“He was even more of a grump before Chloe here, if you can imagine that,” Grace said.
Chloe beamed, pressing her fingertips into the eye masks above her cheeks. “It’s true. You should have seen the man at Disney World. You would have thought we’d dragged him to prison rather than the most magical place on Earth.”
“And this one,” Grace said, nudgingMia Fucking Love— I still wasn’t over that. “She actually grew up with Aleks Suter. And they started dating out of nowhere and had, like, the fastest engagement of all time.”
I remembered, though I wouldn’t dare say a word about it here. I’d followed their whole relationship, fawning over the photos the paparazzi leaked. I especially lost my mind over the one of them kissing on the beach.
“It was so romantic,” Chloe swooned. “I’ll never forget that speech he gave on the yacht when he proposed.”
“So… I actually have a confession,” Mia said, looking around the table with her lip between her teeth. She dropped her gaze back to her painting when she said, “What if I told you we were actually kind of faking it…”
Grace laughed. “Oh sure, so fake.” She rolled her eyes, but then her smile fell when Mia didn’t give in. “Wait. You mean to tell me it was all a publicity stunt?”
“I mean… kinda?” Mia winced. “Until it wasn’t. Obviously.”
“I knew it!” Livia snapped her fingers, pointing across the table at her literal popstar friend. “I overheard your publicist talking to Suter’s agent at your album release party in California, something about gettingthe money shot.”
“But you two are so in love!” Chloe whined.
“We are. And we were then, too. We were just also both really stupid and thought it was fun to torture ourselves thinking the other was just pretending to like us for a few months.” Mia shrugged. “Sounds crazy, but it was actually kind of fun.”
“You’re all crazy,” Maven said, looking around the table. “And that’s exactly why I love you so much.”
I smiled, looking down at the empty table in front of me. I decided to put on the eye mask Chloe had given me just so I had something to do with my hands.
When I looked up again, all eyes were on me.
Shit.
“Here,” Grace said, sliding a coloring page of Idris Alba over to me along with a box of colored pencils. “I don’t craft, either, but I like to color attractive men sometimes. I have a Keanu Reeves coloring book if he’s more your style?”
She tore a page out of that one and handed it to me as I laughed. “Thanks. I… I didn’t even think about bringing anything.”
“Do you do any kind of crafting?” Livia asked, working on her necklace again. “I’m a lover of fine jewelry, but Maven roped us into working on her wedding, and I absolutely hated that shit.”
“She did. She protested until I hired a planner,” Maven confirmed.
“And you thanked me for it, didn’t you?” Livia tilted her wine glass to her lips, and then her eyes went wide. “Oh! We’re so rude. Someone pour Ariana a drink.”
Grace hopped up. “On it!” And then everyone was waiting for my answer.
“I’m not really a crafter,” I said. “But I love to read.”
“Ick, Jaxson loves to read. I don’t know how you guys do it,” Grace said, bringing me a glass of white wine. “Bores me to tears.”
“Yes, well, you don’t know how to sit still without some form of vivid entertainment for longer than two seconds,” Mia pointed out. “Hence why we’ve only recently managed to get you to stay in Tampa for more than a month at a time.”
“I’m still debating the trip to Italy next month,” Grace said.
“I’ll allow it only if you set a wedding date.” Maven arched a brow at her friend before turning her gaze to me. “What do you like to read?”
“Oh, lots of things. Anything, really,” I said, and the first easy smile bloomed on my lips.
I could talk about books all night.
“I’m a huge lover of classics. I have pretty much every book you can think of that your English teachers made you study. Hemingway, Brontë, Austen. I’m a pretty big nerd for fantasy. Tolkien changed my life when I was a kid.”
“You readThe Lord of the Ringsas akid?!” Chloe asked in disbelief.
