I bite my lip, and her eyes widen. “Sorry, Lain. It’s not funny. Maybe they just don’t know how to approach you,” I say as I pull a tank top from the rack, look it over, and then put it back.
“Am I not approachable?” She asks with hurt in her voice.
“No, I just mean girls can be so–”
“I’m more approachable than Rachel. She has the warmth of a king cobra...and Amanda’s just stupid.”
“Amanda is sweet,” I tell her. She is dumb though. “She’s just a little…naïve.”
“Why are you defending them?” she asks.
“Because I hung out with them and they weren’t that bad,” I shrug. I really don’t want this to be a big deal.
“It’s almost like…” she starts to say. She shakes her head and keeps rummaging through the racks. “Never mind.”
“Almost like what?” I ask, and Lainey bites her lip before going on.
“It’s almost like ever since you started ‘dating’ your boss, moved into his big mansion, and don’t have to work anymore, you’ve changed. And then you started hanging out with Brynn and going to the Ring and dancing with them. I don’t know. It’s like you’re one of them now.”
“Lainey,” I say, forcing her to look at me. “I’m still the same person I was,” I insist.
“Really? Because I feel like the Mila I know would have never hung out with them. She would have hung out with me and talked about how we are nothing like them,” she says. As bad as it sounds, she’s not wrong.
I frown, feeling rather terrible about it. After we pay for the couple of things we found, we get lunch at a Spanish food truck nearby. She introduced me to it when we first met, and it is a gem!
“Tell me about your life,” I insist.
“There’s not much to tell,” she says, unwrapping an empanada. “I don’t exactly have the exciting life you do.”
“What about Gavin?” I ask, taking a bite of my empanada.
“You mean Gibson?” she asks.
I nod, chewing. “Right. Sorry. I swear someday I’ll get his name right.”
“Don’t bother,” she says, and I stop chewing. “I broke that off.”
“You did?” I ask. “When?”
“Weeks ago.”
“Oh.” I deflate a little as guilt washes over me. “I had no idea.”
“You didn’t ask,” she says, making me feel even worse. Then she waves her hand. “It’s not a big deal. He was kind of a dick.”
My phone buzzes, and I open the text.
Dominic: Hello.
A smile spreads across my face. “Keep going, I’m listening,” I tell her.
Mila: Hello…
“He was just so…needy. Like he always wanted to know where I was and who I was with. That sounds controlling, right?” she asks.
Dominic: How is lunch going?
I didn’t tell him we were thrifting. If I had to guess, he’d have the same reaction as my dad used to.
