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CHAPTER
1
Gemma Peters didnot like parties.
Her idea of a good time consisted of a book and a blanket, perhaps a cup of tea. The loud, raucous bar where she stood was draining her battery faster than a Netflix binge would her phone. Nonetheless, she was dutifully wearing her party smile and positive attitude. She only had to last another hour until her alarm went off, set for a strict departure time of ten p.m. so that she could head home to give her dog his meds and be in bed by ten forty-five like a responsible adult. It was a weeknight, after all. No doubt the party would last until the small hours of the morning because her best friend Lila regarded mundane schedules with the same importance as spam calls.
If a fizzy glass of pink champagne—bubbly, beautiful—were a person, it would be Lila.
Speaking of champagne, the birthday girl suddenly materialized in front of Gemma, pushing the tiara that hadbegun to slip from her silky hair back into place and shoving a glass of bubbles into Gemma’s hands.
“You need another!” Lila screamed at her from inches away. Despite her skin being misted with remnants of the night’s festivities, her makeup remained impeccable. Gemma chalked it up to the stockpile of free, high-quality beauty products causing small avalanches on every available surface in Lila’s apartment. Companies sent them to her in exchange for a review on her YouTube channel or a post on her Instagram. @Lila_in_L.A. had over two hundred thousand followers.
Lila held a matching champagne glass in her own manicured hand, and Gemma knew by the gloss in her eyes that she had had plenty to drink.
I don’t think I need another, but thank you, Gemma thought about saying, but she knew that refusal would only result in playful pouting, a reminder that it was Lila’s birthday, and accusations of being a party pooper. So instead she would take the glass and discreetly leave it on the bar while Lila sauntered off into the clutches of her more spirited guests. The routine was as old as their friendship.
Except Lila went off script. She did not smear her painted lips against Gemma’s cheek in a parting kiss and gush an inebriated tribute to their bond. She expectantly watched Gemma floating, glass in hand, like an awkward iceberg in a sea full of mostly strangers.
“What?” Gemma asked.
“Drink it!” Lila commanded with an upward sweep of her hand. The bangles on her wrist tumbled midway to her elbow.
Gemma’s face filled with warmth as if they were back intheir dorm room years before and Lila was asking her to choke down a mouthful of pilfered peach schnapps.
“I will,” Gemma said with a shy shrug of her shoulders.
“No, you won’t. You’re going to wait until I turn around and then leave it on the bar and hope I don’t notice. I know you, Gemma Rose Peters.” Lila narrowed her eyes and pointed a finger. “Drink it.”
Gemma cast her a glare and took a tiny sip. She reasoned that her morning didn’t really start until nine a.m. the next day; a slight champagne headache was nothing she couldn’t remedy with a jog and a fresh cup of coffee beforehand. “I wasn’t aware your thirties was the decade of renewed peer pressure. Why are you being so insistent?”
Lila smugly smiled and cocked out a hip. She dug her thumbs into the bodice of her strapless dress and yanked it up, adjusting her sizable chest and doing a little dance. Her dark hair swept her shoulders in a fan made shiny by a host of products with exotic names that Gemma had never even heard of. “Because you’re gonna need it.” She pressed her fingers to the glass’s round base and tilted for another sip.
The sharp bubbles sloshed against Gemma’s lips as she sputtered. “Lila!”
Lila giggled and leaned into the bar to grab a napkin. The Westside lounge hit all the Los Angeles stereotypes: crowded, dim, peddling overpriced cocktails with pretentious ingredients like beets and house-made organic syrups, and full of attractive people slipping in and out of the shadows. Lila brushed against the man beside her. He turned and raked his eyes from her head to her toes, crushed as they were at a needlessly severe angle in shoes Gemma wouldn’t dream of wearing, and obviously liked what hesaw. He smiled and opened his mouth to say something right as Lila turned back around and blindly whipped him in the face with her hair.
Gemma stifled a laugh.
“You’re fine,” Lila said, and dabbed Gemma’s lips with a small black square of rough paper. Despite her similarities to a glittering disco ball, Lila had a surprisingly maternal side to her. “But you do need to finish your drink.”
A mother with an expansive booze collection.
Gemma took another tiny sip. “Again, I ask, why?”
“Because I know you, and I know you’ll need some liquid courage to go talk to that guy at the end of the bar who hasn’t stopped staring at you for an hour.”
Lila casually tilted her head, and Gemma’s eyes shot to the end of the room. At almost the same instant, her whole body flushed, and the alcohol went straight to her head.
“Oh no, I’m not—”
“Yes! Yes you are!” Lila cheered. “Listen, I’ve checked him out: he’s clean, no ring, looks our age, maybe a little tired around the eyes, but that probably just means he’s got a good job and works hard, and he’s got the best quality a girl could ask for...” She suggestively trailed off, beaming, and slowly swaying back and forth on the toes of her ridiculous shoes.
Gemma gulped at her drink simply for relief from the arid desert that had suddenly appeared inside her mouth. She swallowed too hard, and the bubbles burned her throat.
Talking to guys in bars was not her thing. It was Lila’s thing, hence the birthday party in a bar full of guys. Her best friend stood before her with a devilish glint in her eyes, and Gemma wanted to call it a night early and go home.
She risked another glance at the mysterious man in the corner, and he was in fact staring at her.
