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“But you’re not, now are you?” April said smugly.
Three decades earlier, April had been a famous rock-and-roll groupie, but her notorious days were long behind her. She was now the wife of legendary rocker Jack Patriot as well as the mother of a famous NFL quarterback and a recent grandmother. She no longer worked as a stylist, except as a favor to Georgie.
Georgie tucked her hair behind her ears and slipped on a ball cap. She pulled a backpack heavy with water bottles from her car. She was the only one of them who didn’t mind wearing a pack, so she carried all the water, a calorie-burner they’d been trying to talk her out of since she’d gotten so thin, but she refused to cave.
Sometimes she wondered how women who didn’t have girlfriends coped with life. In her own life, these were the friends who never let her down, even though they were so frequently separated by geography, making these Saturday-morning hikes a rarity. Sasha lived in Chicago. April lived in L.A. but spent as much time as she could at the family farm in Tennessee. Meg Koranda, the baby of the group, was off on another of her journeys. None of them were exactly sure where.
Sasha led them toward the trailhead. She held back from her normal killer pace so Georgie, who used to be their leader, could keep up. “Tell us exactly what happened with Bram,” she said.
“Honestly, Georgie, what were you thinking?” April frowned.
“It was an accident.” Georgie yanked on her backpack. “On my part anyway. Totally premeditated on his.” She told them about her plan to start serial dating, then explained what had happened at The Ivy. She avoided mentioning her marriage proposal to Trevor, not because she didn’t trust them—unlike Lance, these women would never betray her—but because she didn’t want her closest friends to know she was even more pathetic than they realized. By the time they reached the open ridge above the canyon, she was gasping for breath.
The last of the morning chill had burned off, and they could see the coastline from Santa Monica Bay to Malibu. They stopped for a moment to take off their jackets and tie the sleeves around their waists. Sasha pulled out two candy bars and offered one to Georgie, trying to be casual about it, but Georgie declined. “I ate this morning. Honest.”
“A spoonful of yogurt,” April said.
“A whole carton. It’s getting better. Really.”
They didn’t believe her.
“Well, I’m starved,” Sasha said.
As she bit into her candy bar, neither Georgie nor April pointed out that Sasha Holiday, the founder of Holiday Healthy Eating, might want to munch on a piece of fruit or a Holiday Power Bar instead of a Milky Way. Sasha was a secret junk-food junkie, something only they knew. Not that it showed on her body.
Sasha tucked the wrapper into the bodice of her white top where it made a lump under the stretchy fabric. “Let’s think this through. Maybe seeing Bram isn’t such a bad idea. For sure it’ll distract everybody from talking about Lance and St. Jade.”
She took a bite. “Plus, Bram Shepard is still the hottest bad boy in town.”
Georgie hated hearing anything even remotely complimentary about Bram. “He’s not hot at the box office,” she said. “And I’m lucky his drug dealer didn’t show up while we were eating.”
Sasha stuck the candy bar between her teeth and slipped behind Georgie so she could unzip the backpack and pull out their water bottles. “Trev told me Bram hasn’t done drugs in years.”
“Trev’s gullible.” Georgie twisted off the top of her bottle. “No more talk about Bram, okay? I’m not letting him spoil my morning.” He’d spoiled enough, she thought.
They spent the next two miles hiking on a fire road that wound through the sycamore, live oak, and bay. Georgie relished the feeling of privacy. They reached a shallow creek bed. Sasha leaned over to stretch her legs. “I have the best idea. Let’s all go to Vegas next weekend.”
April knelt next to the water. “That town isn’t good for me. And Jack and I have plans.”
Sasha snorted. “Naked plans.”
April grinned, and Georgie smiled with her, but inside she felt the familiar pain of betrayal. Once, she’d been as certain of Lance’s love as April was of Jack Patriot’s. Then Lance had met Jade Gentry, and everything had changed.
Lance and Jade had been filming a movie together in Ecuador. Lance had played a dashing soldier of fortune and Jade was a nerdy archaeologist, definitely a stretch, considering her exotic beauty. During Lance’s early phone calls, he’d told Georgie how Jade was so absorbed in her work as a professional do-gooder that she seldom fraternized with the crew and that she spent so much time on the phone advocating for her pet causes, she didn’t always have her lines memorized.
But gradually the stories had stopped. And Georgie hadn’t noticed.
She turned to Sasha. “A trip to Vegas sounds just right. Count me in.” She imagined photos of Georgie York and her glamorous friend whooping it up in Sin City. If she followed the trip with a few months of serial dating as she’d originally planned, maybe the stories of “Georgie’s Unending Heartbreak” would finally give way to “Georgie’s Wild Nights.”
Sasha began to sing “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” Georgie made herself do a little dance. It was a good idea. A great idea. Exactly what she needed.
What do you mean you had to go back to Chicago?” Georgie hissed into her cell phone six days later. She was at a table in the Bellagio’s Le Cirque restaurant where Sasha was supposed to be meeting her to kick off their Vegas weekend.
Sasha sounded harried instead of her normal sarcastic self. “I left three messages. Why didn’t you call me back?”
Because Georgie had accidentally left her cell in her suitcase and only retrieved it on her way to the restaurant.
“We had a fire in the warehouse,” Sasha went on. “I had to get back right away.”
