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“I’ve missed you so much! I can’t believe you’re here!”
Ari stifled the sudden and nearly overwhelming urge to cry.
“Me too! I can’t believe you’d really think I’d bail on you at the last minute and still make you come to this,” she said with a laugh before finally breaking the embrace. “Come on.
Let’s get you a drink so we can gossip properly.”
Ari followed her inside the tent without complaint. Apart from being a refreshingly breezy evening, the tents were outfitted with some kind of outdoor air conditioners and
clear plastic walls to keep the space cool. They found a relatively quiet corner, which wasn’t easy given the number of guests and loud music streaming in through the speakers mounted to the metal beams holding up the tent.
“Cheers,” Jasmine said, clinking her martini glass against Ari’s matching red drink.
Ari took a sip of the pomegranate martini they were calling a red carpet after toasting to Jasmine’s welcomed sneakiness.
Jasmine rearranged the blue bow glued to the top of her short, black wig. “So, where’s Sloane?”
Ari took another sip. “I can’t believe you waited an entire three minutes to ask me that. Tell me about you first. How’s it going with your new beau?”
As they talked about the amazing date they’d gone on just before she flew to Miami, Ari kept her eye on the walkway. If Sloane arrived, she would have to come through there.
By the time they were joined by familiar faces, Ari started to relax and stopped looking for Sloane. She only regretted having waited too long to talk to Jasmine about what was going on between them. She hadn’t counted on so many of their former classmates showing up. As the most recent graduating class, they made up a rather large part of the attendants.
Ari was deep in conversation with one of the girls that had gone to the public defender’s o ce in Broward when curly blonde hair flashed in her periphery. No way.
The sight of Sloane was stunning. With her hair in curls and pinned back at the sides and sporting tight black leather pants and a bare shouldered black top and red heels, she
literally turned heads as she stalked toward Ari like a cat with a mouse in its sights.
“Holy shit. Is that Sloane?” someone asked from somewhere. For all Ari knew, the question could’ve escaped her own lips. The sight of her had caused a brief short circuit in her brain.
Thankfully, a group of Sloane’s friends stopped her advance. It gave Ari time to regain her senses while she greeted them. “I’ll be right back,” she said before bolting toward Jasmine and grabbing her by the wrist.
“Can I borrow you a minute?” Ari asked Jasmine, trying to sound calm. “Sloane’s here,” she whispered when Jasmine looked at her like she was possessed. “And she’s dressed like bad Sandy from Grease.”
Jasmine excused herself, and they bolted to where the bartender had stacked a bunch of cases of beer, o ering them a little cover in the otherwise open tent.
“I thought she wasn’t coming,” Jasmine said in the kind of pointed tone that sounded too much like an accusation.
“I didn’t think she was,” Ari replied, panic rising in her throat. “Listen, I have to tell you something. We kind of kissed. Like kissed a lot. And now things are weird, and I don’t know what to do.”
Jasmine’s eyes widened so far Ari was afraid they’d pop out of her skull. “Um . . . are you freaking kidding me right now?!! What else are you hiding from me? Do you secretly have a few kids somewhere? A tattoo of Elvis on your butt?”
“I know, I’m sorry, but I need you to focus here,” Ari begged. “I don’t know what to do. I actually have no idea what I’m doing.”
Jasmine locked into the mission. “I need more facts. Who kissed who? What happened after? How long has it been?”
“I kissed her, but she was like daring me to do it, so I don’t really know who’s ultimately responsible. After, we decided we shouldn’t complicate our working relationship since we were sharing an o ce and working on a trial together, and generally sharing like everything—”
Jasmine’s raised hand stopped her nervous chatter.
“When?”
“Three weeks ago. Give or take,” she replied.
“Three weeks!” Jasmine whisper screamed. “This happened three weeks ago, and you didn’t tell me!”
It was hard to take Jasmine seriously when she was dressed like a Flintstones cartoon, but Ari had no choice but to ignore the bobbing black wig. “I know, I know,” she whispered back with the same hushed intensity. “What the hell do I do now?”
