“What? Oh, Bennet. I, ah, I don’t know, really. I don’t hear from him a lot.”
“The rags say he’s having all those rockstar good times,” Vi said, shrugging. “I ran into him in Vegas last year actually. He was coming out of a club that I was looking for a skip in. There was a line of girls waiting to get their tits signed by him.”
“Gross,” Luna said, nose wrinkling.
“Says the girl who read an entire smutty rockstar series the last time we tried to take a girls weekend away,” Gracie shot back.
“Your brother is a rockstar?” I asked, confused at how casually they were discussing it.
“Yeah. I mean, he’s not exactly like eighties and nineties level sort of rock star,” Layna said. “But, you know, rock isn’t as prevalent as it used to be. But I did read an article claiming his band was going to single-handedly revive the genre. So that’s cool.”
“Are there other famous members of this group of yours?” I asked.
“I mean, Kit and Ria have millions of followers,” Gracie said, beaming, clearly proud of her friends.
“On social media,” Ria clarified. “On our vlogs, we average more like three hundred thousand.”
“Which is a huge amount of people,” Gracie insisted, not a fan of them trying to play down their success.
Gracie was, I concluded, the group’s cheerleader and mom figure, all in one.
She was the one planning their parties and celebrating their successes. And I would bet good money that she was the one who would be the first at your door with chicken noodle soup if you were sick. Or with ice cream and tissues if you were going through a breakup.
Every friend group, in my humble opinion, needed a Gracie.
But perhaps even more so… this friend group. Full of loud and larger-than-life personalities like Billie and Vi and Layna, and the vlog ladies.
She was the glue, whether she saw that or not.
“Okay, girls, I hate to do this, especially since Luna just got here, but I have to get a little bit of work done today too,” Willa said as she slipped her platinum card into the server book and set it at the edge of the table.
“Don’t worry about Luna,” Vi said, nodding her head toward her. “We’ve already lost her.”
And, sure enough, she had her nose buried in her book again.
“The universe needs to send her, like, a hot lord, or smoldering mafia guy or something so she gets dragged back to the real world for a bit,” Layna decided.
“Luna, how about you switch to a booth?” Gracie invited, actually leading the woman over toward the window, to settle her down at her own table so she could eat and read in peace.
As soon as Willa got her card back, the rest of us all stood in unison, each reaching for our wallets to try to leave the tip.
“We stole the table for hours,” I said, tossing money onto the table, and the rest of them followed suit.
I knew what a difference it meant when someone could tip well. I hoped the server put it toward something good or fun.
“Okay, so,” Layna said as we got to the house again. “Next time, I say we take her to the fight club.”
“Or the underground casino,” Gracie suggested.
“Ugh, no,” Layna declared.
“Oh, right. That whole thing,” Gracie said, leaving me out of the loop, but I figured that I would catch up eventually.
“Well, Theo, it was really nice,” Willa said, giving me a smile as I climbed out and she—and the rest of them—rolled down their windows to talk to me.
“I had a really good time,” I told them. “I’ve never really had any… female friends. I think I’ve been missing out all these years.”
“Well, you’re stuck with us now,” Vi said. “Gracie will see to that.”
“I’m looking forward to it,” I assured them, waving to them, then watching as they pulled away.
As I went back into my house, I was a little overwhelmed with all the things in my life I had to be happy about.
A cute pig.
A sweet kitten.
The girls club.
And Dezi.
I was convinced nothing could kill my buzz.
That is, of course, until all the pain and bleeding.
But I didn’t know that at the time.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Dezi
I was just finishing the fucking laundry that Brooks had made me do because he was pissed at me for, well, something I said. I didn’t even remember. Clearly, he did.
But he would also regret giving me the task, someone who didn’t know dick about doing laundry, and therefore I ended up fucking dying everything in the load a nice shade of pink thanks to a red sweatshirt I’d tossed in too.
“Jesus Christ,” Brooks grumbled, his forehead actually meeting his chin. This was clearly the cherry on the pie of a shitty day for him. I actually kind of felt bad about it.