“You changed your mind? You’ll do this with me?”
“God no. I’m only twenty-six. I haven't hit my prime yet,” she says, sleeking her perfectly blow-dried light brown hair with highlights behind her ears. “I love my life too much to be that foolish. I'll be on that bench over there,” she points behind me, “working on my tan while you try not to kill yourself.”
“You’re not being very supportive,” I complain.
“I don’t need to walk in another woman’s shoes to live a little. I already do every day of my life,” she grins.
She says that because her and her mom, Aunt Angelina, own a very successful affordable designer online shoe company with extended pop-up stores in Venice Beach and San Francisco.
“Everly Bickford-Smith?”
My stomach lurches at the sound of my name. “Yes.”
“I’m Oliver Walters, your instructor,” says a really buff blond walking our way.
“Nice,” Ainsley mutters under her breath. “Maybe I should reconsider.”
I give her the evil eye. “Too late,” I say, like a pissed off three-year-old.
“From the questionnaire you've answered online, I understand this is your first flying trapeze lesson?” Oliver asks.
“It is.”
“The private lesson is the way to go if you can afford it.”
“I have my cousin to thank for that.” Yup, that was a nice little dose of sarcasm.
“Ready?” Oliver asks.
“I wouldn’t go that far.”
“You’ll do fine,” he reassures me.
I'm not that easily swayed. “Do you tell all your customers the same lie?”
“Funny. The answer is, yes. It’s the only way to stay in business. Divert and distract,” he laughs.
Well, if I’m going to die, God gave me a scrumptious instructor to spend my last hours on this earth with.
“We have three hours together. We’ll take it nice and slow.”
“Okay, I trust you.” Sort of.
I can't tell you how much I’m cursing Callum right now.
“Once you get the swing of it, you'll have fun.”
“I won’t die, right?” I ask nervously.
“You’ll be strapped to a safety harness, there’s a safety net right underneath you, my man Martin is on standby,” he points above his head, “and I’ll always be on alert just in case you need a little extra help.”
“I think I’ll need a lot of help.”
“You’ll be a champ.”
Ainsley removes her sunglasses and takes a long step closer to the instructor. “Does anyone ever puke their guts out at one of these classes?” she asks.
She bats her eyelashes at him.
Great, she's flirting.
She's doing a shit job at this wing-person thing.
“As long as Everly didn’t go out binge drinking last night, she should be okay.”
“Great! You should be good, cuz,” she says, patting me on the shoulder. “All performers need an audience. I'll be sitting over there cheering you on. Break a leg!” she cringes at the faux pas. “On second thought, don't!”
There are no words. I simply shake my head at her.
“Let's do this!” Oliver says.
Mother of God, I’m going to die.
* * *
Two and a half hours later, I’m hooked.
Trapeze is really fun and quite liberating. In fact, I haven't felt this empowered since Callum and Ainsley pushed me to take over my deceased aunt and uncle’s bakery eighteen months ago. My cousins had a lot more faith in me than I did.
“Look, Ainsley, I can fly!” I yell.
“Go for it, Super Girl!” she yells back. “As long as you don't touch the sky.”
“I’m going to try something more daring now,” I yell.
“Darling, I was joking about the superhero thing. You're just a human. Don't hurt yourself,” she yells back.
After an invigorating three hours, my lesson ends. It takes me a few minutes to find my bearings once I’m back on the ground. When I do, I whizz to the tent that doubles as a change room to get out of my sweaty clothes.
“You should join me next time,” I say when I approach Ainsley.
“Because you're going to try that again?” Disdain is painted all over her face.
“I might. I enjoyed it.”
She shakes her head vehemently. “I'm good. You're on your own.”
“You don't know what you're missing,” I challenge.
“Instead of that Cirque du Soleil contortion exercise that might’ve gotten you killed—”
“Oh, now you speak your mind.”
“You were willing to go for it. I didn't want to break your stride. It’s over now. I can express myself freely.”
“Thanks for having my back.”
“Any time. We’re family, after all,” she grins from ear to ear. “As I was saying, I think there are more pleasurable ways of stepping out of your comfort zone.”
“Like what?”
“Like walking into a bar, locking eyes with a dashing stranger across the room and getting the ‘comfort’ fucked right out of you,” she says with air quotes. “That would put a quick end to your dry spell.”
“You’re crazy, right out of your ever-loving mind,” I say, shocked.
“Everly, you have intimate relationships with flour and sugar. Men? Not so much. You barely look at them.”
Okay, so I've been avoiding relationships since I landed in LA two years ago. What can I say? I've been busy.
“That may be so,” Let’s avoid this sore subject, “but who randomly picks up strangers like that?”
“How do you think I met Jesse?” she retorts.
Jesse Launchbury is the sole heir to his father's vitamin and nutritional supplement dynasty. In other words, he's dripping in money. He's also her on-again, off-again boyfriend. They’ve been playing this game for a year now.
“You said you connected when you attended a party.”
“It was a party. Just not one I was invited to. My best friend Carolina and I crashed an invitation-only party at the Waldorf when we were in New York. The rest is history.”
“It's not at all how you had described it.”
She shrugs. “So I embellished a bit.”
You embellished a lot.
“Well, I’m not that kind of girl.”
“You say that because you haven't met a guy who is sex on legs. When you do, your body will have such a visceral reaction, you won’t be able to hold back.”
I think I met one of those yesterday.
Holt could fuck the comfort out of me, for sure.
Just like that, I’m turned on, flashing back to his parting words.
My cheeks burn from my flushed state.
“What?” Ainsley frowns.
“Nothing.” I bite off a smile.
It's best not to go there with her. I'll never hear the end of it.
CHAPTER 8
Everly
Mondays are always the busiest. It’s the day clients flock in to place their special requests. Although, it’s not as busy on walk-ins until much later in the day, pretty much every client who drops by to order their donuts buys a few treats for the road. Today it’s only Virginia, Callum and I holding the fort. The rest of the gang comes in from Friday to Sunday—our craziest days.