Melty cheesy goodness inside a perfectly fried shell? I whimper.
Dylan makes a strangled noise and lowers the plate to his waist.
Whoops.
Here I thought shower sex in his perfect little Hallmark Channel house right before the party would keep him from having any obvious issues in public.
He clears his throat. “You’re staying, Lola?”
She chews on her bottom lip and glances between us, and for the first time in my life, I see her in a different light.
She’s lost.
She’s completely and totallylost.
Sheisme. The me I used to be, anyway.
All this time I’ve hated her for being my competition, when really, we’re not all that different at all. We were taught to compete against each other.
What if we’d been taught to support each other instead?
“You should stay,” I tell her. “Tickled Pink is—it’s got thismagic. For all of the places in the world that I’ve been—that we’vebothbeen—there’s nowhere else like it, is there?”
She shifts a look around. “You know theTickled Pink Papers?” she whispers.
I nod.
“I tripped over a goat in the square the other day while I was ...” She drops her voice even lower. “While I was wearing awig, with, like,tonsof people around, like some tourists and, like, some locals, and my wigtotallyfell off, and everyone was super nice and friendly, and then the next day, there was a newTickled Pink Papers, and it was, like, all about how Phoebe dumped soup down her blouse. Not a word about my ... issue. Even though I think I know who prints theTickled Pink Papers, and they were there, and I know they got a picture.”
“People here have good hearts,” Dylan says. “We’re not one size fits all when it comes to dealing with intruding rich people.”
I woke up in his arms yesterday morning, realized what day it was, and told him we had to come back here, that I had to finish up Ridhi’s favor myself despite how much I passed off to my socials team. Naomi wanted to come, too, but she’s tied up with Fitzwilliam Hawthorne, who’s passed all my initial gut checks and who actually knows a thing or two about chocolate, even though I suspect we’ll have a few arguments here and there about recipes and flavors of the month.
But also?
I’d rather have one more person on my team who I appreciate and respect and who wants Zero Ducks to succeed than insist I do it all by myself.
Ilikebeing part of a team.
I also like being in Tickled Pink. It’s different being here when I’m here because Iwantto be and know that I can leave anytime.
It’s also different being here and letting myself look at the town through Dylan’s eyes.
He says he’ll move to Costa Rica for me.
I feel like we can find a better compromise than all in at one place or the other. This is his home, after all. And he still loves it.
And I do want to show it to Naomi someday.
“That’s like ...” Lola shoots a glance at me. “People aren’t nice like that where we come from.”
“They aren’t,” I agree.
“I want to be around nice people. I want—I want what you have. Friends that you can really count on. Siblings who have your back. Knowing who you are.”
I surprise myself by hugging her again. Is she playing me? I don’t know. But I know what it’s like to be lost. I know what it’s like to hate the role I have to play. If there’s any kernel of truth in anything she’s confessing right now, then doesn’t she deserve another chance too? And if she is playing me, the joke’s on her.
Lola Minelli can’t hurt me.
