Finally, Tyler pulls away from Tiffani. She’s giggling like a love-struck preteen, like she’s head over heels for him again. This really aggravates me. Tiffani should hate him. They shouldn’t be fixing things and they shouldn’t still be together, but they clearly are. When Tiffani steps out of the car, she comes rushing across the traffic toward us, bearing a huge grin.
I’m still sipping my latte, never dropping the cup from my face, pretending to be too distracted to say anything. But as Tiffani reaches us, I notice Tyler’s car still sitting there at the opposite side of the road. He seems to have noticed me too. Through the windshield, he’s watching me, staring at me, until finally he smiles. It’s partly apologetic, partly genuine, like he’s glad to see me. I find myself smiling back, but our moment is quickly interrupted as Tiffani joins us on the sidewalk.
Rachael lets out a horrified groan and flings her coffee into a nearby trash can, as if to show her outrage at Tiffani’s good mood. “What is wrong with you?”
My eyes move to Tiffani. Over her shoulder, Tyler’s car revs its way down Broadway, leaving behind the gawking admirers and a plume of smoke. Tiffani, on the other hand, is unfortunately still here. Somehow her smile keeps on getting wider, so I keep on acting like I’m innocently sipping my latte. But I’m not innocent. In fact, I’m the guiltiest person around, and my coffee ran out twenty seconds ago.
“What?” Tiffani blinks her wide eyes, looking almost perplexed.
“That!” Rachael points in the direction that Tyler has just disappeared in. “I can’t believe you’ve forgiven him just like that.”
Tiffani’s smile becomes a pout as she bats her eyelashes and glances up from beneath them. It’s such a contrast from how she looked yesterday, when she cried out five hundred buckets of tears and looked entirely miserable. “He did explain himself, Rachael.”
“You’re really buying his bullshit story?”
“It’s not bullshit.”
There’s a moment of silence as Rachael tilts her head and presses her lips together, but Meghan seizes the opportunity to speak.
“When did you get that purse, Tiffani?” she asks suspiciously. “It’s new, isn’t it?”
All four of us drop our eyes to the purse hooked over Tiffani’s arm. It’s a brown Louis Vuitton monogram purse, the leather shining under the sun. Tiffani gives us a sheepish smile.
“Well…” she says slowly, and then bites her lower lip. “Tyler bought it for me.”
“That’s what I thought,” Meghan murmurs, and her eyebrows knit together as she shakes her head in disapproval. “At least we know now that it only takes a one-thousand-dollar purse to gain Tiffani Parkinson’s forgiveness.”
At this, Tiffani laughs. I don’t. I bite the rim of my cup to stop myself from saying something I shouldn’t, my teeth sinking so hard into the cardboard that I almost bore holes in it.
“He could have donated that money to charity,” Rachael remarks with a twisted frown, and I agree with her comment. I’m pretty sure the homeless would benefit more from that money than Tiffani will from her leather purse. “We all knew you’d end up forgiving him sooner or later.”
“And you could have stopped hooking up with Trevor six months ago,” Tiffani shoots back. “We all knew you’d end up falling for him.”
Meghan lets out a loud snort, to which she quickly covers her mouth with her hands. She blushes but still continues to giggle. I glance over my cup to Rachael, whose lips have parted to form an O. She looks flustered for a moment, like she’s suffering from a concussion and has forgotten how to string sentences together. I think she may be mad, but she only sighs.
“Fine,” she huffs. “You can forgive Tyler.”
“Thank you for your approval,” Tiffani says sarcastically. “Now can we please get inside the mall already? I’m dying for a Johnny Rockets sundae!”
By this point I’m pretty impressed with myself for holding my tongue, for hanging back and acting like I’m drinking the best goddamn latte I’ve ever had. As we head back up Broadway and past Nordstrom and Nike, I slip my gnawed cup into a trash can.
“Hurry up, Eden,” Meghan calls over her shoulder when we turn into the mall, and she pauses for a moment to allow me to catch up, which I unwillingly do.
The thing about Santa Monica Place is that it was built solely for the rich. I’ve noticed this each time I’ve been here, because it’s hard not to look at the people who are happy to flaunt their wealth. From the man in the suit peering through the windows of Hugo Boss to the woman with the sophisticated dress and heels who’s eyeing up a watch in the Michael Kors window, it’s clear they have money they’re willing to spend. Tyler is the same.