[Dedicated to Safiye, who I swear is one of the most talented writers I've ever met on this site. I'm seriously in love with her books and writing ideas, and she is goals, okay? Goals. <3]
"Well, I'm sorry I didn't get you your milkshake," Cara said flatly to Dacey, who pouted as she slouched in her seat at the booth. "But you really should have spoken up before the waitress walked away, so I'm going to say that was all your fault."
"Mean," moaned Dacey, putting her chin on top of her folded hands. "But it's not even like it's impossible for you to get me a milkshake now." She tipped her face up and opened her eyes wider at me. Oh God-was she going to use her puppy dog look on me? Goodness gracious. "Come on, please? Please, Lottie? Just one milkshake?"
I tapped my fingers on the table, shrugging. "If you wanted a milkshake, you could have come the other day when Josh's mom forced the lot of football players to run an organic milkshake stand." I wiggled my eyebrows at her. "I would have even given one to you for free."
Both Cara and Dacey rolled their eyes at me at the same time, which was a little creepy. Cara shook her head at me. "Since when do you know Josh?"
"Through Dom," I said before thinking properly. Immediately, I bit my tongue and sank down in my seat as soon as my two best friends exchanged a suspiciously devilish look and turned to me at the same time. What was up with their synchronized movements? Did they not know that it was incredibly frightening?
It took the two of them an extra minute to decide who was going to speak up, so I took that time to take out my phone and pretend that I had a social life outside of them (which I did, in fact, have-my cross country teammates other than Cara). At this point, I'd do anything to make it look like I didn't have Dom on my mind.
However, the sad truth was that Dom was on my mind, and to be extremely specific, the same image of him just before our lips touched kept flashing in front of my eyes every time anyone, including myself, mentioned his name. By now, I was almost convinced that his face (and those eyes) was some sort of a traffic signal by now often his name started or stopped conversation in throughout my day.
Dom.
Oh, there went a second as I attempted to hide the rapidly reddening flush spreading over my cheeks. And there went a moment of dignity.
Cara spoke up before our back-and-forth game went on for too long-after all, she was always the decisive one in our group of friends. (Actually, she was the one who came up with the idea for us three to meet at the diner.) "Lottie, you're one of the most transparent people I've ever met in my life," she started, leaning forward with folded hands. "And I'm sorry to inform you that you've been hanging around Dom for so long that it's hard to deny that you have a thing for him."
"That's putting it mildly," Dacey cut in, shooting me a smile. I supposed it was half a good thing and half a bad thing that she'd forgotten all about her milkshake due to her discussion of my...relationship with Dom.
(Now I was very certain that our conversation topic change from milkshakes to Dom was a bad thing. Was it really that difficult for my friends to find a topic that didn't involve me and my horrifying love life? I supposed it was. Their lives must be extremely boring...but again, they could never be bored if they were witness to almost everything that happened between me and Dom.)
"All right, all right," I burst out, waving my hands in front of me in a very weak attempt to hide my face, which felt like it was bright red. "Whatever, you've all known forever that I have a thing for Dom, and could we, like, move on? Please?"
Cara and Dacey looked at each other again, narrowing their eyes. After maintaining their staring thing for a couple seconds, they nodded at each other and turned back to me. (Seriously, I was starting to wonder if I was facing their doppelgängers and not them.) "No," they declared to me at the same time with scarily steadily eyes.
I was practically shaking in my sandals.
(But for real-it was creepy. I'd never seen them so...united. Cara usually always complained about Dacey and her sentimentality, and Dacey usually showered excessive love on Cara just for the hell of it.)
"Guys, come on," I groaned. I caught sight of a waitress walking by in her apron and waved a hand to get her attention. Once she came over with a nod and an expectant smile, I said, "One large strawberry banana milkshake, please. On my tab too."
Once she walked away, I turned back and raised my eyebrows at Dacey. "Will you please shut up now?"
