“Just now. We caught the first flight out of Anchorage.” She pointed at a minivan parked down the street. “Dad insisted on stopping at the market, and I was hoping to catch you at the store before I go home to sleep for three days.”
It was hard to miss the dark circles under her eyes, though on her, it looked more like a smoky eye. That was how it had always been with Kaylani. What looked like yesterday’s makeup on her, looked like a trash panda caught in the act on me.
“Two days,” I corrected. “The first festival committee meeting is on Saturday.”
“That’s right,” she said around a yawn.
“But you just got back. If you’re not up for it—”
“I don’t want to hear it,” she stopped me, holding up her hand. “Trust me, after forty-eight hours of sleep, I’ll be back to my usual, peppy self.”
I barely heard a word she said, too distracted by the blinding light bouncing off the four-carat diamond on her finger.
“Excuse me,” I said, pulling her hand to my face. “What is that?”
Her smile soured. “Oh, yeah.That.”
“Oh, yeah.That,” I mocked. “Girl, you got engaged and didn’t say anything?! When were you going to tell me?”
She withdrew her hand from mine, tucking it behind her back. “We wanted to tell you together. In person.”
“We?”
Kaylani’s teeth dug into her lower lip. “Here’s the thing, Ness—”
A whistle pierced the air. We both turned to face the supermarket, just in time to see a familiar face—one that had haunted my dreams for four years of high school—and he held up two pumpkins.
“Kay,” he called across the street. “Come help me pick out a pumpkin.”
“Gimme a minute, Ry,” Kaylani called back to him.
“Hurry, babe. Willy is in the checkout line.”
This couldn’t be happening.
Ryan. Motherfucking. Mitchell.
Somewhere in the last thirty seconds, I had fallen off a Tilt-A-Whirl and landed straight into some parallel universe. One where my childhood best friend was marrying the entitled, jock-hole fuckface who had tormented both of us incessantly throughout high school.
“Ness?”
I spun back to her, moving as though I were bogged down in quicksand. It certainly felt like I was drowning.
“Give me a minute, yeah?”
I must have managed a nod because she took off across the street and bounded straight into the market, hand in hand with Ryan.
Her fiancé.
The brown sugar latte swirling around my stomach suddenly threatened to come back up. I leaned against the nearby trash can—just in case my acid reflux got the best of me—and caught my breath.
Questions raced through my mind. How long had Kaylani been dating Ryan? Why had she kept this relationship hidden from me? Was Mr. Hu okay with Ryan calling him Willy?
Kaylani and I had made a pact years ago—sometime between watching reruns ofFacts of Lifeon Nick at Nite and shopping for our first thongs together—that we would always have each other’s backs, especially when it came to the so-called “big ones.” Momentous occasions like graduations, breakups, and childbirth—hers, not mine. That ship had sailed when I’d gifted myself a tubal ligation for my thirtieth birthday. Kaylani had been working in Japan, but that hadn’t stopped her from chipping in on the “I got ninety-nine problems but a womb ain’t one” surprise party June had thrown me.
It was safe to say that engagements also fell under the “big one” category, too. So, no matter how much I wanted to ditch my oldest friend while she and her husband-to-be picked out pumpkins, I owed it to her to wait and hear her out. Even if I didn’t want to. If our roles were reversed, she would be there for me.
Not that I’d be tying the knot anytime soon.
