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“What in the hell are you wearing?”
“A costume,” she retorts, rolling her eyes. “Because, as you know, we’re going to a Halloween party.”
Her gaze scrutinizes my outfit—my pilot’s uniform that consists of a white shirt and a black tie, slacks, and shoes. “And what are you supposed to be? Pilot Pete?”
I furrow my brow. “Who the hell is Pilot Pete? I just got home from a seven-hour flight from Paris. I’m Pilot Luke.”
An annoyed sigh leaves her pretty pink lips.
“Geez Louise, I need to make you watch more reality TV. Pilot Pete is from The Bachelor, and Pilot Luke is not a costume. Go change.”
“I’m going to. Into jeans and a T-shirt.”
“You’re not wearing a costume tonight?”
“Nope,” I say. “We already talked about this.”
“I thought you were joking! It’s a Halloween party. Costumes are required.”
I just laugh. She sighs.
“You’re going to feel so stupid when you’re the only one there without a costume.”
“I highly doubt it.” I swirl my finger at her, gesturing to the yellow getup she has on. “What are you supposed to be anyway? Some kind of sixties go-go dancer or some shit?”
She puts a defiant hand to one hip. “I’m a Fantana.”
“I’m sorry.” I quirk a brow. “Are you speaking English right now?”
“I’m one of the Fanta girls!” she exclaims and holds both hands out in the air. “You know, the drink Fanta. It’s a soda.”
“Ohh, yeah. I think I remember those commercials. How’s the jingle go again?”
To my utter enjoyment, Ava pulls a bottle of yellow Fanta from her purse and proceeds to sing and shake her hips. “Don’t you wanna…wanna Fanta?”
I smile, take another swig of beer, and toss the now-empty bottle into the trash can. “Well, you look great. Maybe a little too great. Kind of reminds me of our first Halloween at college, to be honest. Also, and this is just my personal opinion, orange Fanta is the best.”
She rolls her big, angelic eyes and tsks her lips. “I look like shit in orange, so I had to go with yellow. But this is not like Columbia.”
“Really? Because you look like my friend Ava and we’re going to the same bar and you have a particularly booze-desperate look in your eye—just like you did that night.”
“We’re not talking about that night right now.”
“Okay, fine. We’ll come back to that later. For now, you can just tell me what’s going on. Why are we spiraling this time?”
She huffs out a breath that blows loose strands of her blond hair out of her face. “Have you ever seen the movie The Wedding Date?”
I shake my head.
“Are you sure you’ve never seen it?” she questions. “Debra Messing? Dermot Mulroney? Set in a gorgeous English village?”
“Not ringing any bells.”
“Ugh!” She tosses both hands up in the air. “It would be so much easier if you watched rom-coms, you know?”
“Reality TV and rom-coms,” I comment with a smirk. “Anything else I need to add to the list?”
“Tons. But I’ve been crafting your reform very carefully over the last fifteen years, and it would really ruin my plan to get ahead of myself.”
My smile makes my cheeks hurt. “Of course. Wouldn’t want to ruin all that hard work. So, just tell me what’s going on in plain terms for now.”
She grins back before diving into the point.
“As you know, I’m the only single Lucie girl in the family—”
“Oh yeah,” I say with a grin that makes her roll her eyes. “I definitely know.”
“Well, thanks to my mom’s obsession with marrying me off, I’ve now been roped into helping plan a reunion party with my old archnemesis.”
“Reunion party?” I ask and tilt my head to the side in confusion.
“My fifteen-year high school reunion.” She pulls an invitation out of her purse and slides it across the island.
I quickly scan the gold-embossed, cursive words on the paper. It’s fancy. A little too fancy for a fucking high school reunion, but what do I know.
“Well, at least there’s an open bar,” I offer and look back up to meet her eyes.
“Oh yeah!” she exclaims in sarcasm. “Thank goodness for the open bar! Maybe I’ll be able to drink enough booze that I won’t have to remember attending it with Callie freaking Camden!”
“The chick who made your teenage years hell?”
“The one and only.”
I shake my head and lean my back into the counter, crossing my arms over my chest. “You know what I’m going to say, don’t you?”
“Don’t say it.”
“I have to, Ace. It is my obligation as your best friend to remind you that if you just stood up for yourself and voiced how you feel—you know, that you’d rather go live under a bridge—your family might just stop pressuring you so much.”
“It’s not that easy.”
For Ava? No, it’s definitely not. She hates confrontation and cannot stand making people feel bad. I know this all too well after all our years around each other.
