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“No,” Porter replied.

“Me?” he mouthed again, or could have been yelling, with booming speakers blasting Doo Wop, That Thing by Lauryn Hill.

“Girls, you know you better watch out!” the songstress crooned through the air.

“Oh God,” Porter said. “He’s not gonna stop.”

The guy, who I’d started to vaguely remember as Ricky something, did that ridiculous, clichéd dance move where he pretended to cast a line in Porter’s direction. When she failed to catch the hook, he kept going anyway, jerking back on his invisible pole, pretending to lure in a big fish. Porter was supposed to be the fish. When she didn’t get up and bounce her way toward him, he pretended the fish was too strong and had yanked him closer to her.

Finally, he stood only a foot away.

“Dance with me, beautiful,” he said.

“Do we know each other?” Porter asked.

He looked taken aback.

“I’m sorry. That was rude,” she said. “I didn’t mean it to be. I’m just having a hard time remembering people.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I don’t remember you either. But we can make new friends, right?”

Porter nodded and looked over at me. I motioned for her to go ahead and join the guy. I wouldn’t feel bad about it. She pursed her lips like she was being forced to do something she had no interest in doing. She was lying. The guy was kind of cute. I knew she was excited to go.

A few seconds later, a stunning black woman and a hunky white dude sat down across from me at our table. It took me a second to recognize her. Him I wasn’t familiar with at all, but holy shit he was hot!

“Roselyn?” I asked. “Roselyn Lewis?”

She peered up at me and grinned.

“Mandy!”

Roselyn had been part of my “crew” if you could call it that. When Porter left, it took me a while to gather up a firm, trusted group of friends. That’s when I’d met Jill and started hanging out more with Ben and a few others.

“Rose!” I shrieked and moved around to hug her.

We embraced and shook each other like excited kids.

“I can’t believe it,” she said. “You look stunning.”

I sat down next to her beau.

“Is this your boyfriend?” I asked.

Then I whispered in her ear, “He’s fucking hot.”

“I know,” she sang back, obviously as excited about her date as I was. “His name’s Nick. He’s a model. I own a magazine and seeing these hunks all the time is definitely one of the perks.”

“A magazine?”

“Yeah, after college I moved to Chicago, part of my following-in-Oprah’s-footsteps dream. I didn’t find that kind of success, but one of my school friends and I started a magazine. It’s pretty popular now. Enough for me to live off of but not enough to do much else if you know what I mean.”

Chicago. Did everyone live in Chicago? I’d never even visited the city.

“That’s so cool. I’m a writer…well…I fancy myself one,” I said. “I write advertisement copy right now, but not in the most glamorous of worlds.”

I’d have to think of how to make that sound better the next time I needed to say it. With Rose, I didn’t need to play pretend. She was one of the few women on the planet I’d always felt comfortable confiding in.

“Well, maybe you can write for my magazine sometime.”

Source: www.allfreenovel.com
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