Luna tilts her head. “Mrs. Grady said it was the cruise from hell. Rocky added the booze part.”
“And how do you even know all this? I thought you went right to bed when we got back and…” I glance at my watch. “It’s not even eight.”
She grins. “It’s all on the group chat.”
“What group chat?”
She gives me a look. “You were invited.”
“No.” I cross my arms. “I was definitely not invited.”
“You were,” she insists, dragging out the words. “But, like… have you even been on Facebook since the Obama administration?”
“I go on Facebook.”
“Not enough.” She shrugs. Then, after a pause— “You’re not missing much.”
Her face says otherwise.
Her face says, “you missed everything”.
The chatter. The inside jokes. The commentary on me and Beckett. The so-called pregnancy.
That’s how the rumor spread. And it wasn't just gossip—it was documentation.
Thank God the boys don’t have accounts yet. Beckett and I agreed—no social media until sixteen. Minimum.
Still.
“Well, that’s horrifying.” I blow out a breath. “I’m never living that cruise down, am I?”
“It’ll blow over,” she says with a shrug. “Besides, it was fun. Honest.”
“You threw up. Multiple times.”
“Small detail.” She flips her hair. “You’re forgetting I have a fiancé who’s a doctor. And that man? Has an incredible bedside manner.”
Her wink is aggressive.
“If you say so.”
I just nod… still absorbing that I’d somehow missed the fact that there’s a full-on group chat, with everyone except me.
And that my luxury excursion was now officially the Booze Cruise from Hell.
But… if Luna’s okay with it, I can be too. And somehow, something that felt catastrophic yesterday no longer has the power to fit on my worry shelf.
By the time Luna’s well into this second styling session, the coffee—is it even really coffee without caffeine? —is mostly gone and I’ve put yesterday, all of it, behind me.
We chat idly about Mom and Babs, Tay’s growing discontent with her job, the cruise staff. Luna showed me the video she took of a rendition of “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” that Denise, Josie, Mrs. Grady and Courtney apparently sang at karaoke after I left the other night.
“So, how are things going there, anyway? With… your future mother-in-law-ex-wife-situation?” I ask.
“Well.” She smiles. “I feel like Mrs. Grady is thawing out a little. Maybe. I mean, she has to, right? Oh, did you see Courtney sitting on Simon’s lap? In the karaoke bar?”
To be fair, half of us were on someone’s lap, from what I remember. But… “Isn’t Simon, like, Noah’s best friend?”
“Yeah, but there’s not…” She frowns. “I guess it would probably be a little weird.”
