Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 121887 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121887 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 609(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 406(@300wpm)
This was real.
And even though I’d scrimped and saved and sold a few designer pieces on online resale sites (presents from Mom that were worth money, but they were so not me or any girl in her 20s, or 30s, or even 40s) to afford my cute-girl décor, I loved it that Luna and Shanti had their feet curled under them on my couch.
“Okay, so we think you should reach out to Kev,” Luna launched in after I fell to my behind on a pale-pink velvet pouf on the floor. “If he hasn’t unmatched you, tell him that Javi is your ex. The breakup was messy. He isn’t big on letting you go. He was lying about the girlfriend business, and definitely the pregnant part, in order to send your date packing. See how he responds to that.”
“This might be a new in, him thinking you’re vulnerable and he can take advantage of that,” Jessie added.
“On it,” I said and looked down at my phone.
When I woke up my screen, my heart skipped a beat when I saw another first, as it came from Javi.
I had a message from him.
He’d never texted me directly. It was always in our group chat (which Jessie had named The Valley Valkyries and Vikings, that said, she changed the name all the time, it used to be The Mighty Sunburns).
Though, I was wrong.
I didn’t have a text from him.
I had three.
“What’s up?” Jess asked.
My head snapped up. “Nothing.”
“You were looking at your phone like it grew teeth,” Shanti observed.
Ugh.
They weren’t going to let this go.
“Javi texted,” I shared.
“Ooo, what’d he say?” Raye asked.
I was not going to look.
I was going to delete them without reading them.
Then I was going to text him to inform him that for both of our sakes, and for the care and love of our friends, we were going to have to figure out how to stomach each other, at the same time warning him I was going to block him.
But that would come later.
“Can we drop the Javi thing?” I requested as I engaged my phone and went to the app.
“This is weirding me out. You’re never secretive,” Luna noted.
Before I could say anything, Jess got there.
“How about we make a deal? You give Lolo some space with whatever happened between her and Javi, or you spill about whatever’s up your ass about Knox.”
God, I loved my bestest bestie.
Luna shut her mouth so fast, her teeth clacked.
I exchanged a there’s-so-totally-a-story-there look with Willow before I went back to my phone.
Kevin had unmatched me.
“I’m unmatched,” I announced.
“Shit,” Raye murmured.
“Fuck,” Jess muttered.
“Harlow was our only in,” Willow said worriedly.
We had, since learning of Willow’s situation with Kevin, extricated her from Kevin’s clutches.
Kind of, he still found ways to get in touch regularly to give it a go.
As such, he’d been instigating some pretty intense maneuvers to win her back. This was after breakup number two, which was messier than breakup number one, and from reports from Shanti, breakup number one sounded more like relationship Armageddon, so breakup number two was indescribable.
After that mess, why he thought he could get back in was anyone’s guess. And since then, over wine, or cocktails or nachos (etc.), we’d done a lot of guessing.
Bottom line, he was a mooch. He couldn’t hold down a job, but he liked the high life.
Willow made the baked goods sold at the coffee counter at The Surf Club and was a server after she stocked the case. She had a side business doing special occasion cakes. She wasn’t rolling in it.
But Kevin had sucked her dry anyway.
Twice.
And now he was eating lobster and drinking top shelf whisky on innocent women’s dimes while hocking their bags, wallets and phones, stealing their money and using their credit cards before they were cut off.
On these unhappy thoughts, I sipped wine.
Then I said to my posse, “Okay, hear me out.”
Everyone looked to me.
“Jinx is cute as a button,” I declared.
And I was right.
Sure, our friend Jinx also had a profession as a lady of the evening, but she was petite and super pretty. We’d seen her dressed in her off-duty clothes, and she might not dress like me or Willow in varying shades of Adorable!, but we could fake it until we put Kev (and I suspected, Trev) out of commission.
“I’m liking this,” Raye said.
“Get Arthur to ante up, make it worth her while,” Luna planned.
“Jinx?” Shanti asked.
“She’s one of our informants. She’s a sex worker,” Jess explained.
“Ah,” Shanti murmured.
“You gals really live on the edge,” Willow said, sounding as if she was no longer sure she wanted to hang in that space with us.
“You’ll love her when you meet her,” I told Willow. “I mean, maybe you’ll love her the third or fourth time you meet her, because she has a hard shell. But under that, she’s totally sweet.”