“You, me, a professional marketing plan, truffle samples, meetings with venture capitalists in person. I spent yesterday doing research on start-ups, and I honestly think our investors need to see both of us together for us to sell this properly. They need to know that the brains behind this operation are committed, no matter what it takes,and if all they have is your social media profile or my word that ananonymous silent business partner without moneyis steering me through all of this ...”
I know Naomi. She didn’t researchyesterday. She’s been prepping for this while I’ve had my head in the sand, thinking I could get my trust fund unfrozen despite the fact that I like to mouth off to my grandmother. “I know.I know.”
“And that means we need Samantha.”
“Naomi—”
“Youdidn’tget caught. She’s good. Youwon’tget caught. We can—I don’t know, give you a cold or something. Or measles. Or northern-Wisconsin encephalomumps.”
“Northern—what?”
“I don’t know! I’m making stuff up! But I know investors need to see that we know what we’re doing, and I think you have more faith in me than I deserve, andI can’t do this on my own.”
“Oh, honey, you can. But you’re right. You shouldn’t have to. Just—I’m working on something that will hopefully get me out of here soon.” I have nothing. I truly have nothing. Even if I make everyone in Tickled Pink a social media star, Gigi will just find something else for me to do. “Just give me one more day to—aaaaahhh!”
My foot connects with something squishy, and I go flying.
“Flaabbaaanagaaaah,”a deep male voice groans.
“Tavi?” Naomi says.
The concrete of the lake path greets me like a fist to a punching bag, and a man groans again.
“Dylan?” I gasp.
Where am I? Am I back on the Tickled Pink side of the lake already? Or is he lost?
“Ain’t no tears, like my beers, got no ears,” the local plumber singsongs in the dark.
“Tavi?”Naomi repeats. “Are you okay? What’s going on? Don’t you hang up on me. It took you three days to call me back after the last time you hung up on me.”
“I’m good,” I tell her. I think I’m good. My arms will be scratched up, and my knee is bruised, and I’m disoriented and possibly in danger of moving wrong and landing in the lake, which is Phoebe’s thing, not mine, but my face survived, and I don’t think I twisted anything. “I’ll call you back. Or text. I didn’t wait three days to text.”
I hang up the phone, then use it as a flashlight.
And there’s Dylan.
Curling onto his side on the path, an empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s next to him.
“Are you dead?” I whisper. I know he’s not. I can see his chest moving and his mouth opening, but he’s not even flinching at the light.
I hate light on a normal morning, but when I’mactuallydrunk and hungover?
It’s like death with a side chaser of seeing my grandmother naked.
“Whishkey don’ kill the pain.” He sings it. He’s drunk-singing to some tune he’s making up on the fly, and even totally foxed, his voice is amazing. “She’ll never be mine a-gain.”
Oh.
I test my body, making sure I’m not any more injured than a few scrapes here and there, and then scoot over next to him while he keeps warbling, but the words have gone incoherent.
“You got dumped?” I ask quietly, ignoring the heavy thump of my heart that has nothing to do with my jog or my farm or missing Naomi and being afraid I’ll lose my farm, and everything to do with being close to the cute plumber who was number one on my list of people to find after the sun came up today, since he disappeared from Tickled Pink completely yesterday.
Or if notdisappeared, at least avoided public places.
Good news? Lola doesn’t know he exists.
Bad news? It won’t stay that way for long.
