by Max Monroe
I stare down at her last message.
Oh, holy shit. What did I just do? WHAT DID I JUST DO?
A boulder of anxiety and regret crash-lands inside my chest, and I give it a moment, just on the off chance it’ll actually kill me before I have to deal with the consequences of my hair-trigger reaction.
When I don’t pass out or pass on, I have no option but to scream my frustration into the ether of my apartment while typing out the digits of my number and my email.
Callie Camden-Baccus: Perfect! Expect an email from me by tomorrow morning!
“Aw, yay!” I mutter out loud to myself, mocking Callie’s superficially cheery, fucking phony demeanor. “I, like, can’t wait. It’s all so totally awesome!”
On a sigh, I close out of the chat box and toss my phone into my purse and get ready to finally leave my apartment for the night.
Thank God. This is way too much unnecessary stress on Halloween.
I only get two steps toward my door when my phone starts ringing from inside my purse. I dig it back out again to find an unknown number with a Vermont area code flashing on the screen.
I know I should let it roll to voice mail, but Aunt Poppy called me from jail one time, and I never heard the end of how I wasted her one phone call by not answering.
Reluctantly, I hit the green button and put it to my ear.
“Ava! It’s Callie!”
Damn Aunt Poppy and her fascination with streaking!
“Oh, uh…hi, Callie…”
“Sorry to bother you, but I had one more question to ask, and since I now have your number, I figured I’d just call you really quick!”
Greattt. “Sure thing,” I say with saccharine sweetness.
“Since I have to finalize the head count for the venue by tomorrow, I need to know if I should just put you down as a single,” she begins. “Pretty sure your mom told me you weren’t married or engaged or dating anyone, but I just want to double-check that you’re still single. Honestly, I think you’re one of only ten people from our high school that isn’t married yet!” she exclaims through an amused giggle.
I put my phone on speaker, drop it down on my entry table, and give it the double finger with as much gusto as I can manage.
Obviously unaware of my display, she continues. “So crazy that most of us have reached the age where we’re married, and some with kids now. Which, by the way, I can’t believe your baby sister Kate is getting married before you. Soon, you’re going to be the only single Lucie left!”
My tongue is tied by an imaginary angry fist, but it doesn’t matter. One of the only positive qualities Callie possesses is the ability to carry on an entire conversation herself.
“By the way, you’re the best for helping me plan the reunion!”
“That’s me.” The best people-pleasing lunatic in NYC who really should look into finding a good therapist to help me work through all of this before I have to head home to Vermont to watch my baby sister get married in the same week I get to attend a fifteen-year high school reunion I somehow got roped into helping plan. With the Regina George of my high school class. In less than two short months from now.
Okay. So, I don’t need to find a therapist; I need to find Jesus. I just hope he lives in Manhattan.
“So…one or two?” Callie asks, pulling me from the deep recesses of my thoughts.
“One or two?”
She giggles again. It’s like nails on a chalkboard to my ears. “How many people should I put you down for, silly?”
This is a remake of Nightmare on Elm Street; it has to be. A new Halloween movie or something. Michael Myers himself must be right outside my freaking door. That’s the only way the universe would be cruel enough to add Callie’s interest into the swirling, boiling pot my family already has roasting over the Ava’s Relationship Status fire.
Just like that, it hits me. I cannot go to this reunion and attend my baby sister’s wedding alone in the same damn week. I just…can’t.
I completely break under the fucking pressure of it all, and the words blurt from my lips before I can stop them. “Two.”
“Two?”
“Uh…yeah… I’ll be bringing my…boyfriend.”
You’ll be…what? You don’t have a boyfriend, Looney Tunes!
“Your boyfriend? Oh, how exciting! Your mom didn’t tell me you were seeing someone!”
“It’s…uh…fairly new.”
Yeah, it sure is. It hasn’t even fucking started yet…
Thinking better of my answer, I add to it quickly before Callie can undercut it. “But serious. Really serious, actually. We’ve just been keeping it private so we can enjoy the perfectness by ourselves for a while.”
Dear God, Ava.
“That’s so awesome! What’s his name?”
Yeah, Ava! Tell your old archnemesis all about your imaginary boyfriend!
