“Do I look like a woman who wants a small amount of caffeine right now?” April asked, pointing at the bags under her eyes.
Owen pressed his mouth together. “I’m going to shut my mouth and get to work on a quad shot oat milk latte.”
“Good man,” April said, then rested her elbows on the counter. Behind her the café buzzed with activity from the usual clientele—Violet Chalmers sipping on a mocha latte spiked with a few dribbles of Baileys that she kept in her purse; Duke Hansard and his brother Jake with their daily helping of sausage links wrapped in buttermilk pancakes, then smothered in strawberry syrup; Logan and Natalie Adler fighting about what to name their soon-to-be-born twins. Personally, April liked Natalie’s most recent favorites, Maple and Oak.
“Hey, darling, how are those cutie patootie cats of yours?” Penny Hampton asked, popping up next to April like an annoying neighbor in a sitcom.
April startled but managed a smile. “They’re little demons.”
Penny laughed, clicking her long russet-colored nails on the plastic menu in front of her. “Good company, I imagine.”
April said nothing, not sure how to take that. Plus, the last thing she wanted was to show up as some story in Penny’s gossip blog,Penny for Your Thoughts.
“Any juicy news from Ramona lately?” Penny asked, eyeing April over the tops of her tortoiseshell reading glasses. Her hair was copper red—just like a penny—and April was pretty sure she was wearing bright green contact lenses, which were new.
“Not lately, no,” April said, widening her eyes at Owen to hurry it up. He just smirked at her, steaming milk happily.
When people started plying April for Hollywood news, it was time to get the hell out of Dodge. Mostly because she had no idea what Ramona was up to these days. At least, not the details. A few months ago, in a desperate attempt to feel more connected and informed about what her best friend might be doing around LA, she’d set up a Google alert for Ramona’s name. So far, she’d only gotten one alert, informing her that Ramona and Dylan had attended some charity function last month. Other than that useless bit of information, she knew Ramona was immersed in a historical romance for Netflix with her boss, Noelle Yang. She knew Dylan, Ramona’s movie star girlfriend, was just about to wrap filming a biopic in which she played Marlene Dietrich, which she’d been working on for over a year. But specifics? Those details were spotty at best, like bad cell reception on the south end of the lake.
She glanced at her phone, eyes drifting over her and Ramona’s last text interaction. Several blue bubbles sent from April, asking Ramona if she thought getting a tattoo of an actual scorpion was a little too on the nose. And underneath the last text—the last text with no response from Ramona—were the wordsRead 8:41PM.
That was two days ago.
April really didn’t want to use the L-word—lonely—but ever since Ramona had moved to LA to work as a costume designer nearly two years ago, the word haunted her like Miss Havisham’s ghost. Ramona was crushing it as Noelle Yang’s assistant, taking on more and more responsibility with each project. It was everything Ramona had ever wanted, everything she deserved after giving up her whole life when she was nineteen to help raise her little sister, Olive, after her father’s debilitating car accident, and she certainly didn’t need her small potatoes BFF whining about loneliness and a struggling business.
Still, over the last few months, her texts with Ramona had been sporadic at best, and she couldn’t remember when they’d last FaceTimed. She did know, however, that they hadn’t seen each other in person since this past November, when Ramona and Dylan had come back to Clover Lake for Thanksgiving with Dylan’s rock icon parents, Jack Monroe and Carrie Page. Even then, their time was taken up with Ramona’s family and April hadn’t wanted to impose.
Her own Thanksgiving was a quiet affair with Dr.and Dr.Evans, sipping red wine around her mother’s immaculate table while trying to deal with her father’s insistence that she invest Wonderlust’s profits—that was a laugh—in the stock market, and her mother’s constant hints aboutsettling down. April didn’t think Jacqueline Evans, a Capricorn sun with a Virgo rising, would appreciate April’s long-term plans of becoming a cat lady, or how she’d recently decided to give up dating altogether, because what the hell was the point, so instead she’d sipped her drink and gotten a little too tipsy, which had only invited further disapproval from her parents.
Then, after walking home in a red-wine haze because her dad hadn’t wanted to drive in the inch of snow that had fallen the night before, she’d promptly opened up her favorite dating app looking for something fresh and intriguing, only to be met with the same boring people asking the same boring questions.
Casual dating had been her bread and butter for the last three years, after her engagement had imploded in spectacular fashion, but it all felt so tiresome to her—the first dates that she never had any interest in turning into a second, getting naked in front of someone new, the whole song and dance afterward, when all she wanted was to go home and sleep in her own bed.
She wasn’t really interested in anyone she dated and hadn’t been since Elena. No matter how she tried to open her mind topossibilities, no one stimulated her imagination or affections, no one made her stomach flutter with that first-crush feeling or caused her heart to feel like it was going to bust right through her rib cage. No one made her smile uncontrollably or wake up in the morning marveling at how fucking lucky she was.
Lately, the only thing she woke up to was a hair ball vomited up by one of her cats at the foot of her bed.
But even if some Taylor or Scott or Lydiahadinspired such feelings, April had been there, done that, and consequently been crushed into oblivion when the only person she’d ever fallen madly in love with left her after three years together for a twenty-two-year-old artist named Daphne Love.
DaphneLove, for crying out loud.
She’d rather not relive that experience, thanks, no matter what Ramona, her mother, or the entire town of Clover Lake thought about it.
“Ah, well,” Penny said now, shoving her glasses back up on her nose. “We’ve got enough going on with this fancy new resort opening this weekend.”
April hmm’d politely, dug her debit card from her bag and tossed it on the counter. Owen whipped it away, then set her latte in front of her. She gulped at it greedily, burning her tongue a bit.
“I hear it’s to be quite the gaudy affair,” Penny said, leaning closer to April and whispering. Loudly. Penny didn’t really do quiet.
April nodded as Owen handed back her card and receipt. Cloverwild was a luxury resort and was indeed rumored to be extravagant. April had no idea ifgaudywas an accurate description as she hadn’t seen it yet, but when a vacation spot’s entire purpose was to bring in tourists with a lot of money, it was bound to be pretty high-end.
“It’s not gaudy,” Owen said. “It’s Mia. She’s a classy broad.”
“Ah, yes,” April said, tucking her card away again. “Just what every classy broad wants to be called.”
Owen laughed. “I’ve seen the main lodge,” he said, setting a glass of water in front of Penny. “It’s gorgeous. Should bring in a lot of good business.”
“There’s a fine line between gorgeous and gaudy,” Penny said, pointing her straw at him before sliding it into her drink and turning to face April again. “Your car outside has a lot of stuff in it. Heading out of town?”
