“My God”—Stumpy pipes up, and I glance over to find her capturing the incident on her phone—“you are a monster, Ms. Range Rover, Louis Vuitton, pug feet with the bright red door!”
“Ah-ha!” I swing a finger in her direction, and Strudel burrows his face into my bosom. “I knew you were judging me.” I take a step into the prying eye of her camera. “Well, Ms. Judgey McJudgernuts, I hate you and your little dog, too!” The tiny whippet barks and nips as if returning the sentiment.
“All right, ladies,” a deep, warm voice rumbles from behind, and I turn slowly, eviscerating him with all of the hate-filled beams I can afford. Axel’s eyes round out as he blinks a nervous smile. “I think I see the problem here.”
My mouth falls open wide at the audacity of this nitwit, albeit drop-dead gorgeous nitwit—suddenly, my ovaries feel rather unsafe at this close proximity—the nerve he has to inject himself into my day, into my life without so much as an invite.
“Don’t worry! I have all the footage I need.” Stumpy snaps up her yippee little rat and scampers back to her hidey-hole.
But Axel doesn’t release me from his hypnotic gaze. I hike up on my tiptoes, bringing me dangerously close to those full lips I might have regretfully fantasized about a time or twelve.
“I don’t think you see the problem here. The problem here is that this waste of human skin”—I turn my attention back to Hairy Granny and a tiny part of me bubbles with regret at my word choice—“sees fit to make a craptastic deposit on my front lawn each and every day as a means to absolve herself of doggy doody for the rest of her numbered days.” I lean in hard toward the beady-eyed woman and note the start of a cactus-like beard already prickling through her skin. “I don’t care if you’re a hundred years old. I wouldn’t care if you were one hundred weeks old! You and your furry little flea bag had better find another lawn to decorate with ding dongs!”
The woman looks to Axel with her unmoved expression and makes a few hand gestures, inspiring him to make a few hand gestures back.
“What’s going on?” I pull Strudel in close and cover his ears in the event a nuclear-sized verbal detonation is readying to lob my way.
“Lexy—she’s deaf.” Axel offers a lopsided smile that quickly glides off his face.
I suck in a breath and cover my mouth in horror. I’m a horrible person by design, of course—but I would never do something like this, and then it hits me. Dear God, I’ve done it.
“That’s right!” Stumpy howls from across the street. “You’re a terrible human being! A witch! A holy terror!”
“Oh, shut up, you!” I bark before looking back at the mustache lady and mouthing I’m sorry while making the sign of the cross—the only sign language I’m even vaguely familiar with.
It takes six seconds for me to scuff my little pugs back to my walkway and trot up the porch. In a moment, Axel is beside me, his fingers on mine as I reach for the door.
I suck in a sharp breath. “Oh my God, you will lose your hand and that plaything you beat with it if you don’t take a full step away from my body this instant.”
Ax hops back as if escaping a fire, and I hop into the house with the exact same sentiment. I bolt the door shut, leaning against it while my chest heaves uncontrollably, but it has nothing to do with that unfortunate run-in with the poor deaf mustache lady, or Stumpy, whom I might inevitably kill in the night. Instead, it has everything to do with the fact I can’t control my breathing, my hormones, or my nonexistent heart whenever that rat is within throat punching range of my being.
I can’t stand that he still has the power to evict this reaction from me. And even more than that, I can’t stand myself for having it.
I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror, my seaweed mask melting from my face, my hair spraying out of the rollers, my eyes bloodshot with rage. Yes, it’s safe to say life has spiraled wildly out of control. There’s only one way out of this mess. Tomorrow night at Low and Levi’s engagement party, I will grind my heel into this budding friendship that’s taken my life down like a wildfire. But not before I grind my heel into Axel Collins’ heart one last time for having the audacity to show up at my front door, nearly killing my dog—calling me Lexy no less. Yes, I may be having a run of bad luck, but sooner than later I’ll get back into the driver’s seat of my life and run over that witch, karma, myself.
It’s the least I can do with that darn Range Rover.