Panic sets in when I realize there is absolutely no way I can talk myself out of this conversation. So, I do what anyone in my situation would do—avoid it.
Three bangs of my fist to my own freaking door, I end the call in a rush, “Oh shoot, Callie! I have to go. My boyfriend just got here, and we’re already late for a big, fancy Halloween party in SoHo. Talk soon! Bye!” Click.
It’s official. I’m pathetic.
I might as well be Debra Messing’s character in The Wedding Date.
Sure, my sister didn’t have an affair with my ex while I was still dating him, but she is my baby sister whose impending nuptials will make me the oldest and last single Lucie sister. And now, because I let Callie fucking Camden get the best of me with her backhanded bullshit, I told the snooty biotch that I have a boyfriend and I’d help plan the reunion.
Oy vey.
Call me crazy, but I highly doubt I can find a hot, Dermot-Mulroney-looking escort in under sixty days.
You know, you could just be an adult about this and tell Callie how you really feel—that you don’t have a boyfriend and you don’t want to help plan that stupid reunion with someone who was a total bitch to you in high school…
That would certainly be the easy way out, wouldn’t it?
Too bad my damn pride is making that feel like an impossible option.
On a heavy sigh, I drop my phone back in my purse, sling my bag over my shoulder, snag the stupid invitation off the counter, head straight out of my apartment, and stride right across the hall, barging through my best friend’s unlocked front door.
I swear, one of the best things Luke and I ever did was rent apartments in the same building—and on the same floor—from his rich uncle Gary. It makes freak-out moments like this a heck of a lot easier to handle.
My go-go boots pound across the hardwood floors as I make a beeline past Luke—who is standing in his living room—dump my purse, and head straight for the kitchen.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Where’s the fire?” he says on a laugh. “Please tell me you haven’t gone old-school and brought a hot plate into your apartment.”
“Funny ha-ha, Luke,” I retort but keep it moving to the fridge. “The fire is my life. Everything is shit, I need a drink, and I’m pretty sure we’re already late to the party!”
I snag a beer from his fridge and pop the top off with a bottle opener that hangs on the door by a magnet. The smell of barley and hops assaults my nose. Ugh. I don’t even like beer, or any alcohol really, but I need something—anything—to take the damn edge off.
Luke
“Did you forget that you hate beer?” I question, but Ava is committed.
Her face crinkles up in disgust as she forces half a bottle of beer down the hatch. Once she’s officially had enough, she slams it onto my kitchen counter and swipes a hand across her mouth. “Yuck. That’s awful.”
“For you, maybe. I happen to think it’s the best. Which is why it’s in my fridge.”
She rolls her eyes at me and stomps back toward the bag she abandoned on my couch. She scoops it up, slings it back on her shoulder and gestures for the doo
r.
I can’t help but laugh.
“Oh no. Don’t tell me you’re in a hurry now. I’ve been waiting for you for more than an hour.”
“I’m in the middle of a crisis, Luke! I don’t have the energy for your jokes.”
I shake my head with a smile. “A crisis, huh? Don’t tell me you fell in the toilet again.”
“No!” she snaps. “But wouldn’t you feel awful now if I had? You didn’t even attempt to help me.”
“I’ll go to confession tomorrow to repent.”
“You’re not Catholic.”
“Oh. That’s right.” I smile huge as I walk back to the counter and grab the half a beer she left behind and take a swig.
When I pull it away and she hitches a hip in impatience, I finally take a good look at what she’s wearing.
A tight yellow skirt, a shirt that’s more of a fucking bra than an actual shirt, and a pair of white boots that stop just below her knees, it all feels a little too sexy to be strolling around some dive bar in the middle of the city.
“What in the hell are you wearing?”
“A costume,” she retorts, rolling her eyes. “Because, as you know, we’re going to a Halloween party.”
Her gaze scrutinizes my outfit—my pilot’s uniform that consists of a white shirt and a black tie, slacks, and shoes. “And what are you supposed to be? Pilot Pete?”
I furrow my brow. “Who the hell is Pilot Pete? I just got home from a seven-hour flight from Paris. I’m Pilot Luke.”
