Lauren Myers was the one who topped off our Three Musketeers trio. Paige and I met Lauren on the first day of our freshman year at Norhurst University. The three of us had been standing in the cafeteria, staring at the lasagna as though we were waiting for it to move. Lauren had made some hilarious statement about how she’d always dreamed of two things when she thought about what college would be like—one, that the boys would be hotter and in more ample supply; two, that the cafeteria food wouldn’t give her the shits. Then she added something about how getting one out of two wasn’t horrible. Paige and I had died laughing and a lifelong friendship had been born.
“No, what?” I asked, unsure if I really wanted to know.
“You have no excuse to not drink with me!”
I rolled my eyes. “Already said I wasn’t getting sloshed tonight,”
Paige peeked her head into my room. “I didn’t say sloshed…I said to drink with me. What, has it been so long since you’ve been out drinking that you’ve become a little lightweight again?” she teased.
“Yes, as a matter of fact, it has. I’ve been working my ass off lately between Cross Meadows and school, unlike some…” I raised an eyebrow at her, insinuating my point further.
An exaggerated expression of hurt stretched across her face. “Blaire, you know just as well as I do that I work as hard as you. I might not work as much, but I do work just as hard.”
I placed a hand on my hip and glared at her. “Really? That’s what you’re going with?”
“You have to admit I’m right.” She laughed.
I pursed my lips together. Paige hadn’t held a steady job for as long as I’d known her. Most would question why I’d decided to share an apartment with someone who was so irresponsible and careless when it came to things such as bills. My answer: Paige was my best friend and she had never let me down once in the length of our friendship. She always came through regardless.
Friendship was reason number one. Money was reason number two. Paige’s parents were loaded. All she had to do was make a phone call home to Daddy and the money was in her account the next day. Problem solved.
If you asked me, it was a lazy way to parent. It seemed to me that parents should raise their children to stand on their own two feet…which didn’t include bailing them out with their own money every time their child was in a jam. Then again, maybe that was just my non-loaded, poor parents upraising.
Reaching for a tissue from my nightstand, I blew my nose and then tossed it at her.
“Eww!” she shrieked.
I chuckled. “Go get ready, you always take longer than I do.”
* * *
In thirty-five minutes I was showered and standing in front of the mirror in my bathroom, straightening my hair. One piece continued to flip in the wrong direction no matter how many times I ran my scorching-hot straightener over it. Giving up, I secured the piece in place with a bobby pin and called it good. My nose was sore and raw, and my eyes had massive dark circles underneath, but after a few coats of concealer any trace of those telltale sick signs disappeared and I sent a silent thank you up to the makeup gods. If I was being forced into a girls’ night out feeling like crap, then I at least didn’t want to look like I felt.
A knock sounded at the front door. Neither Paige nor I rushed to answer it, because we knew it was just Lauren and she’d let herself in anyway.
“You guys?” Lauren shouted down the hall.
“Back here,” I answered her. Paige must have been too occupied primping to speak.
“Hey,” Lauren said. She wore a short, multicolored dress with a thick black belt cutting it in half and a pair of cute purple heels. The entire outfit would look horrendous on me, but she managed to pull it off effortlessly. As always. “I’m surprised you agreed to come out with us.”
I reapplied another layer of black eyeliner and frowned at her. “You guys act like I never do anything fun.”
“Well, since you took that CNA job at Cross Meadows you kind of don’t,” she insisted.
Had it come from anyone else I would have been offended, but since it came from Lauren, and I knew she wasn’t saying it out of hate but merely sincerity, I let it slide. Sighing at my refection, I shifted my eyes in the mirror to her.
“I know.” I pursed my lips together for a moment. “I haven’t been doing much of anything besides working and studying lately.”
Unwrapping another throat lozenge, I popped it in my mouth and attempted to think back to the last time I went out with the girls. Paige’s birthday, nearly two months ago, was the only time that came to mind. I’d really let myself become a hermit. Paige walked into my room. The ends of her hair had been curled into little ringlets, and she only had one eye made up.
“I thought I heard you,” Paige said to Lauren. She pointed at her with her mascara wand. “I need your help choosing which dress matches the shoes I want to wear tonight.” She led Lauren back to her room.
“And you couldn’t have asked me?” I shouted after them.
“You’d tell me to pick a different pair of shoes, because you’d think they were uglier than sin,” Paige yelled in reply.
My nose scrunched up. What? Why would she think I’d say something like that? I started down the hall after them to check these shoes out for myself. I paused at the door to Paige’s room. Dear Lord, she really needed to clean. I tried not to be anal when it came to housework, but Jesus, my little niece kept her room cleaner than this and she was three!
The black-and-white, zebra-striped comforter and bright pink sheets were crumpled up at the foot of her bed in a heap. There were clothes of every color slung all over her bed, making it look like her closet threw up. Soda cans, lotions, and perfume bottles lined the top of her dresser. Nail polishes and hair ties littered her nightstand. Magazines along with dirty laundry covered the hardwood floor.
Paige and Lauren stood in the center of the mess. In nothing besides her bra, panties, and a pair of the ugliest shoes I’d ever seen, Paige held up one dress to herself after another as Lauren scrunched her face in disapproval at them all.
“Those are the shoes you’re wearing?” I asked, taking them in once more. They were some kind of crazy print with tones of seafoam green, purple, and gold. She was right. I thought they were hideous.
“You don’t like them. I can tell by looking at your face,” Paige laughed. “I knew you wouldn’t, that’s why I didn’t bother asking you which dress would go with them.”
Switching the lozenge from my right cheek to my left, I glanced down at them again. “You actually paid money for those things?”
“Yeah, I did,” Paige scoffed.
“You could have saved yourself a crapload of money by buying a white pair and giving Tinley some finger paints.”
Lauren burst into laughter. “I don’t know which is funnier to me right now—the thought of little Tinley decorating a pair of shoes for you, Paige, or the look on your face.”
Paige planted her hands on her hips and glared at us both, which made me think she looked even more ridiculous.
“Whatever.” She stalked off into her closet with a dress the same shade of seafoam green as on her shoes.
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Blaire Hayes enjoys a quiet life, spending her days as a CNA at the local nursing home and nights studying for exams. She prefers things to be as uncomplicated as possible—but when her friends drag her to a party and she bumps into her high school crush, the path of Blaire’s life veers in an entirely different direction than what she had planned for herself.
Jason Bryant created a nice life away from his hometown, putting distance between himself and the suffocating sadness of his father’s death. But when he finds out his grandfather’s health is deteriorating, he decides he must return home. Partying was not on his agenda while in town, but it’s how he bumps into Blaire Hayes—the girl he’d always thought of in high school as an unobtainable pass.