“Obviously.” Hattie rolls her eyes, and I take a moment to appreciate her hair made in thick and thin braids up in a bun.Best one so far, hands down.
“Yeah. You’re the only one who does that.” Rose waves her off.
“You really ought to figure out why you feel the need to overshare like that, honey.” Tia pats Giselle’s arm, brown eyes full of motherly care.
“You know what?” Giselle fumes, and I bite back my laughter when a string of profanities in Spanish leaves her glossed lips.
“Ignore her.” Hattie turns to face me. “You got the afterglow, no doubt.”
“And?” Tia asks with an almost worried gaze. “How are you feeling about it?”
“Good.” I swipe at the fringes on my forehead. “He’s a good man.”
“The kind of man you could fall for?” Rose asks in a dreamy voice, her eyes twinkling as she gazes at me with longing. She keeps going on about how much she wants to findthe onebut seems more invested in other people’s happily ever after than her own.
“In a different lifetime,” I reply with a sigh, turning back to the rack and mindlessly shuffling clothes around.
“Look, I know Jason hurt you—” Hattie begins, but I cut her off with a sharp shake of my head.
“It isn’t just me, Hattie.” I turn to look at her so she can see how serious I am. “Michael… He isn’t a relationship kind of guy. I can’t afford to fall for him, get too invested in another guy that’ll never love me back, it’s too risky.”
“Okay.” Hattie nods.
“Player’s gonna play, Chica.” Giselle waves her hand around. “You just gotta play them right back.”
Tia and Rose join in on the sentiment with some hell yeahs, but Hattie’s staring at me, and in her eyes, I can see she understands that there’s more to it than that.
Just then, my phone rings with P!nk’s “So What,” and after half a second of frowning, I roll my eyes with a smile and tap my wireless headphone that’s always snug in my ear when I’m working on set.
“You gave yourself a ringtone?” I ask Michael, and he laughs.
“You like?” I mumble something under my breath, and Michael just laughs again. “Hey, so, what are you doing tomorrow?”
“Nothing special. Work, as usual. Maybe sitting a bit on Judith’s dress for the gala, finishing up the last couple of outfits for myself. Why?” I busy myself with separating some basics and trying to pair them with accessories in my head, then make a mental note to talk to Posey about joining our girl’s night in a couple of days.
“Rig Romero is coming in for a session. Thought you might want to drop by the studio.” I stand frozen with a black leather strapless mini dress in my hand. “Lore?”
“Yes! Absolutely. Wow. Yes. Thank you!”
“I told you, it’s an arm candy perk,” Michael reminds me.
“So, you take all your arm candy to meet multi-platinum record artists?” I ask with a coy smile, knowing the answer.
“No, just the ones I know won’t try to screw them.”
“Oh, I sense another story there.” I laugh, placing the garment in the right place. “What time?”
“We’ll be in the studio from around 10 AM until we finish recording. Could take most of the day, honestly.” Michael’s sigh is so exaggerated that I know he’s up to no good. “We’re going to have to get all the fucks out of our system in the morning.”
“We could always go for a run, do some yoga.”
“You in a pair of tight yoga pants showing off how limber you are?” he snorts. “Yeah, we better be indoors when that happens, or a whole lot of people are getting the show of a lifetime.”
“I knew the yoga poses were giving you ideas!”
“I’ll make you a deal,” he says, and I can imagine that glint of mischief in his eyes as he speaks, a shudder of anticipation tickling my skin. “You do the yoga, and I’ll show you all of my ideas.”
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Cupcake.”