Hallowed Grounds is brimming with people this Saturday afternoon. The heavenly scent of percolating java has my lips begging to turn upward, but I deny them the effort. It’s not that I’m an unhappy person—I’m more of a practical person who happens to be acutely aware of the fact happiness is just an illusion prepackaged by modern media to make you believe you’re missing out on something big. The only thing you’re missing out on is what’s in front of you. Once people stop chasing some imaginary carrot and realize they have everything they need to survive, they can finally get on with it and stop harassing others to fill some imaginary void. That’s precisely why I don’t need a man in my life. Axel was my first and final foray into what Hallmark has boxed and prepackaged as the L word, and I’m thrilled to report that failed experiment has solidified the fact I can be more than content without a plus one. As much as I don’t need Axel in my life, I do miss his sister, Emilia. She was as close to having a true friend in my life as I’ve ever had. That is, up until I met Low. On occasion, I had even let myself believe that Emilia would have made the best sister-in-law. God, I miss her.
Hallowed Grounds smells like java heaven, and I scan the place for signs of Serena and Sunday. Serena sent a group text and asked me to meet the two of them here for a quick cup of joe. Of course, I would never say no to that request. Serena and Sunday are two people I would gladly rearrange my schedule for. Although seeing that I’m jobless, soon-to-be homeless, and without a single yoga mat to occupy, Serena and Sunday are the only show in town.
I order a cup of coffee, black, no frap, no frills, just as the two of them walk in like a ball of sunshine, laughing and strapping me with arms as we exchange a quick embrace. The girls pick up their drinks and follow me to the back where we take a seat among the throngs glued to their laptops. Hallowed Grounds is one of Hollow Brook’s premiere coffeehouses. It holds a soft spot in the hearts of most people who live here because all of the local universities happened to have one planted on campus.
“What’s up?” I ask, landing Poppy on her very own seat. Poppy is the moniker I gifted my Louis Vuitton Neverfull after I purchased it. The name comes from its bright red lining I selected. I’ve worked hard for everything I have and I aptly take care of and personify all my prized possessions, such as Frank, my Range Rover, who kindly transported me to this sunny little meet and greet this morning. Who I’m only slightly ticked off at for eviscerating my bank account. It’s not his fault I upgraded to the butter leather alpaca-colored seats and twin sunroofs.
They whisper amongst themselves before breaking out into cheery cackles. Sunday is blonder than her brothers, Rush or Nolan, and gorgeous as any supermodel. Serena is my doppelganger with the same crimson hair and deep green eyes. She’s a knock-out, which is why I’m beyond relieved that she’s currently enrolled in her first year at Barnes University, an all-girls’ school right here in Hollow Brook just down the road from the far more hormonally infused Whitney Briggs where poor Sunday has opted to spend the next four years of her life fighting the frat boys off with a stick. Which reminds me, I need to arm her with a can of Mace and a set of nunchakus, too.
“I got a job at the Black Bear!” Serena bounces in her seat with enthusiasm.
“What?” I squawk so loud half the establishment turns my way. “You’re kidding, right?” I clutch at my chest with relief before she lets me off the hook. There’s no way in H-E-double hockey sticks my baby sis would ever entertain getting a paycheck from that romp and stomp university bar. The Black Bear Saloon is nothing but a notorious hookup spot that acts as a sex ring for
the surrounding universities. It’s clear Serena is just trying to soften the blow for something far less offensive in her life that she’s afraid to unload on me. It’s a game we’ve played since our mother ran off to the other side of the country to shack up with some loser ex she claimed still held her black frozen heart. I took on the mama bear role in Serena’s life ever since, and, if you ask me, we’re both better for it. My mother, Wendy, always said she would take off for Neverland one day, and sure enough, she made good on that morbid promise. She lacked the maternal instinct from the get-go.
“I’m not kidding.” She smacks Sunday on the arm for laughing as if this were the funniest thing in the world. “The gig at the bookstore didn’t work out.” She shoots Sunday another side-glance, and she quickly clams up as if the two of them were hiding far more than some summer job gone awry. “In fact”—Serena bites down hard on her lower lip, a maneuver she’s invoked a thousand times while holding back either laughter or tears, and right now I’m hoping for the latter—“the university didn’t quite work out like I planned.”
“What?” My voice cuts through the air like a machete, and the two of them straighten.
