Nik walked across the parking lot with Carlos and Angela. She was
grateful the exodus from the game hadn't started yet, so they didn't
have to wade through crowds of people. The few they did see gave her
dirty looks. That's right, she was the bitch who broke the pretty blond
boy's heart, live on the JumboTron.
She shook her head. That really had happened. She had really been
proposed to, and then abandoned, in front of the world.
She could not believe Fisher had done that to her. Just that he'd
proposed to her in the first place was shocking—she would have been
certain neither of them thought their relationship was heading toward
marriage. She didn't think either of them wanted their relationship to
head toward marriage. But not only did he do it, he did it in public. At
a baseball game? Good God, she was furious at him.
She also felt like a huge asshole. She'd just refused her boyfriend's
proposal in front of thousands of people. On his birthday. All of the
people giving her dirty looks hated her for a good reason. She hadn't
meant to hurt Fisher! He was a perfectly nice, incredibly boring guy.
She probably could have found a nicer way to respond to the proposal,
but she was so stunned she couldn't think straight. Plus, diplomacy
had never been her strong point.
Thank God she'd gotten rescued by the Wonder Twins here. She
should probably be wary of getting in a car with two strangers who had
picked her up at a baseball stadium at a low moment in her life, but she
didn't have the energy. She should especially be wary of this guy, who
seemed way too attractive for his own good, with his tousled dark
brown hair, big brown eyes, and that slight Saturday scruff on his
cheeks. Normal Nik wouldn't have trusted this guy for a second. Dazed
by the JumboTron, Nik had told him where she lived. But at this point,
she didn't have the strength to do anything but be relieved she was no
longer inside the stadium."Thanks again for getting me out of there. I was just sitting there
texting my girlfriends about this fiasco and trying to figure out how I
was going to get home when the camera crew showed up. I still can't
believe any of this happened."
Carlos unlocked his car, one of the fancy red sports cars she was
used to seeing around L.A. Ah, yes, of course the kind of guy who
would almost knock down the cameraman and smile while he did it
would have a red sports car. He opened the front passenger door for
her. She shook her head.
"Oh no, I can get in the back."
Angela laughed and opened the back door.
"Don't worry about it, Nikole. I think you deserve shotgun today."
"Nik." She needed to make this one thing clear, even though she
was only going to know these people for the length of the car ride to
Silver Lake. "Everyone calls me Nik. My first name is Nikole, yes, but
it's Nikole with a K."
Angela looked at Nik for a long beat, her hand still on the open back
door.
"But didn't the screen spell it . . ."
"With a C? It sure did!"
She got into the passenger seat and put her seatbelt on, and Angela
slid into the seat behind her.
"You do not mean to tell me he spelled your name wrong in his
proposal?" Angela said.
"That's exactly what I'm telling you. Only one of the many things
that stunned me about this afternoon." Her pocket buzzed. "Wait, hold
that thought, I have to tell my friends my ride is taken care of."
She had forty-three new text messages.
"Shit."
She clicked on her messages and let out a deep breath. Okay, thirty-
three of the messages were from the group chat with her girlfriends,
first their reactions to her initial texts about the proposal and then
their increasingly agitated texts asking her where the hell she was
when she stopped responding.Sorry sorry, camera crew was in my face, some strangers rescued me, getting a ride
back to the eastside from them right now, long story. Meet me at the bar within the hour.
She scrolled to her other new messages. Two were work related, she
would deal with those after she'd recovered from the hangover she had
every intention of having tomorrow morning. Oh my God, three were
from people she knew who had been at Dodger Stadium that afternoon
and had seen her on the JumboTron. There were more than eighteen
million people in the greater Los Angeles area, she knew no more than
a few hundred of them, max, and three of those had just HAPPENED
to be at Dodger Stadium the one time in her life she was there, just so
they could see the craziest thing that had ever happened to her? This
was like some sort of sick joke.
And the other five texts were from Fisher.
