“You get my point.”
“I do,” she agreed, reaching for one of the chocolate chip cookies. It was still too hot so it broke down in the center. Unbothered, she reached for both parts and shoved them in her mouth. She let out a moan. “You know, if the narrator thing ever stops working for you, you could sell these cookies.”
Not to toot my own horn, but they were the best damn chocolate chip cookies anyone had ever had. I’d been told dozens of times.
I couldn’t take the credit. They came from a cookie recipe book my mom once checked out of the library. She’d made them every year since, sometimes shaking it up by putting M&Ms or big chunks of chopped chocolate. No matter what, they came out perfect. This was my first time making them without her. It was a bittersweet tribute.
But I didn’t dare try one myself, worried I might cry if I did.
“It’s good to have fallback plans. Now back to this event. I need more details.”
“Well, it’s a party full of super-wealthy criminal defense lawyers who will be drinking and feeling charitable. What else do you need to know?” she asked, reaching for another cookie as I turned to drop more dough onto a sheet. “You know, Sammy told me that the guy who got that movie star off on murdercharges is going to be there. She said he charged over three million, flat fee, for that case. And he got a five-hundred-k bonus for winning.”
Jesus.
I couldn’t even fathom that kind of money.
“It was chump change for the actor, though,” she said. Andy, my dear old friend, was a little obsessed with celebrity culture. She knew all the stars, who they were dating, the blind item gossip about them, which reality TV shows they were going to star in, everything. In contrast, the only reason I knew anything about any celebrities at all was from her telling me. “I think his net worth was like one hundred fifty million.”
Wow.
I went to three different stores to get the cheapest butter, chocolate chips, and sugar for the cookies.
Everyone at my charity was busting their ass to try to raise a million bucks to give all kids in shelters a gift for Christmas, while that same amount of money could disappear from the star’s bank account and he wouldn’t even notice.
Life could be so monumentally unfair sometimes.
“Bad topic, I guess,” Andy said, always good at reading my moods. Though to be fair, I was not great at hiding whatever was going on in my mind. My mother used to always say that my face needed a filter. But her mouth needed one, so we were both terrible at hiding our true feelings.
“Tell me more, though. Where is it? What’s the dress code? Is there some sort of entrance fee?”
“Entrance fee,” Andy laughed. She carefully picked at her cookie to find a piece without a chocolate chip, then handed it down to a not-so-patiently waiting Meatball. He scoffed it up and immediately started to let out little grunts of annoyance that another piece wasn’t automatically handed to him. “It’s not a club. No. The firm partners all paid for the venue. Which isclassy. With an orchestra kind of classy. So you need a dress. Not just a dress. But the floor-length kind. Think black tie wedding, but just slightly less restrictive on personal color choice and such.”
“I don’t own a floor-length dress.”
“Luckily, we live in a city full of stores to find one in.”
“It sounds expensive.”
“It doesn’t have to be. I’ll make a list of places for you.”
“Wouldn’t it be really weird for me to go there and just start begging people for money?”
“Well, yeah. You’re going to need to be casual about it. When you meet someone, tell them you work for a nonprofit. Then do a quick spiel about how you’re really trying to make sure all the kids in shelters have a present under the tree this year. I guarantee you most people are going to open up their checkbooks. Networking is better than standing outside of stores any day of the week. You want to do this.”
“I’d do just about anything at this point,” I agreed. “But I’m not seeing anyone. I don’t even have any male friends to lean on.”
“What about another volunteer? I know it’s mostly women there, but there have to be a few guys.”
A few being the operative word.
We had four men.
One old enough to be my grandfather.
Another, young enough to be my baby brother.
Then there was Craig. He would jump on it in a heartbeat. But I also didn’t want him to think it was an actual date, that we were going to have more, that it was anything other than what it was: an opportunity to crowdfund for the charity.