“Kidding!” Serena throws her arms up and breaks out into a wailing laugh.
“Oh, thank God.” My phone buzzes, and it’s a text from Low.
See you in two hours and don’t be late! I’ve got news that will knock your designer socks off!
I glare at the screen as if it were Low herself. I’d like to knock her socks off. And I will tonight when I bring this ridiculous friendship to a grinding halt.
Sunday proceeds to tell the two of us all about her adventures at Whitney Briggs, and I can’t help but note the sullen, I’m missing out look on my sister’s face.
“My new roommate, Trixie, is certifiable in a good way.” Sunday salutes me with her drink as if subtly commenting on my own mental health. I’ve been known to have the reputation of an ice queen, but at the end of the day the ice queen is who I chose to be in order to survive the arctic waters my mother tossed me in all those years ago upon her departure. “She’s a total blast because she’s basically fearless. Her brother, Knox, and Rush are best friends, too, so that’s kind of cool.”
Serena scoffs at the thought. “I’d poke my eyes out with a fork if Marlin were running around on campus.” She plucks her straw from her drink and proceeds to mimic the action. “Especially if he were befriending my roommate’s cute brother.”
“He is cute.” Sunday butts her shoulder to Serena’s, and they share another earth-shattering laugh.
“So what’s the big news?” I lean back, studying my sister with renewed interest. “Surely you didn’t haul yourselves out here to tell me about your nonexistent position at the Black Bear?” The two of them exchange a nervous glance. I don’t know what’s going on, but I don’t like it. “Come on, spill. Nothing can be as bad as working at the Black Bear. What’s really going on? Let me guess.” I pull my sister’s hand toward mine in an effort to comfort her. “You’re too afraid to tell me that you’re not taking a full course load?”
No sooner does Serena open her mouth than a tall, dark, pain in the behind walks in strutting his stuff in a suit on a Saturday of all days.
“Mother F,” I bleat under my breath, and both Serena and Sunday turn to look at what’s hijacked my attention.
“Hello, handsome,” Sunday whispers.
“Come to Mama,” Serena hums before straightening in her seat. “Hey, isn’t that—”
My heart starts to palpitate, my blood pressure spikes to unsafe levels. Axel gives a quick look around before locking eyes with mine and I’m paralyzed, unable to breathe or think or feel. He breaks out into his signature killer grin and heads in this direction as if he has the right.
“Look, why don’t you girls finish up your drinks. I gotta run.” I fling Poppy over my shoulder and snap my coffee off the table. “We’ll catch up soon. Serena, don’t mess with my head like that anymore. I’m in a fragile state as of late and I really can’t take it.” I blink a brief smile at Sunday. “Watch over this one, would you? And stay away from your roommate’s cute brother.” I try to zip past Axel and he steps in my path.
“Lexy.” He leans in with those pleading eyes, that sad, tired smile expanding my way, and my entire body flares with heat. It feels as if all of gravity is buried in his chest, and my body can’t help but demand to yield in his direction. Then I remember who he is and who he’ll never be to me again, and I make a run for the door.
WHERE ARE YOU? I NEED TO SEE YOUR MEAN FACE RIGHT NOW!
I scoff at the text Low just sent. I’d text her back if I wasn’t already standing in the entry of The Sloppy Pelican, a bar-slash-eatery that Axel and two of his cohorts thought it a good idea to plant in the middle of Hollow Brook. If anyone had asked me, I could have told them that this side of town is a graveyard for businesses and restaurants alike. The fact that old mining restaurant they bought out had quickly turned into the ghost town it was destined to be should have given them a clue. But then, Axel was never good with those, was he?
I glare at the elbow-to-elbow crowd as the sound of the house band sends pulsating thumps through me with every beat of the drum. The customer base is primarily made up of sorority girls of years gone by. If the Black Bear is the official frat brat hangout, then The Sloppy Pelican is the rapidly aging alumni section. Let’s just say copious amounts of alcohol and carbohydrates do not a pretty complexion make. The place is teeming with various versions of Barbiturate Barbie. Not that the male offerings are any better—men with beer paunches so pronounced you could play a board game with all that shelf space. And what’s with the Neanderthal-inspired follicles? Please tell me this trend is region specific to the west end of Hollow Brook and that the rest of male civilization still worships regularly at the altar of a razor wielding barber. A brief visual of me wielding a razor to Axel’s neck comes to mind, and before I can properly decapitate him I’m jumped by an over enthusiastic jumble of dirty blonde hair.
