“Exactly that. Tonight, you’re gonna look like a fucking queen.” She attacks my eyelashes with more mascara. “You’re doing your ex-boyfriend the favor of showing up on the arm of a celebrity for his grand opening.”
“You’re calling in a bomb threat to the restaurant, aren’t you?”
She cracks up. “That was five-years-ago Daphne, and that Daphne only would’ve done it to save the polar bears.ThisDaphne prefers psychological mind games, and Jake will lose sleep for weeks over this.”
“Do you think he’s smart enough to realize I’m playing psychological warfare? If your opponent doesn’t understand the game, is he worth playing with?”
“That’s why it’s brilliant,” Hudson calls from the bedroom. He’s flipping through a gaming magazine, on his back on Daphne’s bed, which is also piled with laundry and the ancient stuffed lobster she’s had for as long as I’ve known her. Hudson’s enjoying every minute of what’s likely to be his last summer vacation since he’s planning to try to get an internship somewhere next year. He’s in school to be a teacher, but he’s obsessed with music, and he almost landed a summer job at a record label in New York.
He knows tonight’s full plan because he knows Daphne and he knows me and he has a very logical brain. He basically called us both on it the minute Simon left the burger bus last weekend.
And he’s clearly still in favor of it. “You show up and you’re alloh, Jake, this is so beautiful, you did such a good job, and he’ll be so confused that he’ll spend the night trying to make his little pea brain think bigger thoughts than it’s capable of.”
Daphne laughs. “Can you do that voice again? Bea’s a little higher pitched.”
“Fuck you,” he replies with a grin in his voice. “Bea, if you bring Jake’s favorite actor of all time, he won’t be able to talk or walk straight because he’ll be so flustered. He might even forget Simon’s lactose intolerant and serve him something with cheese. When people talk about his opening, it won’t be about the food, it’ll be aboutwhy was his ex-girlfriend there with Simon Luckwood, and you’ve made his night about you. You’ve stolen all of his attention and all of his glory. You win. Any way you look at this, you win. And you can’t take Simon somewhere else tonight and win the same. Youhaveto crash the grand opening.”
“And then the rocking chair test on top of all of it,” Daphne murmurs. “But if you don’t want to go, don’t go.”
“For the record, I object,” Ryker calls from the short hallway outside the bedroom. He’s been here for about an hour. Probably because he also has concerns about what I’m up to tonight.
“You’d object to breathing if it wasn’t necessary,” Daphne calls back.
I smile at the accuracy of her statement.
“Okay, Bea. You’re ready. And now the first test of the night is if Simon can be on time.”
She’s barely finished speaking before the doorbell buzzes.
Hudson flings himself off the bed and dashes out of the room.
Ryker’s not one to run, but I can still hear the two of them tussling in the hallway, making me wonder if Ry’s breaking his preferred grumpy-slowpoke routine to battle Hudson to get to the door first.
“Too bad Griff couldn’t be here too,” Daphne says. “Can you imagine Simon facing all three of them together?”
“I might be dreaming about it before the night’s over. Probably with Griff’s bat too. Do you think Simon really smiles that much all the time, or is it an act because he’s prepping for a role that’s like, the opposite of playing Peter Jones?”
“Margot says he’s smiley all the time.”
“Seriously?”
“Yep.”
“Huh.”
“Right? I would’ve thought it was fake too.”
If Daphne’s sister says Simon smiles all the time, then he just might. While I don’t know Margot nearly as well as I know Daphne, she’s been to visit enough that I call her a friend. Plus, Daph adores her despite the unpleasantness of Daphne being disinherited while Margot’s still on the fast track to taking over as CEO of their family’s hotel mega-chain.
They grew up filthy rich in a family with multiple homes in neighborhoods full of other rich and famous people. They went to school with famous people’s kids, and Daphne was regularly invited to famous people parties until she was disinherited, soit doesn’t surprise me that Margot, who’s still in that world, would’ve crossed paths with Simon, even if his fame is relatively new.
I check the mirror one last time. “How’s Margot doing?”
Daph rolls her eyes. “Working too much and pretending she’s not thinking about her ex-fiancé.”
I don’t know the full story of Margot’s big breakup—it happened about the same time Daphne was disinherited four years ago or so—but I know enough to make a face. I also appreciate that Daphne’s letting me ask questions to distract myself from what I’m about to do.
“Why’s she thinking about him now? It’s been forever since they broke up.”
