“Not every woman is nurturing, Harry.”
I glance at Blue, who’s watching me. “You said you’re not here to give me a beatdown,” I say, “so why are you here? Is this a warning to stay away from Cal?”
Saying his name gives me an unexpected thrill, and I find myself wanting to do it again.
“Maybe,” Nicole says, giving me a hard stare.
“And maybe not,” Blue continues.
Harry clears his throat. “We want to know what your intentions are.”
I laugh at this, because it’s so like what a father might ask his daughter’s suitor. If I was intrigued by Cal before, I’m more intrigued now. I want to know the man who inspired this loyalty—the kind some people don’t even show to their families. In the meantime, I can’t pretend I don’t know what Harry means. They want to make sure that I’m not in this to dig up dirt on Cal or make a spectacle of him.
Lucky for them, I have no intention of doing either of those things.
“Okay, Dad,” I say, and to my surprise, amusement sparkles in Harry’s eyes. “Fair play. I just want the truth. I feel like people deserve it, especially the readers of Augusta’s book. Suffice it to say, I’m becoming increasingly certain she didn’t have a single thing to do with forming the Bad Luck Club. All evidence points toward Cal.”
“And Bear,” Blue says before the others can respond. Harry gives her a little nudge as if to say this wasn’t what they’d rehearsed.
“They did it together?” I ask, leaning forward a little in spite of myself. He told me that he and his father were close, and here’s further proof. They live together, work together, and formed this club together. That lodges emotion in my throat because I used to think my father and I were close too. He was the one who’d encouraged my writing, who’d read my stories and told me I was going to write a book someday, or become a famous reporter.
“Case cracked,” Nicole said, arching her neck and gesturing toward a server. The man runs into the kitchen as if a fire were lit under him. Clearly they’ve had words before. Those margaritas are going to arrive sooner rather than later.
“Why haven’t any of you spoken up?” I ask. But I already know the answer. Cal didn’t want them to. They did it out of loyalty, although that same loyalty sent them here to test me. Because they want this story to break too.
It firms up my resolve to keep pushing. They wouldn’t be here if they didn’t think it was in Cal’s best interest to set the story straight, regardless of his thoughts on the matter.
“The rules mean something to us,” Blue says, her tone earnest. “The real rules.”
“They mean something to Cal,” Nicole corrects.
Harry nods. “Bear wants the truth to come out as much as we do. Augusta didn’t just twist the truth, she broke it. She got some of the rules right, but a few of them are total fabrications. Harmful ones. He’s worried about the other clubs that are abiding by them. He wants to set the record straight to help people.”
I wonder if Bear’s motives are truly so magnanimous. Surely at least one of them wants to get credit for their work. Not that I blame him. Plagiarism is the eighth deadly sin in my book. Either way, Bear has moved way up on my list of people to talk to.
The waiter from earlier hurries toward us with a pitcher and a basket of chips, the salsa perched precariously inside. “I’m so sorry for the delay,” he says, the words clearly directed at Nicole. “It won’t happen again.”
She just sniffs in an offended manner.
“Are you ready to order?”
“We’ll take two orders of shrimp tacos, and two orders of black bean tacos,” she says, speaking for all of us. “We’ll share.” No one objects, and I know better than to be the one who tries.
The waiter hurries off, and I can tell he’ll be biting his nails until the food comes off the line.
“She tips well,” Harry tells me in an undertone. “She’s a really good tipper.”
“You don’t need to make excuses for me, Harry,” she rebuts. “If a man is blunt and direct, no one thinks twice about it. If a woman tries it, she’s a rude bitch.”
She kind of has a point. I’m not sure I like Nicole, but there’s no doubt she’s interesting. They all are.
“What did she get wrong?” I ask. “Augusta, I mean.”
They all exchange looks, as if silently discussing just how far they’d like to take this.
Blue is the one who speaks up. “We’re not going to tell you,” she says. “You need to talk to Cal.”
I laugh at that, because haven’t I tried? We’ve spoken twice, and he’s given me nothing but a handful of stale breadcrumbs. “He’s not much on talking.”
Harry shakes his head. “No, he’s just the kind of person who only talks when he has something to say.”
“If only you were like that,” Nicole says. The words are sort of biting, but she says them with a certain fondness, and he smiles at her. These people bicker, but they care about each other.
“Maybe I should talk to Bear,” I suggest, to see how it goes over.
They all balk in tandem, almost making me laugh. “He wants to talk,” Blue explains, “but he won’t tell you anything unless Cal’s okay with it. He respects his position. But he’ll be your best source of information about the club if you get Cal to play along.”
Harry takes a long sip of his margarita. “We need your word that you’re not going to film or record him without his permission. Or any of us.”
His eyes widen, then search me for a camera hairpin or maybe a suspicious button.
“Like I said, surveillance equipment is a little out of my unemployment budget. And you should know that I’ve never filmed anyone without their permission. The people in my vlog posts for Beyond the Sheets wanted to be on camera. They signed waivers.” I give a little shrug. “Some people think negative attention is better than no attention. That’s why producers can get people to act like jackasses on reality TV shows.”
“Really?” he asks with obvious interest. “So the guy who got up on that table at the fancy restaurant and sang Miley Cyrus while people threw after-dinner mints at him knew he was being taped?”
I can’t help but grin. “Oh yeah. And he shared the clip two hundred times. To be fair, I’m pretty sure he didn’t get that Molly is the name of a drug.”
Harry is clearly fascinated by this, by why someone would seek out attention that is mostly negative, and it’s a mystery I can’t solve for him. People are complicated, they are strange, and some of them will literally do anything for a thousand likes and comments from strangers.
“Did you quit your job?” Blue asks, latching on to a different detail.
Clearly Cal hasn’t spoken to them about our most recent meeting. I’m not sure whether that’s a good thing.
It also strikes me that Blue, like Maisie, assumes I quit. I decide to take it as a compliment.
“Sort of,” I inform her. “Maisie knows. And she knows I’m meeting with you tonight.”
“Anyway,” Nicole says, taking a gulp of her drink. “Enough chitchat. The best way to get a man to talk is to catch him off guard. Like, if he’s at a business meeting and isn’t expecting to be interrogated. Or if he’s on the phone with his mother.”