Maybe I can turn my fortune around with teenagers leading the way. Let that be a reminder that I should always behave with customers.
It’s just Fable and me in the store now. “They’re adorbs,” Fable remarks from the counter. “They almost make me want to be seventeen again.”
I shudder as I head to a display shelf to tidy up some bracelets. “Nothing could make me want to be seventeen again. I’d have to go through my marriage a second time. No thanks.”
But Fable stares dreamily out the window of the store. “If I were seventeen again,” she muses, “I’d bet Calypso would play me in the movie of my life. The Badass Jewelry Designer Makes it Big Time.” She likes this game, and she whips her gaze to me, appraising.
“Better give me someone good,” I warn her. “Last time we played this, you gave me Brynnie, a woman best known for selling vagina-scented candles. And you just gave yourself someone at least ten years younger than you who won an Emmy at age seventeen.”
“Shhh. Don’t give my age away,” she says.
My phone buzzes from my back pocket. I grab it. Carter’s name flashes across the screen, and my cheeks flame. That’s a weird reaction, but the weirder one is the flip in my stomach. Talk about seventeen again—I feel like I’m back in high school. “I need to take this call,” I say to Fable, then I duck into the tiny office in the back of the shop and answer as I shut the door.
“Hey,” I say, trying to sound cool, like I’m not replaying last night’s hot mess moment. I’ve had enough hot mess moments to make a reel lately.
“Hey there,” he says, and I try to read into his tone in those two words. Does he think it was weird when I bit my lip? Like I qualified for an Internet meme of mockable lip-biters?
I need to fix things, stat, especially since I can’t read his tone. “Listen, Carter,” I say, just diving in, unrehearsed. “About what I said last night at the party. I was just having fun, and I don’t want you to think—”
But, now that I’m here, I don’t know what comes next. I don’t want you to think I was undressing you all night long? Oh, and this morning, too, when I returned home from the pajama-party-kidnapping and finally took care of the ache between my thighs while picturing you?
I squirm over that memory.
But it’s such a good memory that my mind goes blank, and my body feels a little melty.
“I’m glad it worked out. I could tell that guy was putting the moves on you and you didn’t want him to,” he says.
Ohhh.
He was simply superheroing last night while I was going all vampy. I really messed up. “I mean, it was just the champagne talking,” I say quickly. “That thing I said.” God, why can’t I repeat it in front of him?
Because he’s the reason you’ve been low-key horny for twenty-four hours straight.
“Champagne filter,” he says. “It’s a thing.”
I laugh, grateful for the humor to defuse the tension. “Better than champagne goggles.”
“Definitely. And listen, I hope I didn’t come across as…um, crass,” he says. “Like I was trying to…ba—”
He can’t even breathe the awful words. Bang you.
Great. Just great.
“Sweet Unbangable Me” is going to be my new anthem. “Please. You were so gallant. Like a prince riding in on a steed,” I say, and what’s with the horse analogies? “A unicorn,” I say, trying again to make, well, hay. “A unicorn saving the day. You were a unicorn who shot rainbows from his butt.”
“Yeah, maybe not that kind.”
Okay, perhaps that wasn’t the best compliment. “I bet you’re more like a fire-breathing unicorn, only you breathe rainbow fire. So thank you for your rainbow fire,” I say, and can someone just shut me up?
“No problem,” he says, then takes a beat to clear his throat. “And…I need saving now.”
Thank god. I’m more than eager to move on and put this awkward moment behind us. “Hit me up.”
With a heavy sigh, he says, “I owe Date Night some videos.”
He dives into the problem with one of his big sponsors and when he’s done, I want to throat-punch Quinn. I hate her more than I did before. “Want me to find Quinn and burn all her underwear on the Strip?”
He laughs, but then it fades. “Nah, but maybe instead would you go on a date with me?”
That tingle I felt last night turns into a hot spark.
9
I CAN BE DELIGHTFULLY UNDERHANDED
Rachel
There’s no way I heard him right.
After all that terrible lip-biting last night, he couldn’t possibly be asking me on a date, right?
Also, do I even want to date my best friend?
No, no, and a hell no.
Because then what would happen when the date went south? I’d be left alone all over again. No, thank you.
“A date?” I ask, a little uncomfortably.
“A platonic date,” he quickly corrects, and I breathe a very audible sigh of relief. Thank god. But now that he’s said that, I feel the tiniest bit let down. Yes, a date with Carter would have been a terrible idea, but for a few dangerous seconds there I felt…wanted.
And it was nice to feel wanted.
Warm and kind of woozy in my chest.
But I shake off the foreign sensation. Obviously I don’t need to be wanted by my friend.
“Sure,” I add, upbeat.
“You’re a goddess,” he says. “I don’t want to go anywhere near a real date, so my agent is getting it all sorted for me to do five first dates. And it’ll be way easier for me if you and I could do the first one. As friends. So I thought maybe we could do the Puzzle Nerds thing and record some of it.”
“Of course,” I say, even though I’ve already agreed, both to Puzzle Nerds and helping him. “I’ll get my profile up tonight.”
“You’re the best,” he says, then adds, “I should go to practice.”
“I need to get back to the store.”
“Thanks again, Rachel.”
“Anytime.”
I hang up, relieved things aren’t weird with us after last night, even though I still feel a little kernel of disappointment as I leave my tiny office.
I return to the front of the store right as the bell tinkles. A woman in a flowy cream blouse and with the most perfect complexion I’ve ever seen floats in like Aphrodite rising from the foam.
She’s the picture of serenity. She even smells calm too. It’s like lavender is wafting off her, lulling me into a sense of peace and harmony.
“Welcome to Bling and Baubles. We’re happy to help you with anything you need.”
She steeples her fingers together. “Wonderful. I definitely need some help.”
“Let us know what we can do. I’m Rachel, the owner. And this is Fable. She works here and she also designs a number of our necklaces.”
Fable nods toward the Venus on the Half-Shell lady. “You’d probably look good in anything with your dewy complexion,” she says.
The woman smiles, clutching her chest like she’s so touched. “Thank you.” She turns to me, her smile widening. “I do have a question for you.”