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“Hey!” said Gavin, grinning like a chocoholic kid onEaster.
“Hey…” Lilac cocked her head. “What’s gotten you in such a goodmood?”
“I went on adate.”
Lilac almost dropped the phone as she resettled it on its stand on her desk. “What?? Withwho?”
“Hmm… Maybe I should wait until I don’t have to repeat myself.” Gavin looked at the “dialing” screen calling Brielle and Pembroke. Pembroke didn’t connect or she rejected the call or something. Brielle’s keptdialing.
“Fine.Be coy,” said Lilac. “I can fill the silence just fine. I was saved by a flat tiretoday.”
“You were… huh?” Gavin leaned back against the couch in his roommates’ apartment. “Did some handsome grease monkey save you and sweep you off yourfeet?”
“Very funny,” said Lilac. “It wasn’tmyflat tire. Earl had to go home early to deal with his wife’s flat and I had almost the entire afternoon blissfully Earl-free.”
“Wow, a whole few hours without that creep breathing down yourneck.”
“He doesn’tbreathe down my neck,” said Lilac, frowning. But dour thoughts weren’t going to ruin the day’s good mood. “But I mean… Okay, heisa massivepain.”
Brielle joined the video call and Lilac decided to dump her right into the midst of it. “Bri! Help me!” She smooched the air as if ingreeting.
“Miss Big Bazongas is being harassed by Earl,” said Gavin. “Like that’s such a bigsurprise.”
Brielle looked to be sitting on a park bench on a sunny day—though it was early evening, Lilac supposed. Brielle squinted as she stared at the phone. “Earl?”
“The guy I work for at the resort. He’sthisclose”—she pinched her fingers together in front of the camera for emphasis—“to like dropping a pencil in front of me and touching my butt when I’m bent over to pick it up, I’m telling you.” She wouldn’t tell them that she’d been halfway there—picking up markers she’d dropped herself and feeling him leering at her exposed tramp stamparea.
“Gross,” said both Gavin and Brielle atonce.
“But he’s like… He’s walking that line perfectly. Making me feel uncomfortable without ever giving me anything I can actually complain to anyone about.” She sighed. “And actually, I don’t even knowwhoto complain to since he’s my boss and I don’t know whohisbossis.”
“Tildy Tapir,” said Gavin. He was such asmartass.
“I’ll be sure to file my complaint to Ms. Tapir, right before I hop over to Disney World like a traitor and tell Gaston how my best friend back home first thought he might be gay when he fell madly in love with his two-dimensional six-pack.”
Lilac reached behind her for her metal tumbler she’d filled with raspberry-infused water and took a drink as Gavin and Brielle debated the merits of his unabashedly romantic love for a sexycartoon.
“Gav always has the worst taste in men,” said Lilac, raising an eyebrow athim.
“Says Earl’s new girlfriend.” Gavin gestured toward the screen with both hands as if to prove hispoint.
“Don’t even.” Lilac felt bold then, even cheeky. “Besides, if I’m going to be anyone’s new girlfriend, it’s going to be the guy in the Silly Sandgrousesuit.”
Okay, so she hardly knew him. And she’d kind of been a bitch to him the one time they’d talked—but that had been all her. He’d caught her at a bad time. But in any case, he wasn’t her type. Then again, he was clearly fatherly with his siblings, which kind of made her heart melt. And she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about how he’d stood up for her to Earl, even if she knew she’d failed to show him her gratitude. He was so baby-faced and hehadto be younger than her if he was still in school (barring it being graduate school), but he wascute.
And Lilac was in a silly mood, so she thought of her Silly Sandgrouse in shiningarmor.
“You’re joking, right?” Brielle asked. Leave it to Brielle to let out all the air in Lilac’s funballoon.
She laughed anyway. “Only half-joking. He’s pretty hot once you get that doofus headoff.”
“There are actual live Gastons walking around the much better park next door,” said Gavin, holding a finger up to stop Lilac’s automatic defense of Tildy World as the superior park before she could start, “and you’re telling me Silly Sandgrouse is hot. Reality check,Li.”
“So how’s your love life, Gavin?” asked Brielle, shifting gears. Lilac drank from her tumbler again. That was fine with her. Lilac wasn’t in the mood to get all defensive about Tildy Worldagain.
“Don’t ask,” she said, snorting. Gavin never had any luck with guys, so she was quite sure even this “date” he’d hinted at having wouldn’t lead tomuch.
“That bad?” askedBrielle.