You fucking bitch, I can't believe
She turned the phone off and dropped it in her pocket. So Fisher
wasn't a perfectly nice guy after all. She wasn't even going to think
about looking at those texts until she had at least two or three shots of
bourbon in her.
"Everything okay?" Carlos asked, glancing over from the driver's
seat.
She laughed, even though none of this was really funny. Now she
understood what hysterical laughter really meant.
"As okay as anything can get today, I guess. Sorry for zoning out like
that, I had a bunch of texts. My friends are very relieved that I got out
of there in one piece."
"God, me, too," Carlos said. "When we saw that camera crew
coming for you, I was worried that you'd either punch them all and run
or burst into tears."
"Believe me, I was contemplating both," Nik said. "Unfortunately, I
don't exactly know how to land a punch, and I didn't really want to get
filmed crying on top of everything else."
He grinned at her, and she grinned back. It was refreshing to be
around a guy who would joke with her like this after months of Fisher,
who would only look at her blankly.
"Where to?" Carlos asked. "Do you want us to drop you at home, or
at a friend's house, or . . . ?"She was glad that she'd already made plans to meet Courtney and
Dana at the bar, otherwise Dazed-by-the-JumboTron Nik probably
would have given the first guy she'd met in forever who had a sense of
humor her home address.
"There's a bar on Sunset that has a bottle of bourbon with my name
all over it. My friends are meeting me there to hopefully get me drunk
enough so that I forget this day ever happened."
"I cannot believe he spelled your name wrong," Angela muttered
from the back seat.
"To be fair to him, we'd only been dating for five months, maybe he
just hadn't absorbed that bit of knowledge about me yet."
"Wait, WHAT?" She'd thought that Angela was the loud one, but
Carlos nearly shouted that. "You'd only been dating for five months,
and he proposed? In public?"
If she had to pick a strange man to rescue her, at least it was one
who was outraged by the right things.
"Exactly! We'd only been dating for five months, he proposed, in
public. And I'm the bad guy for rejecting him on his birthday?"
"You are not the bad guy," Carlos said. "Trust me on this."
She was tempted to text Fisher back, curse him out from here to
oblivion, and tell him what she really thought of his acting, but she
restrained herself. Barely.
Angela piped up from the back seat. "So, how long have you lived in
L.A., Nik?"
She was grateful for the opportunity to talk about something else.
"For about six years, but I've lived in California most of my life.
What about you guys?"
"Born and raised on the Eastside," Carlos said.
"Don't let my big brother over here act like he's got Eastside cred;
he's been living on the Westside for years and just moved back, thank
goodness."
"Thank goodness?" Carlos said. "This is the first I've heard of my
little sister being thankful that I'm back on the Eastside. Thankgoodness for what, so you can have someone to come over to your
house and kill spiders for you in the middle of the night?"
"Exactly!" Angela said. "That, and someone to build my IKEA
furniture for me, and to dog sit for me when I go out of town."
Carlos somehow managed to roll his eyes while keeping both eyes
on the road.
"You don't even have a dog!"
"But I might! Someday!"
The siblings' friendly bickering kept her entertained for the rest of
the ride to the bar. And more importantly, it kept her distracted
enough so she didn't text Fisher back.
By the time they pulled up to the Sanctuary, the bar that she and
her girlfriends had been coming to for almost as long as she'd lived in
L.A., she'd even managed to laugh a few times at the stories that Carlos
and Angela told about each other.
"You guys are going to come in, right?" she asked them. "I owe you
far more than a drink for what you did for me today, but we can start
with that."
Carlos and Angela exchanged a quick glance. It was a look full of
wordless communication, but she couldn't tell whether it was "This
woman seems crazy, let's get the fuck out of here" or just "I was getting
carsick in the back seat, let's get a drink."
"Sure," Carlos said. "I was about to get another beer anyway right
when all the action started at the game."