I was still painfully aware of how my cheeks still felt pretty much as warm as they were before I borrowed the waitress as a diversion from Cara and Dacey's weird Dom discussion. And oh, my cheeks warmed up even more although I hadn't even gotten the chance to cool down yet. Sometimes, I wished that my cheeks were like a broken computer-after overheating, they would most likely shut down or at least stop getting warmer.
Dacey shook her head at me, eyes twinkling.
There was a moment of silence as the three of us looked at each other. I felt like they were my parents and I was the rebel child who'd managed to fail all my classes from the way the two of them were staring me down. It wasn't fair. It really wasn't.
Finally, I'd had enough, and I slammed my fork down on my plate. Even though I hadn't created the booming, thudding sound that I'd been going for, I supposed that was as much noise as I could possibly create and raised my eyebrows at the two of them. "All right: I'll admit it. Friends aren't supposed to kiss and act totally casual after it. But we kissed, and afterwards, it was like absolutely nothing happened. So there!"
I leaned back in my seat.
I knew the two of them well enough to not deceive myself into thinking that could indulge their questions.
But again, I really was hoping that I didn't have to keep discussing Dom when he was obviously my weak spot. Why did they never choose to have a conversation concerning my strong points? I could go on and on about Guys and Dolls, not the complexity and multi-faceted implications behind my relationship with Dom.
"Does Dom think about it that way?" Cara pointed out. She took a sip from her glass of orange juice. "That's the important part."
I held my hands up. "I don't know; I don't know!" My voice grew higher with each word I spoke. "He was the one who just smiled at me and sat there for the rest of the movie after the incident! I mean, I'm not stupid to think that absolutely nothing has changed, but-"
"Lottie, darling," interrupted Dacey, who put a hand on my shoulder like she was my older sister (when in actuality, I was about four months older than she was), "chill. You're not helping yourself."
I poked her right back, feeling a little like a hysterical child who'd overdosed on Pixie Sticks. "And you're not helping too," I retorted, "by pointing out everything that I didn't want to talk about!"
Cara wagged her finger at me. "But you need this. You've already gone through enough denial."
"Stop it!"
"We're just trying to help you," said Dacey in her most calming voice. It didn't really work since I knew well that she mostly used that voice to calm down fussing babies or out-of-control cocker spaniels. "How about you start thinking about it that way?"
"No."
"Lottie," Cara and Dacey said at the same time.
"No."
Cara turned to Dacey and sighed, shrugging. "Well," she said to her, "I think we should drop this. We've been acting for too long, and I really can't stand your empathy act anymore."
"But I love you, Car!" protested Dacey, who tried her best to throw herself across the distance between the two of them in the booth. It didn't really work out since that was the exact moment the waitress came back with Dacey's milkshake, sending all of us a suspicious look as she set the huge glass in front of Dacey. Luckily for Cara and me, Dacey seemed to completely forget everything we were discussing previously and latched onto the straw in her milkshake like a leech.
"I don't love her," Cara muttered to me. She always did like getting the last word in...which I never quite understood, but I supposed that was all a part of her Cara-ness.
We all sat there for a couple moments, mostly because Cara and I couldn't figure out what to do with ourselves as Dacey somehow managed to drain away half of the milkshake in a minute and a half flat. (How did she not have a brain freeze?) A couple times, I awkwardly made eye contact with Cara, but I could tell that she wanted to tell me whatever she had on her mind with Dacey, which was probably part of the normal plan.
Too bad Dacey was absolute shit at following plans.
Then, Cara grew too impatient to be sitting around uselessly and cleared her throat. "All right, Lottie, Dacey"-she threw a sharp glare at the mentioned person, who blinked-"and I have something official that we want to tell you."
"Are you getting engaged?" I blurted out without a second thought.
Cara threw the most disgusted look I'd ever seen yet-rivalling Dom himself after I once informed him that I'd memorized exactly one hundred and twenty-three facts about Frank Sinatra-and scoffed. "No, I don't want her love. I already feel suffocated."
I glanced over to Dacey, who looked like she had just witnessed Cara drive over a basket of newborn puppies with a monster truck.
