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“I don’t like waiting.” Kris was over this topic. “Are the movies still happening tonight?”
“Yes. Thanks for the reminder.” Susan checked her watch. “We should leave now if we want to make it in time. You know L.A. traffic.”
If there was one thing in life Kris hated more than designer knockoffs, it was Los Angeles traffic. She should’ve hired a private helicopter for the summer instead of taking the Mercedes. She would’ve gotten hours of her life back.
They made it to the movie theater ten minutes past the agreed-upon meeting time. Luckily, Melinda, MentHer’s program director, had been there to receive the girls and their mentors.
Her face broke out into a relieved smile when she saw Susan and Kris. It probably wasn’t easy, wrangling two dozen people on your own.
While Susan and Melinda conferred over business, Kris took in the mentor/mentee pairings with cool detachment. Most of the girls didn’t annoy her, which was saying a lot, but a few could use a makeover. Hadn’t these people ever heard of deep conditioner?
“Kris!” A bubbly blonde in jean shorts and a white T-shirt with a pastel rainbow splashed across the front bounded over. “I’m so happy you’re here!”
Kris’s face softened a smidge. “Wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”
Skylar, who’d joined MentHer around the same time Kris started volunteering, was the one mentee she’d taken a liking to. Kris’s predisposition toward the girl baffled her, considering her tolerance for perkiness hovered near “zero” on a one to ten scale. Until now, Courtney was the only person whose bubbliness didn’t make Kris want to gouge her eyes out.
“Your brother still doesn’t know you’re coming to these meetings?” Kris followed the rest of the group inside. Susan had bought their tickets online, so they bypassed the long lines and headed straight for the bored-looking attendants to the left.
“No. He thinks I’m here with a friend from soccer camp.” Pink bloomed across Skylar’s cheeks. “It’s stupid. He probably wouldn’t mind, but I don’t want to hurt him, you know? He’s done so much for me since our mom died, and I never want him to feel like he’s not good enough. But there are some things…”
“That you need to talk to a female about,” Kris finished.
Skylar flashed a grateful smile. “Yeah.”
For a seventeen-year-old who’d grown up in L.A., the land of backstabbing vipers and fake smiles, she was startlingly innocent and well-adjusted. Not naïve, per se, but she possessed a fresh, optimistic outlook on life that Kris couldn’t fathom. Maybe that was why she liked the girl so much. Skylar was an oddity, a rare gem amongst a sea of hard-hewn pebbles.
Plus, Kris sometimes glimpsed deep, abiding loneliness behind Skylar’s sunny smile. And that, she could relate to. The feeling of being all alone in the world, even when you were surrounded by people, could be a real bitch.
“I’d feel less bad if he had a girlfriend,” Skylar said as they settled into their seats. “Someone to take his mind off family and work. He’s wound so tight I’m afraid he’ll have a cardiac arrest before he hits thirty.” She cocked her head and narrowed her eyes at Kris. “You guys are around the same age…”
“Don’t even think about it.” Kris’s tone brooked no opposition. “I don’t do romance, and I’m only here for the summer.”
Skylar’s brother sounded like a stand-up guy. He also sounded boring as shit.
Family and work.
Kris was halfway to Snoozeville already.
“But summer romances are fun!” Skylar insisted.
Kris arched a perfectly shaped eyebrow. “Have you ever had one?”
“No. But—”
“Shh. The movie’s starting.”
Sure enough, the lights dimmed, and the rest of the theater settled into quiet anticipation.
Since some mentees were as young as eleven, Susan had chosen a sweet, PG-rated movie. By the time they reached the forty-five-minute mark, Kris wanted to shoot the screenwriter, the voice actors, the director, and whoever invented the concept of animation.
There were only so many rainbows and unicorns she could take.
It didn’t help that Skylar snuck glances at her throughout the entire thing with a mischievous gleam in her eyes that Kris didn’t like. At all.
After ninety minutes, the movie blessedly ended. Susan and Melinda stayed with the girls who were waiting for their family members to pick them up, but Kris had had enough group fun for the night. She said her goodbyes to the MentHer staff and Skylar—ignoring the girl’s last-ditch attempts to talk her brother up to Kris—and drove home.
She was halfway to Beverly Hills when her phone rang. It was connected to the car, so she could see the caller’s name flashing on the radio screen.
