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Chapter One
Brooklyn
“You got me a vacation?” I gape at my friends.
I knew they’d cover this brunch, which is why I chose a modestly priced place, but a trip to Florida? Seriously?
“You see that?” Jolene says with her signature grin, one that makes her look like the love child of the Joker and the demon clown from It… but gorgeous. If she were a dog, she’d be an Australian Shepherd, which is a majestic creature that, to my dismay, rarely requires a haircut. “She almost did a spit take there,” she continues.
As always, Dorothy shakes her head disapprovingly at Jolene’s antics. Her spirit dog would be a sad-eyed Basset Hound—another breed that, unfortunately, goes haircut-less.
These two do not consider themselves friends with each other, only with me, which makes it all the more mind-boggling that they would team up to do anything, especially something as logistically advanced as planning me a last-minute vacay.
Dorothy turns her attention to me. “You need it,” she states firmly.
“Brooklyn needs it bad,” Jolene says. “So bad, in fact, that I finally found something I agree on with Grandma here.”
Yep. Dorothy is a cat person while Jolene is a dog person, so they get along about as well as their pets would. Then again, some cats get along well with dogs, so bad analogy.
Dorothy narrows her eyes. “I’m the youngest at this table.”
Strictly speaking, that is true. We met when we were freshmen at Brooklyn College—insert jokes about my name here. Having graduated high school a year early, Dorothy was sixteen, and I was seventeen to Jolene’s eighteen. Of course, unlike me, my friends graduated and got nice-paying jobs that allow them to make grand gestures such as this trip.
“You’re only biologically younger,” Jolene says.
“How else can you be younger?” Dorothy demands.
“In spirit,” Jolene says. “Yours is that of a seventy-year-old virgin with a dried-up?—”
“Hush,” I grit out in the tone I usually reserve for calming my first-grader son and his buddies. “I can’t accept this.”
“Told you,” Jolene says to Dorothy and takes a dainty sip from her mimosa glass. To me, she says, “It’s all nonrefundable, and neither of us can use it.”
My jaw ticks. “I can’t go. I have a job?—”
“I spoke to one of the other groomers,” Dorothy says. “Neveah, I think her name was. She said she’d cover for you.”
“Neveah?” I sigh. “My clients will be pissed. That woman makes every dog look like a poodle.”
“I can ask someone else.” Dorothy’s voice turns steely. “But you’re going, and that’s final.”
“What about Reagan?” I demand. “Which one of you is going to babysit?”
That is not to say I’d let them babysit. If he stays with Jolene, he’ll end up with a girlfriend that he’ll get pregnant in short order. And I’m not saying that Reagan himself was a byproduct of her influence on me… but it was she who dragged me to the bar where I met the sperm donor who knocked me up. Not that things would be better if he were to stay with Dorothy. He might end up with the opposite fate—though I’m not sure what that is. Joining the clergy? Wearing sandals with socks?
Jolene shudders. “We’re not saints. Well, I’m not. We’ve got him covered, though. There’s a sleepaway camp near your Airbnb—also all paid for and nonrefundable.”
“A camp?” I look at Dorothy.
“Reputable,” Dorothy says. “Zero fatalities so far.”
“Zero fatalities. Great.”
“You know how social he is,” Jolene chimes in. “He’ll have a blast, and you know it.”
The truth of her statement just makes me feel guilty about not being able to afford him a trip to a summer camp myself.
My shoulders stoop. “Why would you do this?”
