“I’ll let that slide because I know it’s your highest compliment. But uh…” I waved a hand at her outfit. “What’s happening here?”
“The salad wasn’t enough. How was dinner at Madame Flynn’s.”
“Delightful, darling,” I said, impersonating my mother’s accent.
“Did she like your outfit?”
“She said I looked lovely.”
Addie snorted.
“She mentioned she hasn’t received a thank you note for the flowers she had her assistant send. I told her you were planning to bring one by in person.”
“You did not,” she said, glaring at me.
“I did not.”
She sat up carefully then and patted the cushion beside her.
“I was looking at something after you left that you might be interested in.”
“I know we’re close, Ads, but I don’t want to watch porn with you.”
She flipped me off and waited for me to sit before grabbing her laptop and opening it. On it was a real estate website.
“I made a favorites folder,” she said proudly, resting her head on my shoulder. “Move here. Just do it. Take the job Avery offered. We can take walks on the beach every morning, watch movies and eat pizza at night, and go to therapy together to work out why we pick awful men.”
“That sounds almost exactly how we spent our high school years.”
“I know! It’ll be so fun!”
I laughed and leaned forward, grabbing her beer and taking a drink before settling back on the sofa.
“Show me what you found,” I said, pointing to the screen of her laptop.
Chapter 19
Graham
“Brontë told me to ask if you wanted to meet us for a walk sometime,” I texted Lior the evening I got back from Seattle.
I then immediately wondered if I could unsend it. Was she even home yet? Would she even want to? But I realized if she’d seen it, and was thinking about it, it would be embarrassing to then unsend. And I didn’t want to be embarrassing.
“I suppose I could tell her I meant to send it to someone else,” I said to Brontë, who stared up at me from her bed next to mine and gave two thumps of her tail. “It’s a bad idea, right? I should not engage. We could be friends though. Who doesn’t want a supermodel for a bestie? All that free fashion advice and birthday gifts from Prada?”
My text alert went off.
“Please tell her I’d be honored,” Lior said. “Tomorrow too soon?”
We agreed on a time and then I sent her a landmark for a meeting spot, set my phone face down on my bedside table, and turned out the light.
“Fuck,” I whispered in the dark. “What am I doing?”
Brontë’s tail thumped twice on her bed beside mine.
I woke in the morning after spending half the night going over everything I knew about Lior from the internet, and that which I knew from our in-person encounters. Every word, every look, every joke, every smile. Every on purpose and accidental touch. Every sweet moment with my sister this past weekend in Seattle.
Maybe the drama of her life didn’t actually matter? Maybe I could handle it after all?
