Claire’s blue eyes grew wide. “Dang it!” Then, as she started scrolling through her phone, she looked up. “How many followers do you have there?”
Ava smirked again. “I’m closing in on a million.”
“Wow. How much money do you make?”
“Claire, that’s so rude,” Natalie said again.
Her smile looking like a cat who just ate a mouse, Avapicked up the bottle of water she’d brought with her. “Let’s just say I’m making a living.”
“Can I DM you if I have questions?” Claire asked, clearly starstruck.
Ava’s façadealmostcracked. “Um, sure. I just can’t guarantee I’ll see it. I get all kinds of people up in my DMs all day. It’s a full-time job sorting through them to find the actual job opportunities.”
Claire was undeterred. “Thanks!”
My mom’s voice broke through all the chatter. “Everyone, be sure to get a piece of cake—and please get seconds if you want them. I don’t want to take all this food home!”
Ava, who hadn’t gotten a plate yet, glanced at mine. “Nice to see you still have a healthy appetite. Do you guys have anything thatisn’tfattening?”
I held up a cherry tomato. “There’s a veggie plate.”
She let out a heavy sigh. “Okay. I’ll go check it out.”
As soon as Ava was at the food table, Claire whispered loudly, “How do you know her?”
“We went to high school together. So she’s a big deal online?”
“Yeah! She gives makeup and hair tips, product recommendations, and sometimes fashion advice. She’s amazing.”
I didn’t want to burst Claire’s bubble, so I said, “She’s definitely…unique.”
Ava returned with one of the smaller plates meant for cake and, on it, she had three baby carrots, two celery sticks, two cherry tomatoes, and two slices of red pepper—and no dressing to dip them in. I wondered if she would have been able to tell me the exact calorie count of what was on her plate without looking it up, but I wasn’t about to ask.
Instead, I decided to try to mend that old fence. “You look great, Ava.”
“Thank you.” After taking a sip from her water, she said, “You do too…considering the line of work you’re in. Howisthe band, by the way?”
I didn’t want to come off cocky and over the top like Ava—and I suspected she wouldn’t appreciate the struggles we’d gone through, so I kept it simple. “We’re doing well. We’re getting ready to start working on our next album once Braden and I get back from our honeymoon.”
“Braden Mitchell. I never would have pictured you two together.”
That made two of us, but I wasn’t about to give her the satisfaction. “He is the sweetest, most thoughtful man I’ve ever met.”
“I just can’t picture it. I mean…I’ve seen a couple pics from your band, but I can’t get his dorky high school image out of my head.”
I had to bite my tongue from saying something bitchy, because Ava had always been better at one-upmanship, and I didn’t want to go there. So I simply said, “You’d be surprised. The women in the audience go crazy for all the guys in the band. They love Zack because he’s cocky and sometimes seems vulnerable onstage and they go nuts for Cy because he looks angry and moody. They think of Braden as the charming, sweet gentleman—and they’re not wrong.”
Ava swallowed the bite she’d just taken from a slice of red pepper. “HowisZack, by the way?”
Fortunately, my feelings for the man had cooled, and I was able to give an unemotional response—leaving out the details that Ava didn’t need to know. “He’s doing well. He’s dating his personal trainer…and he built a studio in his garage so we can record in Dalton instead of spending a few weeks in L.A.”
“I don’t get why you wouldn’t want to go to Cali for a few weeks. I love when I get to visit other places.”
Then why the hell was she still living here? Again, though, I wasn’t going to ask. “We’re on the road for months out of every year. We love the times when we can be at home.”
“Hmm,” she said, taking another sip of water. “I moved to Dalton after my business started bringing in enough for that—but I’m thinking about moving to Denver.” When she got no reaction from me, she said, “Or Manhattan. I can’t decide which would better fit my aesthetic. Besides, everyone does New York, but Denver’s home.”
“You might like the Cap Hill area.”