She felt her shoulders relax as soon as the three of them walked
inside the bar. The dark, cool interior was such a relief after the
unrelenting bright sunlight that she'd been enduring all day. She
pushed her sunglasses up to the top of her head, where they would
undoubtedly get caught in her hair within minutes, and glanced toward
the corner of the room. Her friends Courtney and Dana were right
there, waiting for her in their favorite booth.
"I made it," she said as she walked up to them. "Where's my drink?"
"There." Dana pointed behind her. She turned around, and the
bartender, who had been pouring them drinks at least twice a week for
the past four years, handed her a glass of bourbon with one big icecube. That was fast. Granted, they were regulars there, but this was a
record. Courtney and Dana must have told Pete that something was
up.
"Thanks, Pete. Get my friends here whatever they want, please? On
me."
As Pete took their orders, she slid into the curved booth next to
Courtney.
"Hey," Courtney said. "You okay?"
She leaned her head against Courtney's shoulder for the briefest of
moments.
"I'm fine. Just kind of shell-shocked at what just happened, I think."
She motioned for Carlos and Angela to join her in the booth.
"Dana and Courtney, meet Carlos and Angela. They saved me in
about a dozen different ways this afternoon, and I will owe them far
more than my firstborn child. Carlos and Angela, these are my friends
Dana and Courtney, who were about to come to Dodger Stadium and
carry me away from that godforsaken place, so it turns out you saved
them, too."
Just then, the bartender brought two more drinks to the table.
"A toast!" Nik said when the drinks were on the table. "To
friendship, both real and feigned."
They all clinked glasses, and Nik took a deep gulp of her bourbon.
"Okay," Courtney said. "We need details. What did that toast mean?
He seriously proposed? For the record, I never liked Fisher. He was
never nice to me—I don't think fat Korean women were in his target
demographic. Where is he now? Did he cry? Tell us everything."
Nik took a deep breath. She still couldn't believe this had actually
happened to her.
Dana patted her on the shoulder and shook her head at Courtney.
"Let her finish her drink first! You don't have to tell us the story
right now. Are you hungry? Should we get pizza? What kind should we
get?"
She definitely wasn't drunk yet, but pizza sounded incredible right
now."Absolutely. Fisher hasn't eaten carbs in like two years, so pizza
sounds fantastic. I don't care what's on it as long as it includes
pepperoni and lots of cheese."
Dana pulled out her phone and opened a delivery app.
"Are you two in, too?" she asked Carlos and Angela. They both
nodded.
After a few clicks, Dana looked up from her phone.
"Okay, it's on its way here. Where were we?"
She took another sip of her drink. Thank God for bourbon.
"I don't know where we were, but to tell the story backward, that
toast was because these two pretended to be long-lost friends of mine
to save me from a camera crew. God bless them."
"A camera crew?" Courtney stared at her, then at Carlos and Angela,
Nik guessed to confirm she hadn't lost her mind.
"Yep." Carlos nodded. "We were sitting a few rows behind Nik and
saw the whole proposal happen. And then when we saw the camera
crew walking toward her, we knew we had to do something."
"Where did you even come up with that idea? That was brilliant!"
Dana said.
He nodded and lifted his glass.
"Thank you for that; I agree, it was brilliant." He grinned at Nik,
and despite herself, she grinned back at him. "But I have to admit, the
credit all goes to our cousin Jessie. She told me a story once about a
woman in a parking lot doing that to her when there was a creepy guy
following her, and I guess it stuck with me."
Angela laughed.
"I was going to let my brother take the credit for that idea, even
though I knew he got it from Jessie. I'm just glad to know he pays
attention to the women in his family."
Nik couldn't remember the last time she'd seen a man voluntarily
give credit to a woman for an idea. That was one of the major reasons
she'd gone freelance, all of the men talking over her and pretending
they'd come up with her ideas, even when everyone had heard her say
them out loud."Oh, please," Carlos said. "I pay probably too much attention to all
of you."
Nik finished her drink, and within seconds another one showed up
on the table in front of her.
"Thanks, Pete," she, Courtney, and Dana said in unison.
"You three must tip very well," Carlos said.
They all laughed.
