“Mother F,” I bleat under my breath, and both Serena and Sunday turn to look at what’s hijacked myattention.
“Hello, handsome,” Sundaywhispers.
“Come to Mama,” Serena hums before straightening in her seat. “Hey, isn’tthat—”
My heart starts to palpitate, my blood pressure spikes to unsafe levels. Axel gives a quick look around before locking eyes with mine and I’m paralyzed, unable to breathe or think or feel. He breaks out into his signature killer grin and heads in this direction as if he has theright.
“Look, why don’t you girls finish up your drinks. I gotta run.” I fling Poppy over my shoulder and snap my coffee off the table. “We’ll catch up soon. Serena, don’t mess with my head like that anymore. I’m in a fragile state as of late and I really can’t take it.” I blink a brief smile at Sunday. “Watch over this one, would you? And stay away from your roommate’s cute brother.” I try to zip past Axel and he steps in mypath.
“Lexy.” He leans in with those pleading eyes, that sad, tired smile expanding my way, and my entire body flares with heat. It feels as if all of gravity is buried in his chest, and my body can’t help but demand to yield in his direction. Then I remember who he is and who he’ll never be to me again, and I make a run for thedoor.
* * *
WHERE ARE YOU?I NEED TO SEE YOUR MEAN FACE RIGHTNOW!
I scoff at the text Low just sent. I’d text her back if I wasn’t already standing in the entry of The Sloppy Pelican, a bar-slash-eatery that Axel and two of his cohorts thought it a good idea to plant in the middle of Hollow Brook. If anyone had asked me, I could have told them that this side of town is a graveyard for businesses and restaurants alike. The fact that old mining restaurant they bought out had quickly turned into the ghost town it was destined to be should have given them a clue. But then, Axel was never good with those, washe?
I glare at the elbow-to-elbow crowd as the sound of the house band sends pulsating thumps through me with every beat of the drum. The customer base is primarily made up of sorority girls of years gone by. If the Black Bear is the official frat brat hangout, then The Sloppy Pelican is the rapidly aging alumni section. Let’s just say copious amounts of alcohol and carbohydrates do not a pretty complexion make. The place is teeming with various versions of Barbiturate Barbie. Not that the male offerings are any better—men with beer paunches so pronounced you could play a board game with all that shelf space. And what’s with the Neanderthal-inspired follicles? Please tell me this trend is region specific to the west end of Hollow Brook and that the rest of male civilization still worships regularly at the altar of a razor wielding barber. A brief visual of me wielding a razor to Axel’s neck comes to mind, and before I can properly decapitate him I’m jumped by an over enthusiastic jumble of dirty blondehair.
“I knew you’d show!” Low squeals in my ear so loud I can now hear orcas all across the planet howling out their long distanceconversations.
“Geez.” I unleash myself from my one and only soon-to-be ex-friend. “Ease up on the caffeine, would you? One day someone’s going to sue you forassault.”
A dark-haired girl frowns at me from over Low’s shoulder. It’s her “bestie,” Raven, the one that technically started the entire fiasco the night I kissed Levi, Low’s boyfriend—it’s a long story, and I’m not dragging my short-term memory into this. I guess you could say Raven is equally responsible for the fact I got canned, so technically, I’ll be disenfranchising two people from my life tonight. Fine by me. Let the friendless good timesroll.
“I’m so glad you’re here.” Low shakes me by the shoulders as if we were long- lost sorority sisters. I happen to know that Low and Raven actually are sorority sisters, or were. They attended Whitney Briggs University together once upon a sexed-up time and blah, blah, blah. The whole how-I-met-my-bestie story bores me totears.
Low sticks a diamond-clad finger in my face, and her entire face lights up like a firefly. Low sort of has a pixie appeal to her with her delicate features and slightly turned up nose. She’s undeniably pretty. They both are obviously beautiful, but I don’t hold their well-polished genes against them. Just simply everythingelse.
