My face heats. “You saw that?”
She laughs softly. “Before my triumphant fall, yes, I saw something that looked like a puff of make-believe cherry smoke floating all around you.”
I roll my eyes and jam a hand through my short, black hair. “It’s a thing I started doing when I quit smoking three months ago.”
“Does it help?”
I shrug. “Doesn’t hurt.”
“Maybe hurts the ego.” A dimple flashes in her right cheek as she fails to conceal a smirk. “How macho is it to fake smoke candy?”
Is she flirting with me? Or teasing me? I can’t tell, but I can definitely retaliate, and I must admit that her dimple is adorable. I lift my hand to grab the licorice behind my ear and flex and relax so my bicep tightens impressively. “My ego is never in danger, babe.” I pull down the candy and bite a piece off while shooting her a wink.
This makes her genuinely laugh. It’s a rich, full-bodied sound that projects all the way from her toes. “With book boyfriend arms like that, it’s no wonder.”
“Book boyfriend?” I ask curiously.
“Book boyfriend,” she repeats. “The leading male in a romance novel that readers claim ownership of because he doesn’t likely exist in the real world. Basically, the ideal man.”
“I’ve never heard this term before,” I admit, leaning back against the wall and eyeing her curiously. “I take it you’re into books or something?”
“Or something.” She smiles and runs her hand through her wild red waves. They have to be natural because no girl would touch hair that beautiful if it had been styled. “And it doesn’t surprise me you’ve never heard of it.” She leans in and whispers loudly, “You’re not my demo.”
I frown curiously, and with a parting wiggle of her eyebrows, she turns and resumes her walk down the alley toward wherever she was going. After staring at the globes of her ass for far longer than is appropriate, it dawns on me that I didn’t even get her name.
Cupping my hand to my mouth, I yell after her, “What if you’re my demo?”
She twirls on her heel to gaze at me, looking a hell of a lot more graceful than she did earlier. “We won’t know that until The End!”
“Fess up. Where have you been?” My neighbor and best friend since college, Lynsey’s voice snaps, nearly making me fall into my front door and drop my keys in surprise.
“Jesus!” I exclaim, turning toward my tiny brunette compadre who’s the scariest short person I know. “You’re like one of those annoying bouncing min pins that leap up into the air just to be eye level with humans.”
“Ha-ha, short joke, what a shocker coming from you. I’m serious, tell me where you’ve been.”
“The library! I told you in my text,” I reply, turning my back on her to resume my goal. Pushing the door of my townhouse open, I drop my mail, laptop bag, and keys on the entry table by the stairs right inside the door.
“Bullshit,” Lynsey barks, following me in like a little puppy. She reaches out to fist the hem of my shirt. She pulls it to her face and inhales deeply. “You smell like coffee and rubber.”
“Also known as freedom.” I sigh wistfully and yearn to be back there. I would have stayed longer if I could survive on coffee and cookies all day. But curses, I need some protein or I might die.
“You actually went back to Tire Depot?” Lynsey seethes. “Kate! They are going to call the cops on you.”
“For what?” I protest over my shoulder as I make my way through my living room and into the kitchen to grab a water bottle out of the fridge. “Stealing complimentary coffee and cookies? Come on. That’s not a thing.”
“But loitering is.”
My face freezes around the mouth of my water bottle. “You think they’d really do that?”
Lynsey looks slightly unsure. “I don’t know, but do you want the awkwardness of finding out?”
“I don’t care, Lynsey!” I exclaim with a huff. “I’ve found my words at the TD, and I’m not letting go until I’m done.”
“TD?” she repeats dubiously.
“Tire Depot is such a mouthful.”
“You know what’s a mouthful? Prison.” I roll my eyes, but she continues with her lecture. “This is a crutch, Kate. You have to see that.”
“It’s not a crutch.”
“You think you need it, but you don’t.”
“I do need it!” I snap, making my way back to the entry table and grabbing my mail. “I couldn’t write a thing before I went there. And writing is what keeps me in this posh townhouse on the outskirts of beautiful Boulder. If I want to continue being this stunning creature, living the high life in the foothills, I have to follow the vibe. And the vibe is strong at Tire Depot.”
I move into my sitting area and drop into an overstuffed leather armchair to begin sifting through the envelopes in my hand.
Lynsey perches on the edge of my coffee table in front of me. “Can we stop dancing around what’s really going on here?”
“Watch your hiney, Lyns, that’s luxury reclaimed barnwood that Mercedes Lee Loveletter afforded me.”
“Stop changing the subject. This is about your ex who happens to still live with you.” She points up the stairs to the master suite I shared with Dryston Roberts for the better part of the past two years before everything went to shit.
I scoff at that notion. “We’re playing a game of chicken right now, and there’s no way I’m letting that small-minded fucker take this house.”
“Even though you can’t even write in it? You want to fight for the house with no ‘vibe’?” she quips.
“That’s irrelevant,” I exclaim and ball my hands up into tight fists. Every time I talk about Dryston, my hands end up like this.
We met two years ago at a pool party, and I fell for his suave moves. It took me way too long to see that he had Peter Pan Syndrome written all over him.
Unfortunately, leasing this townhouse for three years was the one grown-up thing we did together, and now, it’s a disaster. Living for three months in the same house as your ex-boyfriend, a perpetual frat boy who will never mature, is about as bad as you can imagine.
The only silver lining in this situation is that he’s away for the summer. Thank God.
“There’s no way in hell I’m moving out,” I grind through clenched teeth and swing my eyes to Lynsey in accusation. “I live next door to my best friend! You don’t want me to move, do you?”
She rolls her eyes. “No.”
“Exactly. So that’s that. He’s a spoiled brat who has always gotten what he wants but not this time. He’s summering in the Hamptons, for God’s sake, so he can afford his own place. I’m staying put.”
“It’s like a Mexican standoff with you two…I can’t even!” Lynsey growls and runs her hands through her hair. “You enjoy living with your ex for the next year. See how that works out.”
“I’m perfectly happy living down here. This bedroom is actually bigger.” Never mind the fact that the upstairs room has the best views of the mountains. That room is tainted anyway. It reeks of preppy boy cologne and idiocy.
My thoughts are distracted when my eyes land on a familiar logo that I know better than my own for the Mercedes Lee Loveletter brand.
I look up at Lynsey with grave eyes. “It’s a letter from Tire Depot.”
“They’ve figured it out.” She gasps and covers her mouth like we just found out one of our friends is a murderer.
“Stop being so dramatic!” I screech defensively as my fingers squeeze tightly around the envelope. “You don’t know that they figured it out. This could just be like…junk mail or something. Maybe they’re offering a special on oil changes next week?”
“Have they ever mailed you anything like that before?”
“No!” I bellow as the realization sinks in and dread washes over me. I look at Lynsey with wide, fearful eyes. “What if this is it?”
“What do you mean?” she asks.