We took a second to gather our thoughts. Then, Cara spoke up again. She started a lot more gently and seriously, "Lottie, Dacey and I just wanted to tell you that we think you and Dom are totally cute." She took a breath. For some reason, I kind of felt like I was being punk'd. I shrugged it off when Cara continued, "And you two kind of fit in a sort of fucked up way. And yeah, we agreed that we wouldn't give you too much hell about your thing anymore."
Dacey nodded. "We're super proud of you, Lottie dear," she said, rubbing my shoulder in that specific way that my grandmother would give me affection. I narrowed my eyes at her, but she didn't take her hand off. "But, like, seriously. Seriously."
"So this is official," I said. "I can hold you to this."
They both nodded, and just then, the entire thing felt so serious that I couldn't help but let out a little giggle. That set off Dacey's grin, which then led to one of Cara's chuckles. And really, Cara had a way about her that influenced her company's feelings. And besides, Cara didn't laugh as often as Dacey or I did, and there was another reason to laugh.
After the three of us finished up with laughing our guts out (Dacey even wiped a tear out of the corner of her eye), I nodded at the two of them. "Well, thanks, guys." I exhaled. "Now all I have to do is to get my doofus brother's approval and then wait to see if Dom will even make a move."
I could feel my cheeks warming up again.
What was I, a fireplace? Why was I the host to so many red-hot fires?
At the mention of my brother, Dacey's face fell a little. Just a little. But Cara and I weren't exactly the worst best friends in the world (even though Cara once fucked up and wished Dacey happy birthday on the day of her grandfather's funeral).
"Carter?" I said a little hesitantly. Was it my turn to be Dacey? Shit, I absolutely sucked at this sentimental business. "Come on, Dacey. He's slow. Think of him as..." I rolled my eyes to the ceiling to make a connection and then blurted out the next thing that came to my mind. "Look, Carter's kind of like the first smartphone-super laggy. He's, like, super old."
Cara bit her lips and failed miserably at hiding her ever-growing smile.
"That's not nice," muttered Dacey. To her credit, she didn't seem too sad about it. So far, her relationship with my brother had gotten absolutely nowhere, even despite Plan Bikini. "You need to appreciate him more."
I rolled my eyes. (My cheeks were still taking their sweet time cooling down from the last mention of Dom.) "The only responsible, big-brother-like thing that he's ever done for me is to drive me home after I drink way too much at a party. Aside from that, his favorite hobby is pushing me down the stairs and watching how I recover from that."
Cara let out a choked giggle.
Dacey shot her a flat look. "But seriously, Lottie," she continued, "we haven't gotten anywhere. Shouldn't we take that as a hint that we're doing something wrong?"
"Please stop making this sound like you're planning a worldwide invasion," Cara cut in, spearing a stray blueberry off her plate. "It's just Carter. And please do try to leave me out of this. I don't do matchmaking."
"Well, you do now," I said to her, nodding emphatically. "I'm the little sister. No matter how much I try to tell myself that this is morally acceptable"-I choked on the last few words-"I will always be held back on some things, and you need to back me up."
Cara groaned but made no further protests. She never really was against this whole matter, was she? It was more like she chose to not involve herself, preferring to watch Dacey and me fail miserably...which I had to admit wasn't a bad thing to do. Watching us alone was almost like watching a teen drama, which always inevitably led to some sort of amusing disaster.
"We're bad at this," repeated Dacey, like we needed some negative energy to get us going. "We need someone fresh."
"Cara's fresh," I pointed out. "She's had no involvement thus far, and the most she's ever done in this matter is to laugh at me whenever I tell her about how far we've gotten."
"But she's, like, on our side," Dacey pressed on. "We need someone who knows how Carter and we think at the same time."
I held up a hand and cleared my throat. "Who might that be?"
Dacey didn't bother to answer, and Cara decided to be a sarcastic ass. "Oh, I don't know," Cara said loudly, shrugging. She looked like she was about to dislocate one of her shoulders. "Maybe Lottie's mom. She's still a totally cool mom, right?"
