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“Please say you were lying when you said you were going to test his fucking abilities,” Maddie pleaded after she was done giggling.
“My Gawd, Maddie, how can you and Zoe be sisters, and you not know that she wouldn’t have said that? Of course she said that.”
“But I was subtle. At least give me points for that.” I smirked.
“Yeah, real smooth, Avery.”
I wasn’t about to tell them about the soft kiss hegave me in the Jeep, one I wished had led to more, but instead, he’d stopped and walked me inside instead.
“Did I hear knocking?” Maddie asked.
“It’s okay, they’ll let themselves in eventually.”
“It better not have been Drake. The last time he found out one of our doors was unlocked there was holy hell to pay.”
“That is just plain stupid to leave your doors unlocked!” Angelica sounded pissed, but I ignored her.
“Hello! Tommy dropped me off on the way to taking the kids to the drive-in. I brought more wine!”
“Carrie, dump it into the second pitcher of sangria we have going in the fridge,” Maddie called out. “Then come out to the deck. We have all the food groups covered out here on the deck. Salt and sugar.”
“Do we get to talk about Adam, Beau, Tommy, or Rick?” Carrie asked as she plopped herself down in one of the three remaining deck chairs.
“Oh, for God’s sake, Rick is not a real guy in my life,” Angelica protested. “He’s tabloid fodder my agent has made up.”
“He’s damn good-looking tabloid fodder.”
“He was wearing a speedo! That is not good-looking, I don’t care if it looked like he stuffed it with a sock. No guy looks good in a speedo,” I said. “Your agent is an idiot, fire him.”
“I can’t. He gets me the best deals.”
“Rick wore a speedo. Not in Europe. He wore the speedo on a beach in California. You need to publicly dump him,” Carrie said as she placed two chocolate chip cookies and a handful of potato chips on a plate.
“I think it’s my turn to be dumped. I have to look at the spreadsheet. It’s February, right?”
“It’s March.”
“Oh good. I get to dump him. I’ll do that next week when I go back to LA for my audition.”
Maddie bit down on her cookie and thoughtfully chewed. “Are you serious about the spreadsheet?”
“It’s not quite that bad, but kind of. There’s a group of us who just got sick of all the people digging into our personal lives and making our lives a living hell. We couldn’t go to the bathroom without paparazzi trying to get our picture. After Kit won the Oscar and Code saw just how bad it was for me and some of the others, he got an idea.”
“What was the idea?” Carrie asked.
“We would pretend to date, do, hook-up with, anything that would keep the paparazzi intrigued so that we could go and have our real lives.”
“So, this month is Rick?”
“Yep. Meanwhile, Rick is dating a really great barista down in San Diego named Tabitha. She’s the one who dared him to wear the speedo. I don’t know what he won when he did it, but it must have been major, because he’s been one happy musician ever since that day on the beach.”
“He must have screwed up big, if she forced him to wear a banana hammock,” Carrie said as she went back for some bean dip and tortillas and another couple of chocolate chip cookies.
“Uhm, Carrie?”
“Yeah?”
“Should you be drinking?” I asked.
