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I crinkle my nose. “I can’t really—”
She cuts me off. “It’s on me, girlfriend. When you’re rich and famous, you can buy.”
I snort. “Like that’s ever going to happen.”
“Maybe sooner than you realize,” she mumbles.
I eye her. “Have you come off your meds?”
She laughs out loud, and I close my laptop and reach for my purse. “I could eat. I think. One condition. We don’t talk about him.”
At the mention of him, her eyes travel the length of me. “Have you been taking care of yourself?”
“Yes, Mom,” I lie.
“Okay, I’ll shut up, but you’re ordering one of everything.” I link my arm with hers, and we step out into the sunshine. People bustle by, one man with his face buried in his phone nearly mowing me down.
“I sure miss Saint Thomas.”
“I bet you do.” She steals a glance at me. “Do you think you’d ever go back?”
I give her a look that suggests she’s insane. “Not now. What reason would I have?”
“I don’t know. You said you loved working with the kids.” Her eyes light up. “Hey, maybe you could get a job here teaching.”
“Since it doesn’t look like I’ll ever write for the New Yorker, maybe I should,” I say, even though, strangely enough, the New Yorker isn’t where my heart is anymore.
“Why can’t you do both, part time?”
I stop walking and stare at Steph. “Who are you, and what have you done with my best friend?”
She laughs. “Come on, before lunch I have to make a quick stop.”
I glance at my watch. “I don’t have a long lunch hour.”
“Yeah, well. I think it might be longer than you realize.”
I grab her arm. “Oh my God, please don’t tell me I’m getting fired again.”
“Come with me,” she says, and I once again go over the few bills left in my wallet. I ate the Mentos in the bottom of my purse, so there goes my backup.
We step into a bookstore, and I furrow my brow. “What are we doing here?”
“Oh, you’ll see.” She takes my hand and leads me to the stack of newspapers. “I wanted to check out the papers.”
“Don’t you get like every newspaper known to mankind already?”
“I do, but you don’t.”
I grimace. How’s a girl supposed to write for the New Yorker when she had to cancel her subscription because she couldn’t afford it? Heck, I can’t even afford the cheaper digital versio
n. A saleslady walks by me, a grin on her face. Okay, why is she looking at me like that? I turn to see her switch the sign on the door from Open to Closed.
I nudge Steph. “We need to go. She must be closing up for lunch.”
“Hang on, I heard there was an article on Will Carson in today’s paper.”
Blood drains to my toes. “Oh, God, no. Who wrote it?” Did Avery find him after I called her? If so then I’m the one responsible for whatever is written about him. I swallow and lean against the stack of books as my legs weaken.
