“Other than the letter, how hard did you work to reach out?”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
Cami throws me acome onlook. “I mean—and please don’t take this the wrong way, J, I know you were grieving, but—it kind of sounds like you threw in the towel and gave up on your friendship with Zoe without putting up too much of a fight? You didn’t have a real, honest conversation with her in person. Instead, you wrote her a letter. Even years later, you could have checked in, but you didn’t. The reason I think that’s so odd is because Iknowyou, Josie, and you never give up. You’re a fighter.”
Cami’s right about one thing. Ididn’tfight for my friendship with Zoe. I accepted it was over, then crawled into a corner and cowered there. Partially because I couldn’t make sense of why she’d allowed me to be her friend in the first place. We were so different. Not in a cute, opposites-attract way, but in a make-it-make-sense way. I’d packed three suitcases for that beach trip and Zoe had brought a carry-on. I took photos of my outfits for Instagram; Zoe was a short-story Tumblr girl. I was the one doing the hurting; she was the one getting hurt.
“She deserved to find a better friend than me,” I say.
“Josephine,” Cami says, reaching for my hand again. “Trust me. There’s no such thing.”
CHAPTER TEN
We have to be the most-hated group of women in a one-hundred-mile radius at the moment. Thirteen of us, dressed in denim and cowboy boots, hair teased, makeup slathered, a picture of David Ortega’s face tattooed on our cheeks and shoulders and wrists.
I’ve owned a business for seven years now, but I’veneverhad to be as authoritative as I was thirty minutes ago, corralling a dozen drunks onto this party wagon (which I reserved by calling 615-GIDDYUP several months back). The trailer is hitched to a cherry-red tractor with wheels so tall they reach my shoulders, driven by a man who announced himself as Farmer Bob and who was, frankly, a little too cavalier with the safety instructions.
I definitely prefer the morose disposition of our bartender, Wylie: a mid-thirties jock type with a muscle tee and a man bun. I know his name only due to the name tag, and not because he’s offered up a single word yet, despite taking our consistent drink orders frombehind the small bar in the corner ever since we climbed aboard. Something tells me if a member of our bridal party is hanging by one boot over the side of the wagon at any point this afternoon, Wylie, andnotFarmer Bob, will be the one to intervene.
“How do people hold a job in this town?” Giovanna asks, leaning both elbows on the wagon’s edge as she gazes out at Broadway. It’s four o’clock and lines are already forming outside the four-story bars down by the Cumberland River.
I point at the masses. “Bold of you to assume any of these people are going to be in Nashville come Monday.”
“Wheredothe locals go?”
“How should I know?” I take a sip of my seltzer. “I haven’t been local in ten years.”
“Is that a woman wearing a dinosaur costume?” Gio raises a cool eyebrow at a walking mascot missing her headpiece. “Carrying abow and arrow?”
“I’m sure it’s fake.”
(I’m not.)
“GET THE FUCK OUT OF NASHVILLE!” a dude in a University of Tennessee baseball cap shouts at us.
“Oh! There’s a local!” Gio exclaims, pointing at him like he’s a starfish and she’s a small child in an aquarium.
“Don’t be so sure. He’s got a guitar,” I note, “strapped to his back.”
“AUSTIN IS THE REAL UT!” Cami’s younger sister Patricia shouts at the guy from the other end of the wagon.
“Oh,that’scrossing a line!” he rallies back, cupping both hands around his mouth. “Can I get your number?”
We’re in such standstill traffic that Patricia nods, giggling, while the guy comes into the street and passes his phone up to her. Gio and I watch in rapt amusement as he stands below us, hands on his hips, and proceeds to flirt.
In the middle of the wagon, Cami is in a dance circle popping her booty while everyone gasses her up, screaming at the top of their lungs in unison with the blaring Fergie tracks. When she spots me watching her, she bursts through the circle and grabs me.
“Dance!” she commands.
I toss my drink into the garbage can. We hold hands and spin in a ridiculous circle, jumping and dancing, until I’m bodychecked by Mariana. Half her margarita seeps down the front of my overalls.
“Nobody will know!” she tells me seriously, cupping my cheek. “They’ll never know!”
“Mariana, I don’t thinkwe’llknow.”
“Another!” she announces, cementing this fate. She links arms with me and steers us toward Wylie—who looks more and more horrified by the second.
Hours later, I’m wedged into the corner of a honky-tonk booth as every Sanchez sister belts Shania Twain to a roomful of strangers, most of whom have taken it upon themselves to roundly ignore the drunk women onstage.
