“Do you need anything or can I take this call?” I ask her. “It’s important.”
“Oh, take it,” she says, waving a hand through the air. “I got nowhere to be.”
Swiping the screen and heading into the back, I feel my heartbeat soar. “Hey,” I say once I can hear.
“Hey.” Her voice is sweet, but missing the warmth I usually hear. “Where are you?”
“I had to fill in for Nate for a little bit.”
“So you’re at the bar?”
“Yeah.” I hear her sadness and want desperately to make it leave. “Hey, your brother’s buddy Travis called today.”
“Troy’s brother?”
“Yeah, that one. He’s coming by tomorrow to look at some stuff for Nate. He’s a cool guy.”
“Travis and Troy are both awesome. I knew you’d like him.”
“So what are you doing?” I ask like I have no idea.
“Well, I’m in the car on my way to Picante,” she sighs. “I wish you were here.”
“It’s on T.V.,” I tell her. “I’ve been waiting to see you.”
“They’re supposed to interview me when I get there. I hate that part of it.”
I laugh, picking up a glass and putting it in the sink. “You’re famous.”
“Hardly,” she groans. “We’re pulling up. I’ll see you after?”
“Let me know when you’re home and I’ll come over,” I promise. “Have fun tonight.”
“I’ll miss you.”
“You, too, Cam.”
She’s gone before I even get it all said. With a frown that I hate wearing, I tuck my phone in the pocket of my jeans and head back to the front.
“Can I get a Jack and Coke?” someone shouts right away.
I make the drink and deliver it to a man next to Billy. When I look up, I see her on the screen.
She’s breathtakingly gorgeous in a light yellow dress that sits off her shoulders. Her hair is pulled up, diamonds in her ears, and her make-up so minimal, if she has any on at all, that she looks like an angel.
“She’s pretty, all right,” Red Lips says, sidling up to the bar again. She sighs a rough, smoker’s cough. “I wonder what it’s like to be one of them.”
“I have no idea,” I say, fascinated by Camilla. She smiling, not looking at all like the mellow woman I just talked to on the phone. She laughs, teasing the interviewer, before posing for a few pictures and disappearing inside the hotel.
“I’ll never know,” Red Lips admits. “Hell, you could dress me up in one of those dresses and dot me with diamonds and I’d still look like a poser. You can take the girl out of the trailer park but you can’t take the trailer park out of the girl.”
She laughs at her joke, repeating it to the guy that joins her at the bar. He laughs too.
I, on the other hand, do not. Not because she isn’t funny. Because she’s right.
Camilla
“ARE YOU TIRED OF SMILING yet?” Sienna whispers in my ear. “My cheeks ache.”