“I knew you’d show!” Low squeals in my ear so loud I can now hear orcas all across the planet howling out their long distance conversations.
“Geez.” I unleash myself from my one and only soon-to-be ex-friend. “Ease up on the caffeine, would you? One day someone’s going to sue you for assault.”
A dark-haired girl frowns at me from over Low’s shoulder. It’s her “bestie,” Raven, the one that technically started the entire fiasco the night I kissed Levi, Low’s boyfriend—it’s a long story, and I’m not dragging my short-term memory into this. I guess you could say Raven is equally responsible for the fact I got canned, so technically, I’ll be disenfranchising two people from my life tonight. Fine by me. Let the friendless good times roll.
“I’m so glad you’re here.” Low shakes me by the shoulders as if we were long- lost sorority sisters. I happen to know that Low and Raven actually are sorority sisters, or were. They attended Whitney Briggs University together once upon a sexed-up time and blah, blah, blah. The whole how-I-met-my-bestie story bores me to tears.
Low sticks a diamond-clad finger in my face, and her entire face lights up like a firefly. Low sort of has a pixie appeal to her with her delicate features and slightly turned up nose. She’s undeniably pretty. They both are obviously beautiful, but I don’t hold their well-polished genes against them. Just simply everything else.
“Does this ring make me look engaged?”
I scowl at the sparkling treasure as if it personally offended me. It’s big—too big if you ask me. “It makes you look like you stuck a quarter in a gumball machine at the grocery store.” I twist my lips at Low, and something about the vulnerable way her eyes get squirrely right after I gift her the zinger endears me to her as if she were Serena. “And it’s nice. Yes, you look engaged. Did you dump Levi and meet a Rockefeller?” The truth is, as soon as Levi gifted that boulder to her, she texted me and I sent her a very cordial congratulations. That was exactly T minus five seconds from
the moment I was evicted from gainful employment. It seems the better things go for Low, the worse they get for me. Either the universe has a twisted sense of humor or it’s experiencing a bout of temporary cosmic insanity. Judging by the state of the world, I’d bet the latter.
She wrinkles her nose at me. “Very funny. I’m thrilled you’re here, and I want you to know that”—her eyes moisten with tears, and her lips quiver the way Serena’s do when we’re having a heart-to-heart and the urge to coo at her as if she just morphed into a kitten overwhelms me—“I’d be honored to have you as one of my bridesmaids.”
“A what?” both Raven and I cry out at once.
Raven steps between us with her signature long raven-colored hair, dimples that look as if someone chiseled them out with an ice pick, and that same perplexed look on her face that I’m currently wearing. “You can’t—there’s no way I’ll let you—what in the hell, girl?”
I grunt at the expletive. Sure, I’ve been known to let an off-colored word fly now and again, but that’s only on occasion—say after a truck tire ran over my left foot, or the time I walked through a glass door and ended up with one hundred twenty stitches because the thing looked so damn clean. See? There it goes again. I know when and where to let them rip, and I refuse to be populating the world with them right along with the masses. They’re cheap, offensive, and make the user look aggressively stupid. And perhaps the fact my mother cursed like a sailor has a tiny bit to do with it. Wendy, in search of her Neverland, loved to lace even the most mundane thoughts with a curse word or twelve.
“I’m dead serious. I am formally asking Lex to be a bridesmaid.” Low bites the air between her and Raven before reverting to me. “I want to. I want you. Both my sister Lisa and Raven are my maids of honor, but I’d be so happy if you’d stand up for me right along with my other two sisters. I realize we’ve only known one another for a few months, but you were there for me during one of the toughest times in my life, and we were sort of ride or die the night we took off out of this place after that whole making out with Levi debacle.” She takes a moment to glower at me. “Which I’ve totally forgiven you for. So what do you say? You, me, the entire wedding party, right here in a few short weeks?”
Summer Breeze Kisses Page 81
