Page 5 of A Taste of Vanilla
He snatches my phone out of the glass a split second before I can reach it. “Absolutely not.”
“It could be Marley.”
He checks it. “It is Marley.”
“Then give it to me,” I demand, my hand outstretched.
He squints at the screen. “She says, and I quote, ‘If you cry again, I’m coming over with a shovel.’”
I press my hand to my chest. “For Grant?”
“She didn’t specify, and I respect the ambiguity.”
“Did she say anything else?”
His mouth twitches. “She says, ‘tell her I love her, and if she texts him, I’ll shave off one of her eyebrows in her sleep.’”
I gasp. “Not my brows!” I ignore the fact that my other best friend knows Oliver would have taken my phone from me.
“She knows just where to hit,” Oliver all but smiles.
“My brows are innocent in this.”
He points to my hands. “Your thumbs are not.” He puts the phone on the shelf behind him, next to the top-shelf bourbon I know he’s pretended customers didn’t deserve.
I let my arm fall across the bar dramatically. “Everyone is so mean to me.”
“Yes, that’s why we rescued you from a gas station parking lot seven days ago.”
I lift my head just enough to glare at him. “We said we aren’t talking about that.”
“You tried to drive to Florida without checking your gas.”
“My car lies!” I cry.
“Your car has a gauge.”
“Correction: my car has adecorativegauge.”
He stops. “Halston.”
I put my hands up. “It has never once told me the truth in its life. If my car were a man, you would hate him.”
“I hate your car already,” he mumbles.
“That’s because it has personality.”
“It has a check-engine light that’s been on since Easter.”
I shrug. “Exactly. Personality.”
Oliver looks toward the ceiling like God may personally intervene.
God did not.
God had abandoned this conversation around Suzy Homemaker.
The memory of my little issue on the side of the road makes my throat tight, so I drink more betrayal bubbles.
