Rosie digs her toe in the ground, toying with an auburn curl. “I know.”

I take in her expression, more enamored than I’ve ever seen before, and feel a painful sense of distance. When did this development happen? When did Rosie’s feelings grow this intense? I thought it was a schoolyard crush, but this—this looks like more than that.

Emmitt’s voice draws my attention away as Grant claps him on the back.

“There’s no way,” Grant is saying, shaking his head. “You have the hand-eye coordination of a toddler.”

“Smack talk before we even begin? You wound me, Grant,” Emmitt says, holding a hand to his heart. “I could run circles around you.”

“As if,” Grant says, waving him off. “My grandmother could do better than you.”

“Is that a challenge?” Emmitt asks, a wicked grin on his lips as he slides the plastic rings along the length of his arm. “You’re on.”

And then, because Emmitt Ramos apparently has not an ounce of shame, he walks up to the counter of the booth and leans forward, talking to the girl running it.

The girl—who can’t be more than a few years older than us—becomes increasingly flustered, visible in the way she starts fidgeting, her cheeks flushing and her eyes sparkling as she looks up at him.

I sigh, shaking my head. The flirting never ends with Emmitt.

But I realize why he went over a minute later, when he climbs onto the counter on his knees.

“Bro, the fuck?” Grant protests, pooling his plastic rings in one hand to swat Emmitt on the arm with his other one. “That’s not fair. Come on.”

Emmitt shrugs. “It’s not my bloody fault you didn’t think of it first.”

Grant turns to me, gesturing wildly to Emmitt, as if I somehow missed the spectacle occurring in front of me.

I look back at him in bemusement. “What?”

“Collect your man!” he says, pointing at Emmitt with way too much conviction for the words coming out of his mouth.

“He is not my man,” I say, lifting a brow.

Grant levels me a look of disbelief. “Who exactly do you think he’s winning that prize for?”

I shrug a shoulder, refusing to read into that implication. “Don’t know, don’t care. And if you can’t collect him as his friend, I can’t collect him, either.”

Grant gives me a look of despair. “This is the worst kind of betrayal.”

Meanwhile, Emmitt has tuned us out, throwing the rings with ease, watching as they land securely around the bottle necks with a smug smile on his face.

“Worry less about me, and more about convincing that girl over there to let you climb on the counter,” I suggest, my eyes tracking the movement of Emmitt’s rings.

Grant groans at my side as Emmitt’s last ring neatly circles around a bottle neck. “This is so unfair.”