Page 80 of The Lipstick Flip

“Uh, yeah, no, the metaphor probably doesn’t work for that.”

I grunted. I rubbed my eyes. I still had no fucking idea what to do except, apparently, start socking money away for more therapy.

“You know,” Auggie said, “I remember when you and Theo were together.”

“Really? That far back?”

“Okay.”

“When you were still in diapers.”

“What the hell, Cart? I’m trying to help you.” But he was grinning.

“Spit it out, Sparky.”

“I remember—” he said, and now he was drawing it out because Theo obviously didn’t spank him enough. “—you guys had some rough patches.”

“We fought like shithouse rats, I think you mean.”

“And you know what I remember?”

“Jesus Christ.”

“You were terrible at apologies.” His grin crooked across his mouth. “But that never stopped you from trying.”

And the idea hit me. “Fuck me.”

“What?”

“Text Theo and ask him if you can stay out past curfew. You’re going to help me.”

“Please,” Auggie prompted.

I clapped my hands. “Text your fucking daddy, nips. We’ve got work to do.”

25

Auggie—because he’s almost as bad as Noah—spent close to an hour making me try on different clothes and change and then calling Theo for what he called emergency backup. Which was how I ended up sitting in front of the Christmas tree in a chambray shirt that wasn’t mine, in chinos that weren’t mine, but at least looking semi-respectable. Auggie even made me cuff the sleeves, and he said the word wet over and over again until Theo sent him out of the room and did the sleeves for me.

So, I was sitting in front of the Christmas tree, and at least I was wearing my own underwear, and Theo had an expression on his face that wasn’t exactly a smile. Came closer to confused, as a matter of fact. And Auggie was grinning, and then he aimed his phone at me, and he gave me a thumbs up, and I started talking.

That’s the opening to the video: me, looking like a dumbass.

“Hi,” I said. “If you’ve been following me on @secondchancewamo, you probably know this already, but I’m Howie Cartwright. If you stumbled across this because of the algorithm, you can skip right the fuck on.”

Auggie wanted to edit out that part.

“There have been a lot of questions and comments about me in the last few days, ever since I was tagged in a post. And for the record, none of it is anybody’s fucking business.” I drew a deep breath. In the video, maybe my eyes looked a little wider than usual, but you couldn’t tell I was about to throw up. Auggie even edited out the part where I stopped and had to swallow a bunch of times. “But I do want to share something with you because it’s important to me.” And then I stopped again because all of a sudden I was about to cry, and you could definitely see it in the video because I was blinking like crazy. “He is important to me. He’s the most important person in my life, actually.” I took another of those don’t-hurl breaths. And then I said, “I want to introduce you to my husband, Noah Reynolds.”

And then the video jumped to a picture of Noah. A good one. One I knew he liked. We’d been out in California, and we’d gone to dinner with his family, a surf-and-turf place Jonathan loved that was right on the water. And Noah’s hair was a little longer. And he was wearing this fluffy white top that looked like something Stevie Nicks would wear. And the wind had caught the feather earring, and it had caught his hair, and it had caught the puffy sleeves, and he was smiling.

“Noah is the most amazing, most beautiful person I’ve ever met,” I said. And the video cut back to me again. “He’s smart. He’s talented. He’s funny. He’s brave. That’s something I wish I told him more often. That I see how brave he is. And that I love that about him. He’s so passionate about everything in life. He’s worked so hard to build himself the life he wants.”

The video jumped to a clip of Noah when he was six. He was trying to dance in his mom’s high heels, and when he spun and kicked his leg out, one of the shoes flew off. It was a perfect shot. It knocked a lamp off a side table, and the lamp shattered when it hit the floor.

“He’s also a terrible dancer.”

Auggie took out the part where he and Theo burst out laughing. And where I started to cry a little.