Does she know Tavi eats meat too?
She knows about the chocolate, so she has to know about the meat, doesn’t she?
Considering it feels like she’s silently threatening to castrate me if I so much as twitch a facial muscle, I’m gonna guessyes.
“Heard she likes that Soy Sweet stuff better,” I say.
Lola pulls a face like she has something stuck to her tongue. “That’ssogross. I’m so glad I don’t have a problem eating a well-balanced diet from all the food groups. In public.”
Ah, hell.Distract distract distract.“I like to garden,” I tell her.
She leans closer and licks her lips. “Is that, like,superdirty?”
“No dirtier than plumbing.”
“I like dirty.”
The doors to the restaurant jingle again, and Estelle Lightly marches through the entrance.
Marches?
Glides?
Floats on the cloud of sulfur wafting up from hell to transport her where she needs to go?
She has a way of walking that saysI’m in charge, and there are so many reasons you don’t want to get in my way, while still not looking like she’s barreling headfirst into any situation. Like she’s in total control of her emotions, but if she unleashed them—yeah, I hope that happens far from Tickled Pink.
“You.” She perches on the edge of the booth seat opposite where Lola has me trapped. “You posted a highly unflattering video of me to TikTok.”
One, credit to the seventy-something-year-old woman for not calling itthe TikToks.
Two—“I thought your whole family gave up phones and the internet.”
I smile.
She doesn’t.
Lola makes a noise like the guardian angel inside her got stuck in her throat trying to fly out to warn me to shut up.
“The man has a point, Gigi,” Phoebe calls from behind the counter, where the noise on Anya’s phone suggests they’re all rewatching the video that Tavi’s people apparently finished and posted.
WhereisTavi?
The door bells ring once again, and this time, Willie Wayne and his wife, Akiko, hustle inside.“Dylan,”Willie Wayne crows. “You’refamous.”
“I—” I start.
“You really are,” Lola agrees. “I knew you had star quality the minute I saw you.”
I first saw Lola when I was climbing out of my truck in front of a house across the street from the school. The family had a backed-up-sewer problem. Lola had anew, you were attractive until I saw that your truck says you’re a plumberproblem.
You see it sometimes.
They hit you with a massive smile, start to move in to talk, and spot theWRIGHTPLUMBINGsign on the side of the truck, and their noses twitch and their eyes flare and they take a step back.
It’s like they’re picturing you thirty years from now with a beer belly and jeans that don’t cover your crack.
Nice to get judged on how we look when we’re the ones digging tampons out of someone’s clogged pipes.