"That, and Pete's had a crush on Dana for at least two years,"
Courtney said. Dana grinned and shrugged.
"Okay, okay." Nik took a sip of her new drink and set it down. "And
now for my part of the story. Here is the most important thing: I had
NO IDEA that anything like this was coming. I was racking my brain
on the way here for where this came from, and I swear, I had no hints."
She'd actually started wondering within the last few weeks how
much longer this Fisher thing would last. Not only did he bore her, but
she didn't really think he was all that interested in her, either. She
didn't look like the models his friends all dated, he didn't even pretend
to be interested in her work, and she found his laughable. A great
recipe for a marriage!
"Anyway. The game was whatever, fine, boring, sunny, et cetera.
And then all of a sudden, Fisher told me to look at something. I
thought it was some stupid baseball thing, so I looked at the field, but
then he pointed toward the JumboTron. And up there, in twelve-foot-
high letters, was something like 'I love you, will you marry me?'"
"You forgot the most important part," Angela said. "It said 'Nicole, I
love you, will you marry me?' Nicole with a C!"
Dana and Courtney gasped in unison. The appropriate response.
"He spelled your name wrong in his proposal?" Courtney asked.
"Yes!" Nik said. "But wait, think about that part later, let me get the
whole story out first. So when I saw the thing up on the screen, I
thought it was some sort of joke or that he was just showing me
because that's my name and it was someone else in the stadium, or
something like that. He'd never even said I love you to me before—
which, if he had, this whole nightmare today never would havehappened, because I'd have cut that thing off in a heartbeat, but
anyway. Wait, where was I?"
"You saw it up on the screen . . . ?" Dana prompted her.
"Oh, yeah. So I turned to him, and he was down on one knee. With a
ring box in his hand!"
"What did the ring look like?" Courtney asked.
"The ring?" Nik paused. She'd been so freaked out at the time she
hadn't even looked at it. "I have no idea. I don't think I even saw it.
Hell, I don't even remember what I said to him, something about how
we should have talked about this before, and then he said something
like, 'Are you saying no?' and I told him I wasn't saying that out loud,
and then he told me to just live a little. LIVE A LITTLE. Like deciding
to get married on a whim is the thing all the cool girls are doing these
days. And when I again refused, he got furious and stood up and left
and his friends followed him." She turned to Carlos. "Did I forget
anything?"
Carlos made a face. Oh shit, what had she forgotten?
"Just that . . . just that there was a camera on you the whole time, so
the entire thing was broadcast to the whole stadium. No one could hear
what you were saying—I mean, we could, we were just a few rows
behind you and your dude talked pretty loudly—but what was going on
was probably pretty clear to everyone."
"Oh yeah, right. That part." Nik put her head down on the table. "I
think I need to just stay here for the next few days. Throw a blanket
over me and just leave me here in the bar, and for the love of God, take
my phone with you. Maybe by the time I resurface, everyone will forget
that any of this ever happened."
Dana patted Nik on the back and Courtney took the phone that Nik
had tossed on the table and tucked it away in her pocket.
Someone pushed her drink against her hand. She grabbed it, lifted
her head, took a sip, and put her head back down on the table. Thank
God for bourbon.
"Did I forget anything else?" Nik sat up and pushed her hair back.
"I saw the ring," Angela said.
"WHAT?" the whole table said in unison.Angela looked at Carlos.
"You didn't see it? Oh yeah. He opened the ring box when he first
got down on one knee, and the camera zeroed in on the ring. I can't
believe you didn't notice."
She knew there was a reason she'd wanted Carlos and Angela to
stay.
"Well?" Nik asked. "Don't keep me in suspense. What did it look
like? Please tell me you remember."
Angela paused.
"Okay, you know the Kate Middleton ring, right? The Princess
Diana one? With the huge sapphire in the middle and diamonds all
around it? It looked just like that. Except smaller."
Nik banged her drink down on the table. It sloshed everywhere, but
she was past the point of caring.
"Does he think he's some kind of a prince?" She took a deep breath.
