Harlow said she’d meet us at the park.
This is the first time we’ll all be together since my phone call with Mia, and since I found out Harlow was upset about me being with Luke. Lola insisted we should take advantage of this shared day off. She insisted what we all needed was girl time. She insisted it wouldn’t be weird.
But let’s be honest: I’m sort of a novice when it comes to intimate girl friendships, and Harlow’s temper is legendary. It’s totally going to be weird.
It’s a perfect day: the sky is blue with only the fluffiest, most innocent clouds overhead. The air is warm in the sun, cool in the shade, and wherever we go it’s heavy with the scent of salt water. I want to believe there isn’t any further drama to be found here but even I, a staunchly anti-drama advocate, can’t imagine we’ll all just pretend that nothing happened.
“Everyone’s okay, right?” Lola says, breaking the silence.
I can’t tell if she’s asking me, or Mia.
“I’m good,” Mia says from the backseat.
“I’m good, too!” I chirp.
I can feel them both look to me. We pull up to a stop sign and the Prius falls so completely silent, I can practically hear the brightness of my answer echoing through the car.
“We’re all best friends, you know,” Lola says, but she waves her hand in a circle, clearly including me. “I think that’s just why Harlow flipped. She’s cool.”
“Good,” I say, grinning over at her and determined to not apologize again. I appreciate the gesture she’s made, of helping me feel as tight in the group as the rest of them, so I try to focus on that instead of pointing out the obvious, that I wasn’t around four, three, or even two years ago when Luke and Mia would have been working through anything. Besides, it’s moot anyway, and the more we talk about Luke, the more it becomes a thing.
It’s so not a thing.
When he’d called me last night, I’d been in the middle of an order and had to double-check that it was actually him on the line, and not some random guy who’d managed to get my name off their receipt . . . though admittedly none of them call me Logan.
Was Luke really calling to ask me out? Luke Right now I’d be terrible at anything more Sutter? Fred watched me with the most amused expression and I had to turn my back to him, because the look of surprise on my face would have been enough to have him questioning me for the rest of the night.
Luke sounded so sincere that, for a moment, I’d been caught off guard. I like Luke—which is actually part of the problem.
So I’d lied, telling him I had to work when I could have simply said I already have plans.
Which I do.
I hate lying.
I’ll call him later, I decide. I’ll admit that I panicked, that I wasn’t prepared for him to call me at work. But I’ll make it clear—without being harsh—that the best he and I can ever hope for is friendship.
We pull into the lot and everyone piles out of the car, stretching limbs and turning faces up into the sun. Balboa Park is an enormous park in the center of urban San Diego. The zoo is one of the best in the world, there are more gardens and museums than can be visited in a single day, but we usually come for the giant stretches of lawn beneath the brilliant blue sky.
We find a shady spot under a towering tree, and spread out a blanket. I slip off my shoes and revel in the cool grass slipping through my toes before I plop down, hoping to shut my brain off for a few hours.
Lola opens the picnic basket and tosses us each a bottle of water before brandishing a small box of cupcakes. “We’re eating dessert first.”
“I do not need a cupcake,” I groan, stretching out on the blanket. “I polished off an entire pint of Ben and Jerry’s when I got home from work last night.”
“At Fred’s?” Mia asks, bending to straighten her side of the blanket. Her dark hair is cut shorter again and skims her jawline as she leans forward. It’s a cut most people could never hope to pull off—angular, maybe even a little harsh—but with her delicate features and creamy skin, I’m pretty sure she could be wearing one of those hats with the beer cans on it and still manage to look gorgeous.
Mia is of course lovely, but it’s moments like these where I can really see her and Luke as a couple: beautiful, petite, porcelain-doll Mia, and Abercrombie & Fitch Luke who has better cheekbones than any woman I know.
“Yeah, Fred’s.”
“I can’t keep track of your schedule,” Lola says, handing me a cupcake anyway.
“Because she works too damn much,” Harlow says, startling me as she seems to appear out of nowhere. She sits down next to me. “Hey, everyone.”
We all return the greeting . . . and when she looks over at me, yeah, it’s weird. Her smile is tight, and mine is probably too wide.
But we’re all committed, apparently. Harlow takes an offered cupcake from Lola and crosses her legs in front of her. “Guess who I just ran into in the parking lot?”
I don’t even bother guessing. Practically everyone I know in San Diego is sitting on this blanket.
Apparently Lola and Mia draw a similar level of blank, because they ask in unison, “Who?”
“Ethan Crumbley.”
It clearly takes both of them a few seconds to place him, because Harlow adds, “The UCLA football dude.”
“Ohhhhhh,” they coo in unison again, and based on their reactions, I wish I’d run into him, too.
“Sadly,” Harlow says, licking a little frosting off her finger, “he has not aged too well.”
“Oh, that is sad,” Mia says. “But I guess he was sort of a jerk, and it’s better to see the ex looking like crap than seeing him with someone super hot!”
Oh fuck.
Mia snaps her mouth shut, throwing Lola a horrified look.
Harlow takes an enormous bite of her cupcake and looks up at the three of us who have gone completely silent. “What?” she asks, mouth full. “Finn is leaving for two weeks and if I’m not getting sex I should at least be getting something with frosting on it.”
Okay, clearly Harlow did not pick up on the weirdness there and apparently assumed we were just horrified that she managed to eat half of a cupcake in a single bite. I can see Mia relax a little across from me.
I would do anything for a reassuring smile from someone today.
“How’s Finn adjusting to the filming?” Lola asks.
“Very few complaints, actually,” Harlow says. “Which is surprising because Finn usually complains about everything. Nonverbally, that is: his chosen medium of expression is typically heavy sighs.”
“Wow, how few things you two have in common,” Mia says, and Harlow throws one of her flip-flops at her.
“Well, I for one am thrilled to be out,” Lola says. “If I had to spend one more second looking at the terrible mock-ups of the site I’m having done, I was going to lose my mind.”
“You’re having a new site built?” Mia asks, and Lola nods.
“Yeah, but so far it’s been disastrous. This guy came really highly recommended, but so far he doesn’t seem to get the art, if that makes sense?”
“I think it makes perfect sense,” I tell her, and everyone looks to me as if they’ve forgotten that I was here. “I could take a look at it, if you wanted?”
Lola looks like someone just offered her a puppy. “You’d do that?”