensure they’d made a sizable contribution. Sometimes the more low-profile guys tried to get away with just buying tickets.
    “What’s your name ?” he asked, a little more hostile this time.
    She sighed. “Wendy.”
    “Like Peter Pan,” Carlton noted astutely, and it was her turn to eye-roll.
    “Its origins have never been explained to me.”
    Her mom and dad used to call her Wednesday as a nickname, and when she’d confronted her mother about it—just a few years ago—the response had been underwhelming.
    “That was mean,” she’d said. “Like Wednesday Addams? I was skeletal, Mom; did that really seem like a good joke?”
    “Honey, you were born on a Wednesday. Just a few minutes after midnight. I had no idea what day it was and your father— It was because of that.”
    That was the story of her name, then. You shattered my conception of the space-time continuum, First Contraceptive Accident.
    She tugged at Carlton’s sleeve. “Come on. Let’s go outside,” she said.
    “Wendy,” he said. “Hang on. As in— that Wendy?”

    She turned to see what she’d already known was there: a poster for the fund-raiser, complete with a photo of the cancerous spokesbaby, dotted at the bottom with HOSTED BY WENDY EISENBERG OF THE CHICAGO PHILANTHROPIC WOMEN’S SOCIETY . A robotics engineer would be exponentially less likely to donate if he discovered that the middle-aged organizer was making out with his pretentiously named twenty-two-year-old son. It was the sight of the Eisenberg that really got her, though, the prodigious loop of the g . It still bothered her to see her name on its own. She backed away from her tailored little charge and tried to smile.
    “Do I seem like the hostess of this event?” she asked.
    “What’s your last name, then?”
    “Sorenson,” she said without skipping a beat.
    “Well, could I—can I text you?” he asked, and she smiled.
    “I’d like that,” she said ominously. “But I’d better go.”
    “I thought we were going outside.”
    “Alas, no time. I’m ancient. I’ve gotta go. Coaches. Pumpkins. Life Alert.”
    “Well—okay. This was—um—this was nice.”
    Ah, he was a sweet one: her prize for taking the high road.
    “Do yourself a favor,” she said, still flustered, tugging at the heel of