"Wait, that sounded mean. That was mean, I guess. But . . ."
"But you are not a princess ring kind of person," Courtney finished.
"But I am not a princess ring kind of person!" Nik said. "Nothing
against princess rings, but IF I wanted an engagement ring from him—
which I absolutely did not—it wouldn't have been a replica of a
princess ring. He obviously doesn't know me that well; I'm not a
baseball-game proposal kind of person, either. But seriously, a princess
ring? For ME?"
"You did get up at four a.m. to watch Harry and Meghan's wedding
though," Dana said.
"That was different," Nik said. "Anyway, is there anything else I
missed about the proposal?" she asked Carlos and Angela. "Am I
remembering the forlorn look on Fisher's face correctly?"
Carlos shrugged. "He looked more outraged than forlorn, really.
Like a kid having a tantrum."
Yeah . . . that sounded like Fisher, unfortunately. She mopped up
her spilled drink with some of the extra napkins Pete had left on the
table."Carlos is right," Angela said. "No offense, but he seemed like kind
of a baby."
Nik shrugged and sighed. Fisher had been kind of a baby. A baby
with beautiful blond hair he constantly admired in the mirror and
great abs. So yeah, it made sense that he would yell and storm off when
she'd publicly rejected his proposal.
"None taken. He was kind of a baby. But babies can be pretty great
sometimes—isn't that why people like them?"
Carlos cleared his throat.
"As a professional baby expert: people like babies because they're
cute, they have big heads, and because they're pretty helpless without
us. They can scream really loudly, though."
Courtney nodded.
"Yep, that sounds like Fisher. Down to the big—"
"COURTNEY!"
Dana and Courtney giggled and high-fived, and Nik tried and failed
to suppress her laughter.
"You two are the worst friends in the history of the world, do you
know that?"
They nodded, still laughing.
"We know," Dana said.
• • •
Carlos coughed. Maybe they needed a reminder that there was a guy at
the table with them?
Nope, that just made all four women, his little sister included,
glance his way and laugh harder. Excellent. He looked at Nik, who was
looking back at him. She winked at him. He grinned and winked back.
One of the friends' phone buzzed. Dana, right? She was the black
one who looked like a model. Courtney was the Korean one with pink
lipstick on.
"Pizza's here!" she said. A few minutes later, a huge pizza box
covered their table, and they all had big pieces of pizza in their hands,the pepperoni oil dripping onto more napkins that the bartender had
thrown onto their table.
"I didn't even ask if anyone was a vegetarian or gluten-free or
anything," Dana said. He and Angela both shook their heads.
"This is a Los Angeles rarity, to have five people at a table all dig
into a cheese-covered, two-meat, gluten-filled pizza without
hesitating."
Nik lifted her almost empty glass.
"To new friends and gluten!"
They all toasted and stuffed pizza into their mouths.
"Wait." Nik looked up at him and started to say something, but
stopped to finish chewing her bite of pizza. "Did you say a few minutes
ago that you're a baby expert?"
His sister just shook her head.
"My brother. Always with the delusions of grandeur."
He had the opportunity to impress three attractive women with his
degrees and knowledge—could his sister at least try to be a good
wingman here?
"I'm a pediatrician, but to be perfectly honest, I don't see a lot of
babies anymore. I'm the assistant director of the teen clinic at Eastside
Medical Center."
"Oh." Nik put her pizza down and reached for a napkin. "You're a
doctor."
Okay, he'd never had a woman with that look on her face when he'd
said he was a doctor. Like she'd smelled something bad.
"Oooh, you brought us a doctor?" Courtney poked Nik.
Nik looked at Dana and rolled her eyes.
"A doctor," Courtney said, presumably to the table at large. "That's
a normal job. I didn't think people in L.A. had normal jobs anymore.
All of the jobs here are, like, writer, magician, fit model, actor, cupcake
baker, dog walker, social media manager, juice shop cashier, and
nonsense like that."
"Well, what do you all do?" he asked Nik and her friends."Writer," Nik said.
