A flush had bloomed on her friend’s chest, above the silk of her shell. “We had a plan, Lucy. Why are you making this harder on both of us?”
Lucy shook her head. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“We talked about this.” Allie huffed out a breath. “You’d apply for the show, and I’d be your real estate agent. You’d get to be on TV and spend time with the boy who got away, and I’d take my career to the next level. It’s really not that difficult. Or it wasn’t, until youmadeit difficult.”
Lucy gaped at her friend. How in goddess’s name had Allie gotten everything so wrong?
“I didn’t choose this experience to get myself on TV. I could take or leave the cameras.” She bit her lip. “I didn’t apply to spend time with Sebastián, either. I need a house, Allie.”
Although, now that she thought back on that initial, wine-soaked conversation about the show, she hadn’t agreed to apply until Allie had mentioned Sebastián as someone Lucy could recruit as help. She’d known he wouldn’t refuse her, not with such a stressful and important task, no matter how much he prized his privacy.
This show had bought them three full days together. More than they’d had since those endless summers as teenagers. Had that been her subconscious aim all along?
“And I need to support my children in a slow housing market, since their dad’s a deadbeat.” Allie’s hands had clenched into fists. “All you had to do was pretend for three days, maybe four. Help the filming go smoothly, so I could pick up my kids on time. Find nice things to say about each of the options, even if you hated them. Make believe you were considering them. I thought you, of all the Pollyannas in the world, could do that to support me.”
The amethyst slid into Lucy’s palm, slick and cool. “I’m so sorry.”
She was, sincerely. Allie was clearly desperate to make a name for herself and claw her way toward financial stability, and Lucy—selfishly—hadn’t considered childcare issues any of the times she’d interrupted filming.
Still, she couldn’t afford to playact through the process, for obvious reasons. “I need a house, though. Not as a ploy to snag my high school BFF, but because I’m moving soon. Can’t you find me something workable?”
Allie threw her hands in the air. “Do you honestly think I haven’t tried? Do you really think I’m such an incompetent real estate agent that I showed you a dilapidated pot shack, the dick bus, and acovered wagonbecause I thought those weregoodoptions? You have a strict timeline, so you don’t want to custom-build something. You have a low budget. I had very little notice before filming began, and I can’t produce a perfect tiny house out of thin air, Lucy. I even asked the producers for other options, and they didn’t give me any.”
Shit. Lucy dropped her chin to her chest, feeling an inch high.
“I sold your condo for above asking price in less than a week.” Allie’s voice rose. “Can’t you just try to play ball, instead of living in some naïve wonderland where you canhave exactly what you want without a few compromises? Can’t you face reality andthink, for once?”
A familiar accusation, and one that stung more than it should have.
Lucy gripped the worry stone in her fist and gave herself a minute to return to the present. To consider what her friend—or former friend, as the case might be—had said and whether it rang true even apart from Lucy’s own insecurities and doubts.
Deep breaths. In through the nostrils, out through the mouth.
After a few seconds, her pulse no longer thrummed in her ears. Her head cleared. She knew what to say.
“Allie.” She spoke quietly. “You’re a very good real estate agent, and I’m sorry I didn’t consider your position in all this.”
Allie dropped her arms to her sides. “Good. So can we just?—”
This argument, her old friend’s anger, would have gutted Lucy a week ago. But something about the filming process, about these past three days, had allowed her to remember her own needs, to regain confidence in her own judgment.
She couldn’t let this conversation derail her now.
“I’m not done.” Lucy took another slow, deep breath. “Again, I should have understood your circumstances better, and I apologize. That said, you owe me an apology too.”
“What?” Allie’s brows drew together. “I?—”
“The accusations you just made may or may not be true. Either way, they weren’t a kind thing to say to a client and a longtime friend. Also, my supposed naïveté doesn’t change any of the crucial facts. I’m not buying this house. I’m not buyinganyof the houses. And I don’t plan to lie or mislead property owners on cable television. If that’s what you wanted me to do, you should have told me so from the beginning—in clear language—and I’d have refused to apply for the show.”
Allie shook her head, arms akimbo. “I thought you understood the situation, Lucy. Any normal person would have.”
Lucy wasn’t letting herself be sidetracked. Not this time. “You should have let me know you hadn’t found workable tiny houses before filming began, but you didn’t. Probably because you wanted to prevent me from backing out. And you should have listened instead of ignoring me when I tried to talk to you two days ago. We could have stopped filming then, before we were both put in this position.”
Sebastián was standing near the door of the wagon, watching them both. Making sure she was okay. But she was. For the first time since she’d met Jarrod, she really was.
“I don’t think I’ve been unkind about the options you showed me.” She refused to break eye contact with Allie, despite the other woman’s obvious anger. “I’ve merely been honest. If you expected anything from me but honesty, you haven’t been paying much attention over the past thirty years of our friendship.”
After she’d said her piece, she felt lightheaded and unsteady. But Sebastián was suddenly beside her, his hand on her elbow keeping her upright. And she didn’t regret anything she’d told Allie. She wouldn’t beg for forgiveness or flagellate herself for being who and what she was. Not anymore.
