92 Days Before Our Wedding, My Best Friend Won... novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Entered Manually

Devin's best man Darek flies to Charleston with the game's log: the winning number was typed in by hand Sunday at 9:12 pm, two minutes before Ansley's ticket died. Devin is already telling everyone she ended the wedding.

The doorbell rang at eight on Friday morning, while my father was frying bacon and my mother was pretending not to watch me.

I opened the door in my pajamas and my father's old cardigan.

A man stood on the porch with a canvas jacket, a carry-on bag and a face that hadn't slept either.

"Ansley Hennessey?" he said. "I'm Darek."

I knew the name. He had stood next to Devin at every dinner for two years, and he had never once started a conversation with me.

"How do you know where my parents live?"

"The save-the-date cards. Your mother's return address." He rubbed his neck. "I flew in at six. I know how this looks."

"It looks like Devin's best man is on my porch the morning after his best friend left me."

"Yes."

"Did he send you?"

"No." He said it before I finished. "He thinks I'm at my sister's in Denver."

My father came to stand behind me with the spatula still in his hand.

"Dad, this is Darek."

"The best man," my father said.

"Yes, sir. I'd like to show your daughter something. Then you can throw me off the porch."

My father looked at me.

I stepped back, and Darek came into the front hall and stopped on the mat and wiped his shoes twice.

We sat at the kitchen table, and my mother set a mug of coffee in front of him without a word.

He took out his phone.

"The game is an app," he said. "Devin wrote it in college. Three people pick a number from zero to ten, the app draws one, and closest wins."

"Devin, Lila and you."

"Yes. We played for small things. Who pays for dinner, who drives, who picks the movie."

"Round 9 was on his screen," I said. "I saw it."

"Then you saw the number." He turned the phone to me. "This is what you didn't see."

It was a list of rounds, each with a date, three numbers and a result.

Round 8 was in August: whose turn to host. Round 7 was a coin toss for a parking spot.

Round 9 was at the top.

Beside it, in a column I hadn't known an app could have, were the words Entered manually.

"What does that mean?"

"The app never draws it. Someone typed 10 into that field. The number you picked and the number Lila picked were typed in afterward."

"Who typed it?"

"Devin's account." He scrolled to the time. "Sunday, 9:12 p.m."

I looked at the time for a long moment.

"My flight was canceled at 9:14," I said.

He swallowed. "Two minutes apart. He typed in the win, and then he canceled your flight, and he sat on that couch for three days waiting for you to pick a number."

My mother set the coffee pot down harder than she meant to.

"He wanted me to say zero," I said.

"He needed it to look like a game you agreed to."

"And Lila knew."

"I don't know what Lila knew." Darek shook his head. "I know she didn't ask what the prize was, which isn't like her. She asks what everything costs."

My father put the spatula on the counter.

"Why are you telling us?" he asked.

Darek looked at the table.

"Because last night a friend sent me what Devin is telling people," he said. "And because I should have said something a long time ago."

"What is he telling people?"

"That you called off the wedding over a joke. His mother started it in the family group chat at midnight." He took a breath. "By Saturday morning, everyone he knows will believe you ended it."

"I didn't."

"He knows that. He wants you to do it anyway, so it's your name on the cancellation and not his."

My mother spoke for the first time since the coffee.

"Why would he want that?"

"I don't know yet," Darek said. "But he's not careless. He canceled your flight on a Sunday so no one could say it happened because of the game."

"Does the app show anything before Round 2?" I asked.

He went quiet.

"The list starts at Round 2," he said. "Round 1 is gone."

"Who could have deleted it?"

"Only Devin and Lila can edit the history. I can only read it."

Nobody said a word.

I pressed my palms flat on the table, and the skin on my ring finger was still paler than the rest.

"What do you want from me?" I asked him.

"Nothing yet. Devin lands Monday at 6:40 p.m. Chicago time." He met my eyes. "Don't confront him on the phone. Don't confront him alone in your kitchen, where he can tell everyone you were hysterical."

"Where, then?"

"Somewhere with witnesses." He pushed the phone across the table to me. "Keep that. Send the log to yourself and to your father."

I forwarded it to both of us while he watched.

When I looked up, he was looking at my mother's coffee instead of at me.

"I'm sorry," he said. "For two years of not saying anything."

I didn't tell him it was fine.

It wasn't.

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