"Cupcake baker," Courtney said.
"Actor," Dana said.
He and Angela both laughed, but they didn't.
"Oh wait. You're serious?"
Nik nodded and sipped at the dregs of her drink.
"It's true. We're a parody of L.A. sitting right here." She turned to
Angela. "What about you? You are also probably something normal,
like a teacher or a social worker or an accountant."
"Marketing, for one of the studios," Angie said. "I'm also a parody.
Granted, I got my MBA first, so I could have done a normal job, but no,
I went straight for the L.A. stereotype."
"What kind of stuff do you write?" Carlos asked Nik.
"Lots of entertainment and celebrity-related stuff, and some more
newsy journalism occasionally."
"What about Fisher?" Carlos couldn't keep himself from asking.
"Was he also an L.A. stereotype, or was he a lawyer or trader or
something?"
Nik shook her head. "Actor! I should have known! Never date an
actor; you get proposed to in public with a fucking princess ring." She
took another bite of pizza and swallowed it. "Sorry, Dana. No offense."
"None taken," Dana said.
Nik sighed.
"Speaking of Fisher . . . he sent me some texts after he left the game.
I only saw a glimpse of one of them, but . . . it wasn't so great. I guess I
probably need to read the rest, right?"
Ahh, that's probably what she had been looking at when her face
shuttered when they were in the car. She probably didn't want to talk
about this with strangers around. Carlos caught Angela's eye, and she
nodded.
"Ladies, my sister and I should take off. We have a family event that
we have to get to and we can't be late.""Oh!" Nik looked up. Was it just his imagination that her face fell?
"If you have to go, I understand. But you guys, I can't thank you
enough for today; you two saved me on what was maybe one of the
weirdest days of my life."
Angela stood up, and all of the women followed her out of the
booth.
"It was our pleasure," she said. Nik threw her arms around Angie
and whispered something in her ear that made her laugh. Then she
moved over to Carlos.
"Carlos, thank you so much." She gave him a tight hug and a kiss on
the cheek. He almost kissed her back, but stopped himself just in time.
She'd probably had enough out of men today.
"Glad we could help."
Dana and Courtney both hugged him, too.
"Thanks for taking care of our girl until she could get back to us.
You are the prince of the day," Dana said.
He and Angie left Nik and her friends to dissect the texts,
something he knew women loved to do.
• • •
"That was nice of him, to leave just then," Dana said, after the three of
them sat back down in their booth alone.
"What do you mean?" Nik said as she reached for another piece of
pizza. "They said they had a family thing."
Dana rolled her eyes.
"Sure they did. He wanted to let you show us Fisher's texts without
him around, so he made up some reason to leave." She took a sip of her
drink. "I don't often say this about men, but I liked him."
Courtney nodded.
"I liked him, too. You know what I think?"
Oh God. Whenever Courtney asked that question, either something
great or something terrible was on its way. Sometimes it was a little bit
of both.
Nik rested her chin on her hand and closed her eyes."What do you think?"
"I think Carlos should be your rebound."
This time it was just terrible.
"Dana, talk some sense into her, please." Nik looked from Dana to
Courtney. "Number one, Fisher and I broke up, like two hours ago.
Number two, Carlos seems like a very nice guy, but he's a doctor, come
on."
Dana looked at her blankly.
"And?"
What was wrong with them?
"And Justin was a doctor, remember?"
Dana and Courtney looked at each other, then back at her.
"Yes, Justin was a doctor," Dana said, in her most patient voice. Nik
hated that voice. "That doesn't mean that all doctors are assholes."
That's not what she meant and they knew it.
Well, okay. That was kind of what she meant. But still.
"Justin was a surgeon." Courtney took a gulp of her drink and
slammed the empty glass onto the table. "That's different than a
pediatrician."
Not that different. She hadn't seen or talked to Justin in years, but
she remembered him and his God complex all too well.
"Plus," Courtney said, "Carlos is hot. I would go for him myself, but
he was staring at you all night."
