Sienna
You’re staying for two weeks?” Paige’s voice on the other end of the phone is almost loud enough to be unpleasant. “I’m at a loss. Seriously! Who are you and what have you done with my best friend? Y’know, workaholic Sienna Murphy who wouldn’t even go out to Sage’s Steakhouse last month with Alex Miller, sex on legs and rich to boot?!”
“There’s something about Luke,” I tell her, holding my cell phone against my ear with my shoulder drawn up near my face to free my hands as I paint my toenails. “I can’t explain it, but I just feel … drawn to him.”
“Drawn to him?” I can picture Paige’s face all scrunched up in her head. “What, like pheromones or something?” She laughs. “Hey, I admit the guy is delicious; you’ll get no argument from me, but I’m worried.”
“What’s there to worry about—oh dammit!” I look down to see turquoise nail polish soaked into the stark white bedsheet where a glop had fallen from the end of the brush before I could catch it on the rim of the bottle. “There’s another charge on my credit card. Just great.” I set the nail polish aside on the nightstand and get up from the bed, still with the phone held against my ear by my shoulder, and I walk awkwardly across the room on my heels.
“It’s just not like you,” Paige rambles on. “I’ve tried to hook you up with several guys, but you usually had an excuse not to go, or you’d never see them again afterward if you did.”
“OK, but I don’t get what’s got you so worried.”
I set the phone on the bathroom counter and run my finger over the speaker icon and Paige’s voice appears—should’ve done that while trying to paint my toenails on the bed.
I hoist my right foot on the edge of the counter.
“Well, we haven’t even gone on our vacation yet,” Paige says, her voice funneling from the tiny speaker into the confined space. “If you take the plunge and fall in love at twenty-two, you’ll be barefoot and pregnant by the time you’re twenty-four, living in a trailer somewhere with ugly wallpaper, waiting for your boyfriend who works for minimum wage to come home so you can bring him a beer while he sits on his ass and watches wrastling.”
I laugh out loud, holding a cotton ball doused in nail polish remover over my big toe.
“What’s so funny, Sienna? I’m being serious here. Bitches get serious with guys and it’s like parts of their brains stop functioning. You don’t care anymore if there’s no condom, or if you forgot to take your pill, and you blame getting knocked up on the heat of the moment—life ruined!”
“Wrastling,” I say, still with laughter in my voice.
I carefully dab the cotton ball around the edge of my toe to clean away the nail polish where it’s not supposed to be.
“Are you making fun of the way I talk?”
“Paige,” I say seriously, “I’m not going to even have sex with him, much less be having his babies. It’s just a vacation. One I think I’ve earned. We’ll still go on vacation together soon, I promise.” After inspecting my toenails, I drop the cotton ball in the toilet and my foot back on the floor.
“Why are you being so uptight, anyway?”
She sighs. “Honestly?”
“Well, yeah,” I say. “Out with it!”
“I’m jealous! There, I said it!”
My laughter fills the bathroom.
“Jealous I might get knocked up and move into a trailer with ugly wallpaper?”
Paige snorts when she laughs.
“No! I just wish I was there on vacation with you. Stupid family reunions!”