This was her chance to go from small-town designer with a failed engagement to something more. Something better. Someone her mother actually liked. She would prove herself with this project, she could feel it.
She offered her reflection one more smile and was straightening the buttery material of her dress when a fist banged on the glass from inside. She startled, stumbling back so that her ankle very nearly buckled from the height of her heels.
“You look hot as fuck!”
A pretty redhead grinned at her through the window, then made a show of waggling her eyebrows at Astrid’s form.
“Jesus, Iris,” Astrid said, fingers pressed to her chest as she tried to calm her galloping heart. “Could you not for one day?”
“Not what?” Iris yelled through the glass, arms propped up on the back of a turquoise-painted wooden chair.
“Not . . .” Astrid waved her hand around, searching for the right word. When it came to her best friend Iris Kelly, the right word rarely stuck for very long. “Never mind.”
“Get your cute ass in here already,” Iris said. “Claire and Delilah are whispering sweet nothings in each other’s ears—”
“We are not!” Astrid heard her other best friend, Claire, call from somewhere behind Iris before she appeared in the window too, her dark hair up in a messy bun and her purple-framed glasses catching the sunlight.
“—and I’m slowly losing my will to live,” Iris went on, her shoulder knocking into Claire’s.
“Don’t even pretend you don’t love it.” This from Delilah, Astrid’s stepsister and Claire’s girlfriend for the last ten months, whose presence Astrid was still getting used to in her life. She and Delilah had had a fraught childhood together, filled with resentments and misunderstandings. The healing process was long and, honestly, exhausting. They’d come a long way since last June, when Delilah arrived in town from New York City to photograph Astrid’s doomed wedding and fell in love with her best friend instead. Since then, Delilah had moved back to Bright Falls and proceeded to make Claire happier than Astrid had ever seen her.
As though to further prove the point, Delilah glided into view and draped a tattooed arm around Claire, who promptly beamed up at her as though Delilah not only hung the moon, but created it as well. Astrid felt a pang deep in her chest. Not jealousy necessarily, and she’d long realized the problems she and Delilah had growing up were just as much her fault as they were her stepsister’s, so it wasn’t discomfort or worry on her best friend’s behalf either.
No, the feeling was more akin to . . . nausea. She’d never admit it to Claire—or Iris and her brand-new girlfriend, Jillian—that the sight of a happy couple gave her the urge to vomit, but it was true, and her roiling stomach was the proof. Ever since she and Spencer had broken up last year, she felt squicky just thinking about romance and dating.
Which was exactly why she didn’t think about romance and dating—much less engage in them—and had no plans to do so in the future.
“Come on inside, honey,” Claire said, tapping at the window gently. “It’s a big day!”
Astrid smiled, her nausea dissipating, thank goodness. When she’d told Claire and Iris about Pru Everwood’s call—about Innside America, how Pru’s grandkids were coming into town to help the older woman manage the whole affair, Natasha-freaking-Rojas—her best friends had promptly squealed with glee and helped her prepare for today’s meeting with the Everwood family. Granted, prepare entailed several nights at Astrid’s house, open wine bottles littering her coffee table while she worked on her design software and Iris and Claire grew increasingly giddy and obnoxious, but still. It was the thought that counted.
Today, they’d insisted on her meeting them for breakfast at Wake Up to fuel her with, as Iris put it, “bagels and badassery.” Astrid would be lying if she said she didn’t need a little badassery right now. She nodded at Claire and moved toward the front entrance, hand reaching for the tarnished brass handle. Before she could give the first tug, however, the turquoise wooden door flew open and something slammed into Astrid, yanking all the breath from her lungs and sending her flying backward.
She landed hard on her butt, palms scraping on the cobblestones, and a burning sensation grew in the center of her chest before slithering down her belly.
“Oh my god, I’m so sorry.”
A voice sounded from right in front of her, but she was frozen, her legs splayed in a most inelegant fashion, the right heel of her favorite shoes snapped in half and hanging on by a literal thread, and—
She squeezed her eyes closed. Counted to three before opening them again. Maybe it was a dream. A nightmare. Surely, she was not sitting on her ass on the sidewalk in the middle of downtown Bright Falls. Her pencil dress—her gorgeous, lucky, just-shy-of-a-grand pencil dress that made her ass look amazing—was not covered in very hot, very wet, very dark coffee right now. Three soggy paper cups were not spinning on the ground around her, a drink carrier was not upturned in her lap, pooling more liquid all over the dry-clean-only linen, and there was most definitely not a woman with a tangle of short golden brown hair, light denim overalls cuffed at the ankles, and rugged brown boots standing over her with a horrified expression on her face.
This was not happening.
“Are you okay?” the woman asked, holding a hand out to Astrid. “I was in a hurry and I didn’t see you there and, wow, that dress really took a hit, huh?”
Astrid ignored her babbling, ignored the hand. She concentrated instead on breathing. In and out. Nice and slow. Because what she really wanted to do right now was scream. Loudly. In this woman’s face, possibly accompanied by a nice, firm shoulder shove. She knew she shouldn’t do any of those things, so she breathed . . . and breathed.
“Are . . . are you hyperventilating?” the woman asked. “Do I need to call someone?”
She kneeled down and peered into Astrid’s face, her hazel eyes narrowed. Her face was almost elfin, all delicate features with a sharp nose and chin, and her short hair was shaved on one side and longer on the other, swooping over her forehead and filled with messy tangles like she’d just woken up. She had a nose ring, a tiny silver hoop through her septum.
“How many fingers am I holding up?” she asked, presenting two fingers.
Astrid felt like responding by holding up one important finger, but before she could, Iris and Claire and Delilah spilled out of the café, all of their eyes wide when they spotted her on the ground.
God, was she still on the ground?
“Honey, what happened?” Claire asked, hurrying over to help her up.
“I happened,” the woman said. “I’m so sorry, I was coming out and not watching where I was going, which is just so typical of me and I feel so horrible and—”