“Does this ring make me lookengaged?”
I scowl at the sparkling treasure as if it personally offended me. It’s big—too big if you ask me. “It makes you look like you stuck a quarter in a gumball machine at the grocery store.” I twist my lips at Low, and something about the vulnerable way her eyes get squirrely right after I gift her the zinger endears me to her as if she were Serena. “And it’s nice. Yes, you look engaged. Did you dump Levi and meet a Rockefeller?” The truth is, as soon as Levi gifted that boulder to her, she texted me and I sent her a very cordial congratulations. That was exactly T minus five seconds from the moment I was evicted from gainful employment. It seems the better things go for Low, the worse they get for me. Either the universe has a twisted sense of humor or it’s experiencing a bout of temporary cosmic insanity. Judging by the state of the world, I’d bet thelatter.
She wrinkles her nose at me. “Very funny. I’m thrilled you’re here, and I want you to know that”—her eyes moisten with tears, and her lips quiver the way Serena’s do when we’re having a heart-to-heart and the urge to coo at her as if she just morphed into a kitten overwhelms me—“I’d be honored to have you as one of mybridesmaids.”
“Awhat?” both Raven and I cry out atonce.
Raven steps between us with her signature longraven-colored hair, dimples that look as if someone chiseled them out with an ice pick, and that same perplexed look on her face that I’m currently wearing. “You can’t—there’s no way I’ll let you—what in the hell,girl?”
I grunt at the expletive. Sure, I’ve been known to let an off-colored word fly now and again, but that’s only on occasion—say after a truck tire ran over my left foot, or the time I walked through a glass door and ended up with one hundred twenty stitches because the thing looked so damn clean. See? There it goes again. I know when and where to let them rip, and I refuse to be populating the world with them right along with the masses. They’re cheap, offensive, and make the user look aggressively stupid. And perhaps the fact my mother cursed like a sailor has a tiny bit to do with it. Wendy, in search of her Neverland, loved to lace even the most mundane thoughts with a curse word ortwelve.
“I’m dead serious. I am formally asking Lex to be a bridesmaid.” Low bites the air between her and Raven before reverting to me. “I want to. I wantyou. Both my sister Lisa and Raven are my maids of honor, but I’d be so happy if you’d stand up for me right along with my other two sisters. I realize we’ve only known one another for a few months, but you were there for me during one of the toughest times in my life, and we were sort of ride or die the night we took off out of this place after that whole making out with Levi debacle.” She takes a moment to glower at me. “Which I’ve totally forgiven you for. So what do you say? You, me, the entire wedding party, right here in a few shortweeks?”
“What?” both Raven and I squawk in unison again. My God, we have to stop doingthat.
“That’s right.” Low wags that star sparkling on her finger in the air once again. “Levi and I have decided to get hitched right here in the bar. What better place to commemorate the night we first laid eyes on eachother?”
“Didn’t you land behind bars that first night?” I’m quick to point out. “Perhaps your nuptials are better suited to be held at the Hollow Brook Police Department.” A part of me demands to stick a pin in that ginormous helium balloon Low has inflated with lust, or infatuation. The good Lord knows, she hasn’t known Levi all that longeither.
“Details.” She rolls her eyes, and much to my relief my phone buzzes deep in my purse. I fish it out of Poppy. It’s a text fromSerena.
Is this really you? What the hell are you thinking?! I cannot be your sister if you’ve devolved to this level. The poor woman was deaf for God’ssake!
“What?” I hiss, trying my best to click on the link she’s sent. Both Raven and Low gather to my side, but I couldn’t care less about their impromptu snooping. Serena sounds distressed, and what is she talking about—deaf?
A video pops up on my screen of me wagging my face and my finger at that mustache lady yesterday morning, and Igasp.
“Oh no!” My fingers fly to my lips because God knows I’m begging to let a few expletives flymyself.
