“FYI, I’m staying with Samson this week,” Rhiannon told them. Samson, Rhiannon’s gentle giant boyfriend, lived in Los Angeles. “We have a fancy gala he’s making me go to.” She sneered, though her words had been tender.
“You’re a nonprofit director’s girlfriend now. Get used togalas.” Katrina waved her knife at her friend, and the sunlight flashed off the diamond ring on her finger. It wasn’t an engagement ring, she’d informed them both a few months ago. Simply a gift from her boyfriend.
Jia was privately skeptical, but she was willing to let her friend come to grips with the fact that Jas may have sneakily put a ring on it.
“I’m Samson’s partner. Girlfriend sounds like we’re in high school. Partner is responsible sounding enough to stop people from asking when we’re getting married.” Rhiannon made a face, like the wordmarriedhad left a bad taste in her mouth.
“I like galas,” Jia contributed. “Any excuse to dress up. You should wear that lime-green dress.”
“Is it too much?”
“Nope.” Rhiannon’s skin was a dark brown, darker than Jia’s, and the color would pop, while the sleeveless silhouette would bare her toned arms. “Put your hair up, do a light makeup.”
Rhiannon touched her curls. She’d cut her hair recently, and they barely brushed her shoulders. “I’ll think about it. Lakshmi will do my makeup, so I’m not worried about that.”
Now Jia resisted the urge to sneer. There was no love lost between her and Rhiannon’s assistant.
The woman had assumed Jia was frivolous and silly on sight. That wasn’t uncommon. People didn’t respect influencers nearly as much as they respected med students. Jia had responded as she always did to disdain, with an airheaded affectation guaranteed to annoy even more. “Sounds good.”
“How was the party you went to last night, Jia?” Katrina asked.
Jia took a sip of orange juice, mostly to clear the sudden lump in her throat. “Fine.”
“Uh-oh.” Rhiannon glanced up from her plate, a sharp look in her eyes. “That doesn’t sound good.”
“I got a goody bag.”
Katrina perked up. She liked the goody reveals too. “Ooh. Have you gone through it yet? Any new brands?”
“No, I didn’t get a chance.” Jia took another bite, though she didn’t much want to eat any longer. “Something happened, and it upset me.”
Rhiannon stilled. “Something or someone?”
“Someone.”
Her roommate’s dark eyes narrowed. “A man?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you want me to take care of him?”
It was funny, Rhiannon sounded vaguely like she was threatening to put a hit on someone.
“Like, I can kill them,” Rhiannon explained.
Or not so vaguely. Jia huffed out a soft laugh. “No need for an assassin. It was a stupid thing.” She let the back of the chair mold to her spine.
“What happened?” Katrina asked.
Jia hadn’t really rehearsed what she was going to say, which was probably why she went with “I think I may havebeen catfished by someone pretending to be a famous Indian actor.”
There was a beat of silence, and then Rhiannon spoke. “I feel like we need something harder than orange juice for this conversation.”
Jia didn’t drink, but she couldn’t disagree. “Do you... do you guys remember that guy I was talking to like a year ago?”
Katrina and Rhiannon exchanged a look. “Yes,” Katrina said gently. “You said you stopped talking to him after the holidays.”
“I did. There was so much going on then, in the world, and with my family.” She had two parents, three sisters, and two brothers-in-law who were doctors, and times had been tough in the medical field around then. “I got tired of us being so far apart, and him not wanting to chat on video, and it started to feel like a lot of his messages were rehearsed. I told him we could maybe talk in the future, when we were in the same place in the world.”