I sighed. "You guys are so annoying." I turned back to Dacey. "Hello? I'm your inside man. I've lived with Carter for about seventeen years of my life; I've got the scoop on him"-Cara rolled her eyes-"and how much more experience do you want?"
"You're not a dude." Dacey took a sip from her milkshake. "You're way too sappy, and besides, Lottie, you spend most of your time writing essays about Dom's abs, I bet. I really don't think that Carter thinks that way."
I tried to answer her, but my mouth couldn't seem to work. It just hung open there. Finally, after having enough of two sets of amused eyes stare at me, I spluttered out, "I do not day dream about Dom's abs, let alone write essays about them! I spend a lot of my time, you know, doing schoolwork and the such..."
Cara shook her head at me. "You know you're not an angel, Lottie."
I shook my head right back at her. "Oh, whatever. Just reject everything I have to say."
Dacey pursed her lips. "I don't know, Lottie. We need to get someone who understands the male mind and isn't just some random dude we pick off the streets."
"The streets," I muttered, darkly picking up the last of my pancakes with my fork. "What are they going to come up with next? The sewer? The local dump? The nearest strip club?" I looked up to meet Cara's and Dacey's slightly freaked out eyes. "What? The pain of rejection never quite dies down."
Cara held up a hand. "Well, let's be rational and clever now, guys. Blind guesses aren't gonna help. But remember what we were talking about before this?"
Immediately, my cheeks lit up like Christmas lights. "I thought you guys weren't going to talk about that anymore."
Oh God, how was I supposed to get his face out of my mind now? I seriously couldn't discuss my brother when he was there distracting me with all of his gloriousness.
Dacey raised her eyebrows. "Yeah, Cara?" She finished up her milkshake (so quickly!) and off-handedly threw her a clean napkin. "How does Lottie's love life figure into this at all?"
I was about to open my mouth and affirm Dacey's comment, but then, it was like someone lit a light bulb in my brain. (This also meant that more blood went to my brain instead of to my cheeks, which was a plus.) "Oh-my-gosh," I said. "Why didn't I think of this earlier?"
"What?" Dacey blinked, looking from me to Cara and back again. "What?" she repeated when no one responded to her. Then, after a while, she threw up her hands and slouched down in her seat. "Why does nobody tell me anything?" A little more quietly, she added a couple seconds later, "And I want another milkshake."
I picked up my phone and opened my texts, scrolling to the one contact I'd texted about three times in total (mostly because I couldn't manage typing out anything without feeling too scared to press "send"). I took a breath. All right. What was he supposed to think after our last thing? What was he going to think of me after I asked him this favor?
"Fuck it," I whispered to myself and started to type out the text.
Hey, Dom. I have a favor to ask you.
The thing was that he already thought I was a little bonkers, so this wouldn't make a difference.
I hoped.
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Hey everyone! I literally just saw you guys three days ago (or something like that; I suck at math), so I'll spare you my rambling about the week. But really, how are you? Any funny stories to share with us all?
So this was just a nice little interlude between the action...but I'll just say that this launches an important initiative in the Carter + Dacey plan ;) Dom is finally getting even more involved, which is definitely fun (he'll be very instrumental in a couple of upcoming chapters). Let's just say that the next chapter is one of my favorites!
The song for this chapter is a little obscure since it isn't in the movie (but it was in the original musical). To be honest, I didn't know about this song until I did some further research into the musical for this book, haha. But anyway, I love the message behind it--Sarah Brown does need an avuncular figure (Brother Abernathy, with whom she works in the mission) in her life to guide her through decisions about a certain gambler, and also, it fits in perfectly with this chapter. So yeah. The song is attached above! (The audio may not be the best, but I love the actor playing Brother Abernathy.)
The next update will be next Friday (for no particular reason), so please keep your eyes peeled for that!
As usual, thank you so much for everything, and I hope you're having a fantastic day.
Anne xo