“I do not need a cupcake,” I groan, stretching out on the blanket. “I polished off an entire pint of Ben and Jerry’s when I got home from work last night.”
“At Fred’s?” Mia asks, bending to straighten her side of the blanket. Her dark hair is cut shorter again and skims her jawline as she leans forward. It’s a cut most people could never hope to pull off—angular, maybe even a little harsh—but with her delicate features and creamy skin, I’m pretty sure she could be wearing one of those hats with the beer cans on it and still manage to look gorgeous.
Mia is of course lovely, but it’s moments like these where I can really see her and Luke as a couple: beautiful, petite, porcelain-doll Mia, and Abercrombie & Fitch Luke who has better cheekbones than any woman I know.
“Yeah, Fred’s.”
“I can’t keep track of your schedule,” Lola says, handing me a cupcake anyway.
“Because she works too damn much,” Harlow says, startling me as she seems to appear out of nowhere. She sits down next to me. “Hey, everyone.”
We all return the greeting . . . and when she looks over at me, yeah, it’s weird. Her smile is tight, and mine is probably too wide.
But we’re all committed, apparently. Harlow takes an offered cupcake from Lola and crosses her legs in front of her. “Guess who I just ran into in the parking lot?”
I don’t even bother guessing. Practically everyone I know in San Diego is sitting on this blanket.
Apparently Lola and Mia draw a similar level of blank, because they ask in unison, “Who?”
“Ethan Crumbley.”
It clearly takes both of them a few seconds to place him, because Harlow adds, “The UCLA football dude.”
“Ohhhhhh,” they coo in unison again, and based on their reactions, I wish I’d run into him, too.
“Sadly,” Harlow says, licking a little frosting off her finger, “he has not aged too well.”
“Oh, that is sad,” Mia says. “But I guess he was sort of a jerk, and it’s better to see the ex looking like crap than seeing him with someone super hot!”
Oh fuck.
Mia snaps her mouth shut, throwing Lola a horrified look.
Harlow takes an enormous bite of her cupcake and looks up at the three of us who have gone completely silent. “What?” she asks, mouth full. “Finn is leaving for two weeks and if I’m not getting sex I should at least be getting something with frosting on it.”
Okay, clearly Harlow did not pick up on the weirdness there and apparently assumed we were just horrified that she managed to eat half of a cupcake in a single bite. I can see Mia relax a little across from me.
I would do anything for a reassuring smile from someone today.
“How’s Finn adjusting to the filming?” Lola asks.
“Very few complaints, actually,” Harlow says. “Which is surprising because Finn usually complains about everything. Nonverbally, that is: his chosen medium of expression is typically heavy sighs.”
“Wow, how few things you two have in common,” Mia says, and Harlow throws one of her flip-flops at her.
“Well, I for one am thrilled to be out,” Lola says. “If I had to spend one more second looking at the terrible mock-ups of the site I’m having done, I was going to lose my mind.”
“You’re having a new site built?” Mia asks, and Lola nods.
“Yeah, but so far it’s been disastrous. This guy came really highly recommended, but so far he doesn’t seem to get the art, if that makes sense?”
“I think it makes perfect sense,” I tell her, and everyone looks to me as if they’ve forgotten that I was here. “I could take a look at it, if you wanted?”
Lola looks like someone just offered her a puppy. “You’d do that?”
“Sure, why not?”
“I know how you feel about doing work for people you know,” she says, worrying her bottom lip. “I didn’t want to put you in a position where you had to say no.”
“You’re you, Lola. If I don’t want to do it I’ll just tell you.”
Lola lunges forward to hug me before reaching for her phone. “I’ll forward you the links to everything right now,” she says, giddy.
“So what else have you been up to?” Harlow asks me, somewhat stiffly, stretching miles of tan legs in front of her. “I don’t think I’ve seen you since we all went out.”
I blink, looking up into the tree overhead, at the way the branches crisscross back and forth like a giant jigsaw puzzle. I count off on my fingers, “Skydiving, fighting crime, a little brothel business I’ve been running on the side.”
“Now, a brothel I could get behind because one: Ladies getting paid,” she says. “And two: It’d give you at least marginally better hours than you have now. Plus, you know, penises. Peni? What is a lot of penises? A bushel?”
“A bushel of penises, Whorelow? Really?” Lola says as she drops her phone back in her purse. “But otherwise, preach. She’s even working extra shifts at . . .”
I push up on an elbow, intending to interrupt, but at the same time, Lola moves a little to the right and my breath catches in my throat.
This can’t be happening.