“I need to get cleaned up at home,” she said, slipping off her other shoe to avoid limping down the sidewalk in one three-inch heel.
“I’ll come help,” Claire said.
“No, that’s okay,” Astrid said, untangling her arm from Claire’s grip and moving toward where she’d parked her car. She needed to be alone right now, get her head on right. Disaster of a morning notwithstanding, she was still the lead designer for the Everwood Inn, she was still going to be on Innside America, and she was still about to meet Natasha Rojas. No way in hell was one collision with a clumsy coffee drinker and a moment of extreme bitchiness going to ruin that for her now.
She’d kissed her friends goodbye and was halfway to her car when she thought to look at her phone for the woman’s name. Maybe she could send her an apologetic text, tell her, at the very least, that of course she would not be sending her the dry cleaning bill. She unlocked her phone, her bare feet coming to a halt as she stared down at the woman’s contact information.
There was no name.
There was only a number, saved under Delightful Human Who Ruined Your Ugly Dress.
Author photo by Craig Pope
ASHLEY HERRING BLAKE is an award-winning author and literary agent at Rees Literary Agency. She holds a master’s degree in teaching and loves coffee, arranging her books by color, and cold weather. She is the author of the young adult novels Suffer Love, How to Make a Wish, and Girl Made of Stars, and the middle grade novels Ivy Aberdeen’s Letter to the World, The Mighty Heart of Sunny St. James, and Hazel Bly and the Deep Blue Sea. Ivy Aberdeen’s Letter to the World was a Stonewall Honor Book, as well as a Kirkus Reviews, School Library Journal, NYPL, and NPR best book of 2018. Her YA novel Girl Made of Stars was a Lambda Literary Award finalist. She’s also a coeditor on the young adult romance anthology Fools in Love. She lives on a very tiny island off the coast of Georgia with her family.
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