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“Hear, hear!” Carrie seconded, clinking her glass to her friend’s.
At the end of her third glass, she looked at Juanita and said quietly: “I think I might have fallen just a tiny bit in love with him, though.”
Juanita shook her hand in the air. “Who wouldn’t have? He’s gorgeous. Total sex on a stick. But he’s still a bastard.”
“Right,” Carrie said with a nod. “A bastard.”
The only thing better than a boozy night in with one’s best friend was the addition of a movie; they loaded up the first Twilight and snuggled into the sofa for a session of vampire romance.
“See? Edward wants what’s best for Bella! He doesn’t care that she’s human and he’s an immortal. He loves her.” Carrie said unsteadily, not entirely sure she was making sense anymore.
“Yeah.” Juanita agreed anyway, her smile firm on her face. Until it slipped off, to be replaced by a thoughtful frown. “Is that your phone?”
Carrie shook her head. “I don’t know where it is.”
Juanita, at that point in time, thought that was about the funniest thing she’d ever heard. She stood up and looked around, following the sound of ringing like a cat might hunt its prey.
“Uh huh!” She slipped it out of Carrie’s handbag, and victoriously held it aloft.
Carrie froze when she saw Gael’s face staring back at her.
“Shit!” She lifted her hands over her eyes, as if that would erase the image of him staring at her.
“Oh. It’s him?” Juanita handed the phone over like a hot potato.
“I’m not going to answer that,” Carrie said angrily, passing the phone back.
“Good for you.”
One hour, another Moët, and seven attempted calls later, Juanita hiccoughed, “I’ll get it. I’ll give him a piece of my mind.”
And Carrie was too delightfully
tipsy to care. “Fine,” she said with a shrug, standing up and moving well away. Even the sound of his disembodied voice, carried from Juanita’s ear to hers, would be too much. So she disappeared upstairs, intent on doing anything but being in the same vicinity as Gael’s sinfully gorgeous words.
“Carrie’s phone,” Juanita said, her tone dripping with ice. At least, she imagined it to be. In truth, after half a dozen glasses of bubbles, she was slightly fuzzy around the edges.
“Is Carrie there?”
“No, Gay-yelllll, she is not. Not for you anyway.”
Gael gripped his phone tightly, the torrent of emotions he’d been navigating for a week making his patience thin like the top of an ice lake on the first day of Spring. “It’s important.”
“Yeah, well, do you know what else is important?” Juanita lifted her champagne and gestured with her hand. “Treating a woman with respect. Accepting her for who she is.”
Gael closed his eyes. “While this is a conversation I’m willing to have with you another time, I called to speak to Carrie on another matter. Would you be so good as to take the phone to her?”
“She doesn’t want to speak to you, okay?” Juanita’s lips curled in response to his silence. “And if you think she’s been here pining over you all week, you’ve got another thing coming. You’re nothing compared to the guy she replaced you with. Yum, yum, yummy.”
There was silence. Several moments of obviously angry silence, before Gael spoke again, “Tell her to pack an overnight bag. I’ll be there within an hour.”
“Oh, crap.” Juanita disconnected the call and stared at the phone, wondering if she could rewind time and take that particularly unwise conversation back.
“Carrie?” She called, walking a little unsteadily up the stairs of her friend’s townhouse. “We have a bit of a, um, problem.”
“No more champagne?” She giggled, pulling her new shoes out of their box and slipping her hands into them. “Look, shoe hands, shoe hands,” she joked, making imaginary footsteps with them through the air.
“No, I’m serious, babes. A real problem.”
