She threw up her hands. “My grandmother boiled handfuls of something she found in the woods.”
“It’s fiber!” Edith trilled, floating by with a tray of what looked like tofu and berries on a dried leaf.
Frank blinked at me. “Meg, I didn’t know you were a triplet. And why are you all purple and…” He blinked. “Green and blue?”
* * *
“I can’t believeyou had the city shut us down!” Edith complained to me after the ambulances had taken Frank and several other customers to have their stomachs pumped. “I am certainly not voting for you after this.”
“That’s perfectly fine,” I said firmly. “But until the election, I am acting mayor, and I will not allow you to sell people the equivalent of LSD-laced smoothies.”
“Hunter,” Edith demanded. “You would let me serve these smoothies, right? You understand the importance of male health.”
I raised an eyebrow at him and handed him the smoothie Frank had half finished. “You want to down that?”
Hunter scowled slightly. “No, Edith, you cannot serve this to people.”
“Well,” she said with a huff. “You are not receiving my vote either!”
“If you want to have a mayor who is for freedom of food and sexuality,” Ida said into the megaphone that had materialized out of her enormous purse, “vote for me!”
“Freedom of food!” Edith and her fellow seniors chanted.
“Down with corporate overlords!”
Hunter muttered a curse.
“Welcome to my world,” I told him then left before the protests turned ugly. I was starving. Frank hadn’t drunk enough of the dirt smoothie to earn a free meal.
“You have an apartment now,” I chastised myself, “and you have no money. You need to cook at home.” But I didn’t feel like it. I felt like a hamburger and onion rings and a chocolate shake and maybe some french fries because you couldn’t have a shake without french fries. It was like having—
Sex without Hunter.Urg. Over the last few years, Hunter had been the only man I’d slept with. Yes, I was that pathetic. I liked to blame my lack of orgasms on Hunter. It seemed that any time I went out on a date, Hunter somehowappearedand proceeded to intimidate the men I was with. But in the fried-food haze of the fast casual restaurant as I waited on my order, a part of me had to admit I was secretly a little thrilled whenever he showed up.
You’re addicted to the drama. You need a nice normal man, I lectured myself.You’re addicted to the highs and lows of being with Hunter. You’re almost thirty-five—middle-aged. Stop acting like a teenager.But Hunter always seemed to turn me back into a starstruck girl, drooling over all the celebrities in magazines, daydreaming about them whisking me off to an exciting life.
I scooted aside for a brown-haired woman in heels to step up to order and started to dig around in my purse for my phone.
“I’ll have whatever she ordered,” said a familiar voice.
I looked up, shocked. “Kate?” My mouth hung open.
“Hey, girl!” My bestie friend and former roommate while I had lived in Manhattan turned and smiled broadly at me.
“What? Why? I’m so glad to see you!” I hugged my friend. She was taller than me and had married Grant Holbrook and now lived the jet-set life I had always wanted.
“So, you want a cheeseburger with the works, a large onion ring, a large fry, and a large chocolate shake?” the bored teenage Svensson brother at the cash register asked.
I turned red. “It’s been a terrible week,” I muttered.
“I’m not judging,” Kate assured me. “I haven’t eaten all day. I’m starving. I’ll have all that,” she told the kid then winked at me. “And I have wine in my purse.”
“Oh, and she had an order of mozzarella sticks,” the Svensson brother added.
“Hunter is literally driving me into a fried-food addiction,” I wailed.
Kate patted me on the head. “And I’m here to support you in your time of fried food and billionaire crisis.”
12
