“Pretty good.”
“Insanely good!” She pauses, tugging on the short strands of her black hair. Her green eyes are on the van, scouring it for defects. “Do you think we should have it washed again when you get back?”
“No. It’s beautiful.”
“What if it gets dirty on this delivery?”
“I won’t go off-roading, I promise. I’ll bring it back pristine.”
“This is just so huge.”
“I know.”
“Today is huge too.” Her eyes are unfocused, staring dully at the word ‘Mad’ scrawled across the side of the van.
“Yep, but I’ve got it. You don’t need to sweat it.”
“Why couldn’t they be filming today?” she laments, not listening to me. “We’re catering the gender reveal for an NFL coach. That’s drama. That’s the stuff they’re looking for and I’m sure the Baileys would have signed the waiver to let us film them.”
“Maybe. But I wouldn’t have.”
Rona bites her lip, but I know it’s her tongue she’s really holding onto. She has opinions too. Big ones. Bold ones. The problem is that I know what they are and they won’t change a thing. My mind is made up. It has been for the last year.
“How’s Michael doing?” she asks after my brother, as though the question is relevant to the conversation. And I guess it is, though not in a way anyone on the outside would ever understand.
I snap the van doors shut firmly. “He’s good. Better.”
“Has he started dating again?”
“He’s not ready.”
“It’s been over a year.”
“He doesn’t care.”
“He’s not still hoping she’ll come back, is he?”
I shrug one shoulder. “I don’t know. Probably. He just doesn’t say so anymore.”
The truth is that Michael says he doesn’t want Cassie back, not after what she did to him, but I know better because I know him. I know that if she took time off from her grand world tour to show up at his doorstep, he’d be right back where he was a year and a half ago following her around from one concert to the next like a loyal puppy, turning a blind eye to all of her indiscretions. All of her lies.
She was one of my closest friends for most of my life, second only to Rona, but after the shit she pulled on all of us I’d punch her in the tit if I saw her on the sidewalk today. Lucky for her she’s no longer speaking to me or Michael or anyone else making less than a hundred thousand dollars a year. We’re beneath her now. We lifted her up and she left us behind.
It’s a shitty thought, one I don’t like to visit. It’s too real, it makes me too angry. It’s definitely too honest for eight o’clock in the morning on a sugar congealed stomach and no caffeine.
“I heard she’s up for a Grammy,” Rona drops with disdain.
I snort. “She can shove it up her ass.”
“Without lube.”
“On a twenty-four-hour flight to New Zealand.”
“With turbulence.”
I cast Rona an affectionate smile. “I love how hard you hate her.”
“That’s love, lady. I hate who you hate. It’s the Ho Code and I will live and die by it. Now give me a hug before you go,” she demands, opening her arms to me. “We’ll both feel better after a hug.”
My shoulders slump. “Rona, do we really have to? You know I’m not much of a—“
She’s already pulling me to her, crushing me in a bracing hug. “Shhh. Shhh,” she hushes me gently. “It’s happening. Just let it happen.”
“Oh my God,” I mutter into her hair.
Her bigger body overpowers mine in a way that feels uncomfortable and great all at once. She’s only an inch taller than my five foot seven, but our bodies are built entirely different. She’s fuller than I am in almost every respect. Bigger eyes, bigger boobs, bigger butt. I’m not flat by any means, but if Rona was a road she’d be the PCH, winding curvaceously up and down the California coastline.
Meanwhile, I’d be I-5, cutting a marginally drunken line from here to Stockton.
Rona’s been my best friend since we were messy faced five year olds baking mud pies in the backyard. In kindergarten we figured out how to write each other’s names before our own. When we were ten, we demanded our moms buy us matching underwear, and even now we share everything from the bakery to an apartment. She knew I wasn’t a hugger when we were kids and the bitch knows it now, but I somehow still end up in her arms every other day.
When she finally releases me, she hands me the keys to the van. “Take pictures of it when it’s all set up?”
“I’ll text them to you. Before and after they cut the cake.”
“And take pictures of the hotties too.”
“What hotties?”
She laughs, turning back toward the building. “Give me a break, Lil. That place is going to be swimming in pretty fish. Try and catch one if you can.”
“I’ll only throw him back if I do!”
“That’s ‘cause you don’t know how to have any damn fun!”
I wince, feeling the offhand comment backhand me across the face.
“I used to,” I mutter to myself.
CHAPTER THREE
COLT