Smart Girl by Rachel Hollis

going to throw myself at him—at least not without some alcohol in my system.
    “Can I help with something?” I ask.
    “No.” Viv waves me away with a perfectly manicured hand. “We’re almost done with the tacos. Grab yourself a drink, and have some of that queso Landon brought. It’s got to be five hundred calories a bite, but it’s worth every one.”
    I follow the direction of the knife she’s using to point down the counter. Brody and Landon are drinking beers near an elaborate spread of chips and salsa and a giant bowl of melted cheese that Landon considers one of her specialties. Liam walks around them and goes to work next to Viv chopping vegetables.
    Oh gods, please don’t let him be good at cooking too! I can’t make a meal to save my life, and if this man has some culinary prowess on top of everything else, I might actually just have to kidnap him. A Stockholm syndrome kind of love is still love, right?
    I force myself to look away and find something else to focus on. As usual, Max is whipping up some kind of cocktail, and Taylor is . . . I’m not really sure.
    “Taylor, what are you doing down there?”
    His voice comes out muffled from where he’s half bent under the kitchen table.
    “This table wobbles a little,” he calls back. For good measure he shakes it to prove his point.
    “It drives him insane,” Max tells us as she lines glasses with salt. “You want one of these?”
    Both Tosh and I nod in unison.
    “It doesn’t drive me insane,” Taylor says.
    “It does. He’s been fretting over that table for weeks, but he doesn’t want to offend Mom and Dad, so he hasn’t offered to fix it,” Max says with a smile.
    Taylor unfolds himself from beneath the table, his height and muscles and tattoos in direct opposition to the sweet smile he gives Max and the lazy drawl of his accent.
    “Jennings, you know I’ve never fretted about anything in all my life.”
    “Even when we did events?” Landon asks. “I seem to remember you rewiring an alarm once during a blizzard at Sundance.”
    “Ugh!” Max scowls at her. “Don’t bring up Selah—it’s bad juju.”
    Both Landon and I yell mostly incoherent things at the mention of our horrible former boss, and Brody throws a handful of tortilla chips at his sister.
    “Dude, you know you’re not supposed to use her name. She’s like Voldemort!”
    I take a sip of the margarita she just handed me with a scowl on my face. Fresh citrus hits my tongue, covering the fire from the tequila almost completely and wiping out some of my annoyance at the mention of my former boss.
    “It doesn’t matter now.” Max hands Taylor his drink and accepts his kiss on the cheek. “Taylor no longer works there as of Friday.”
    Landon gasps and I squeal. It’s loud enough that everyone stops what they’re doing to look at us.
    “This is so great!” Landon says, standing up on tiptoes to give him a hug.
    I follow suit while Taylor chuckles self-consciously.
    “Yeah, well, all the cool kids are starting their own businesses, so I thought I’d follow suit.”
    “You’re not just starting.” Max fits herself against his side. “You’ve been successfully designing furniture for years; now you’re just doing it full time.”
    “That’s awesome, man.” My brother taps glasses with Taylor. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”
    Taylor grins.
    “Beyond the order you just placed for forty-three desks for your office, you mean?”
    Now it’s Tosh’s turn to look embarrassed.
    “That’s entirely on Koko. You know she’s the arbiter of style. I just do whatever she tells me to.”
    I sigh dramatically. “If only every man was so easy to tame.”
    I’d meant it as a joke, but if I’d thought about it for even a second, I wouldn’t have said the words at all. There are way too many people in this room who know way too many things for me to make a joke like that. Unfortunately Viv isn’t one of those, so she doesn’t resist an