“I know that,” Ramona said.
“Do you?”
Ramona sighed.
April sighed.
They’d been having this sigh-inducing conversation for Olive’s entire senior year. And it wasn’t that Ramona didn’t understand that dreams needed action to become reality, it was just fucking scary. Plain and simple.
“She doesn’t remember me,” she said softly, sudden tears swelling into her eyes. She swiped them away fast, though April caught them. She always caught them.
April’s eyes went gooey. “Honey.”
“It’s fine,” Ramona said, waving a hand through the air. “It’s better, actually.”
April let that settle between them for a second. “You’re not doinganything wrong or dishonest, Ray. You’re hanging out with her, which is whatsheasked for. If you happen to get on set in the process, where’s the harm in that? It’s not like you’ll ever see her again after this summer.”
Ramona folded her arms. April was right. Dylan wasDylan Monroe.And Ramona was just…Cherry. A small-town girl whom Dylan once kissed. A forgettable kiss. Forgettable girl.
And Ramona, honestly, was sick and tired of being forgettable.
“Yeah,” she said, forcing resolve into her voice. She rolled her shoulders back, straightened her posture. “You’re right. We’re just hanging out.”
“Exactly. Like gal pals.”
“That sounds gay.”
“It is gay.”
Ramona flapped her hands in the air. “Well, this can’t be gay!”
“Everything is gay, Ray, we’re queers.”
Ramona laughed and dropped her head into her hands before popping back up again. “Acquaintances. Not gal pals. I’m helping her at the diner, and I’m helping her feel normal. Whatever that means.”
April nodded vigorously. “Yes. Right. And in turn, she’ll help you meet Noelle. Hell, I doubt she’ll even mind after a few hangouts and she realizes how awesome you are.”
“Yeah,” Ramona said, a flurry of excitement and lingering guilt warring in her gut. “Yeah.”
April grabbed Ramona’s arm and yanked her into her arms, hugging her tight. “You deserve this,” she whispered in her ear.
Ramona could only nod.
“Okay,” April said, releasing her best friend and taking a deep breath. “The real question is…will Dylan Monroe allow me to tattoo her ass?”
“Oh my god, Apes,” Ramona said, but she laughed. She feltbetter, as she knew she would. For all of April’s persistence, she was also Ramona’s fiercest champion, ever since the fourth grade when April and her parents moved to Clover Lake. On her first day of school, April had promptly shoved Caden Haskins to the mulched ground during recess for stealing Ramona’s swing.
They’d been best friends ever since, through Olive’s birth and April’s struggles to relate to her stoic parents, through April’s beloved grandmother’s death when she was ten, through Rebecca’s abandonment and Steven’s accident and Olive’s preteen moodiness.
April was Ramona’s person, and she couldn’t imagine ever being away from her.
And LA…well, it was far, far away.
She shook off the thought, shook off Olive leaving, the idea of her father being all alone, shook off anything but right here, right now.
“Seriously, though, I need a plan,” she said. “In writing.”
“You and your plans.”