Nik rolled her eyes and drained her glass.
"That is not true."
"Oh, come on," Dana said. "Even I think he was hot, and I'm a
lesbian."
Nik shook her head.
"I'm not arguing that point. Of course he's hot, did you see those
forearms? I meant it's not true that he was staring at me all night."
Courtney and Dana looked at each other and laughed. There was no
point in arguing with them about this. Especially since she wasn't evensure if she was right.
"You have a rebound with Carlos if you want," she said to Courtney.
"I'm taking a vow of celibacy. Men are clearly not for me at this point
in my life."
Dana and Courtney dissolved into laughter.
"No really, you guys. I mean it!"
Their heads were down on the table. Courtney's face was possibly
buried in a slice of pizza? It apparently didn't matter, they were still
laughing.
"I'm not joking! I need a break. Once you find yourself on the
JumboTron with a guy kneeling at your feet with a princess ring in his
hand, you start to reevaluate your life, okay?"
Courtney sat up, a piece of pepperoni in her bangs. After that
performance, Nik wasn't going to tell her it was there.
Dana gulped down the rest of her drink and waved Pete over for
more drinks.
"A pitcher of water, too, please," Nik said to him. "I want to be able
to at least somewhat function tomorrow."
As soon as he walked away, Dana turned to her.
"If we say we believe you and your vow of celibacy, can we get back
to Fisher's texts?"
"We believe you, we believe you," Courtney said, the pepperoni
bobbing up and down as she nodded her head.
They did not actually believe her, she knew that, but there was no
point in arguing with them right now. They'd see. She took her phone
back from Courtney.
"Here." Nik unlocked the phone and pushed it across the table.
"After the glimpse that I saw, I don't know if I want to see the rest."
Dana picked up the phone and Courtney looked over her shoulder.
Nik looked at their faces as they scrolled through the messages. After
about two seconds, they both looked ready to kill.
"That bad, huh?" she asked.Courtney's eyes narrowed at the phone. Oh no, it was even worse
than she'd thought.
"Okay. What do they say?"
Dana cleared her throat. Thank God neither of them offered to just
delete them for her. Her friends knew her far too well for that.
"'You fucking bitch, I can't believe you did that to me on my
birthday.' That was the first one," Dana said.
"'I can't believe you would be that stupid. I was the best thing that
ever happened to you.'" Dana looked up from the phone. Nik nodded
for her to continue. "'You're such a'—I'm not saying that word—'my
friends always said so. I saw your potential when no one else did. You
were lucky to be with me, you're never going to get the chance again.
No one else will ever love an unfeeling bitch like you.'"
Well, at least she didn't need to feel guilty about hurting him
anymore.
"I don't want anyone else to ever love this unfeeling bitch.
Something terrible always happens when a man says 'I love you.' First,
Justin said it and then he tried to sabotage my career, then Fisher said
it and I get put on a big screen and he texts insults to me. If that's what
love means, no thank you."
Dana took a sip of her drink and kept reading.
"'You're going to die alone, and you could have been my princess.'
There are five exclamation points at the end of the word princess. FYI."
At least that made her laugh. Thank God for unnecessary
exclamation points.
"Okay, and here's the pièce de résistance." Dana pushed the phone
over to her, and she looked at the picture that filled the screen: Fisher,
Dodgers cap on backward, middle finger in the air, with the princess
engagement ring on said finger.
"OH MY GOD."
Dana and Courtney exploded with laughter. Courtney's head shook
so much that the pepperoni finally fell onto the table and she didn't
even notice. Nik laughed until tears streamed out of her eyes. They
collapsed against the booth cushions, laughing so much and so loudlythat even the too-cool-for-school dudes at the end of the bar turned
and stared.
"Are you KIDDING me? Is this some collective hallucination? What
was IN those drinks that Pete brought us? Since when is Fisher Vanilla
freaking Ice?"
"Well." Nik managed to stop laughing and reached for what was
definitely her final drink. "I feel better already."