An annoyed sigh leaves her pretty pink lips.
“Geez Louise, I need to make you watch more reality TV. Pilot Pete is from The Bachelor, and Pilot Luke is not a costume. Go change.”
“I’m going to. Into jeans and a T-shirt.”
“You’re not wearing a costume tonight?”
“Nope,” I say. “We already talked about this.”
“I thought you were joking! It’s a Halloween party. Costumes are required.”
I just laugh. She sighs.
“You’re going to feel so stupid when you’re the only one there without a costume.”
“I highly doubt it.” I swirl my finger at her, gesturing to the yellow getup she has on. “What are you supposed to be anyway? Some kind of sixties go-go dancer or some shit?”
She puts a defiant hand to one hip. “I’m a Fantana.”
“I’m sorry.” I quirk a brow. “Are you speaking English right now?”
“I’m one of the Fanta girls!” she exclaims and holds both hands out in the air. “You know, the drink Fanta. It’s a soda.”
“Ohh, yeah. I think I remember those commercials. How’s the jingle go again?”
To my utter enjoyment, Ava pulls a bottle of yellow Fanta from her purse and proceeds to sing and shake her hips. “Don’t you wanna…wanna Fanta?”
I smile, take another swig of beer, and toss the now-empty bottle into the trash can. “Well, you look great. Maybe a little too great. Kind of reminds me of our first Halloween at college, to be honest. Also, and this is just my personal opinion, orange Fanta is the best.”
She rolls her big, angelic eyes and tsks her lips. “I look like shit in orange, so I had to go with yellow. But this is not like Columbia.”
“Really? Because you look like my friend Ava and we’re going to the same bar and you have a particularly booze-desperate look in your eye—just like you did that night.”
“We’re not talking about that night right now.”
“Okay, fine. We’ll come back to that later. For now, you can just tell me what’s going on. Why are we spiraling this time?”
She huffs out a breath that blows loose strands of her blond hair out of her face. “Have you ever seen the movie The Wedding Date?”
I shake my head.
“Are you sure you’ve never seen it?” she questions. “Debra Messing? Dermot Mulroney? Set in a gorgeous English village?”
“Not ringing any bells.”
“Ugh!” She tosses both hands up in the air. “It would be so much easier if you watched rom-coms, you know?”
“Reality TV and rom-coms,” I comment with a smirk. “Anything else I need to add to the list?”
“Tons. But I’ve been crafting your reform very carefully over the last fifteen years, and it would really ruin my plan to get ahead of myself.”
My smile makes my cheeks hurt. “Of course. Wouldn’t want to ruin all that hard work. So, just tell me what’s going on in plain terms for now.”
She grins back before diving into the point.
“As you know, I’m the only single Lucie girl in the family—”
“Oh yeah,” I say with a grin that makes her roll her eyes. “I definitely know.”
“Well, thanks to my mom’s obsession with marrying me off, I’ve now been roped into helping plan a reunion party with my old archnemesis.”
“Reunion party?” I ask and tilt my head to the side in confusion.
“My fifteen-year high school reunion.” She pulls an invitation out of her purse and slides it across the island.
I quickly scan the gold-embossed, cursive words on the paper. It’s fancy. A little too fancy for a fucking high school reunion, but what do I know.
“Well, at least there’s an open bar,” I offer and look back up to meet her eyes.
“Oh yeah!” she exclaims in sarcasm. “Thank goodness for the open bar! Maybe I’ll be able to drink enough booze that I won’t have to remember attending it with Callie freaking Camden!”
“The chick who made your teenage years hell?”
“The one and only.”
I shake my head and lean my back into the counter, crossing my arms over my chest. “You know what I’m going to say, don’t you?”
“Don’t say it.”
“I have to, Ace. It is my obligation as your best friend to remind you that if you just stood up for yourself and voiced how you feel—you know, that you’d rather go live under a bridge—your family might just stop pressuring you so much.”
“It’s not that easy.”
For Ava? No, it’s definitely not. She hates confrontation and cannot stand making people feel bad. I know this all too well after all our years around each other.
But at some point, she’s going to have to stand up for herself and end the suffering. If she just spoke to everyone else like she does to me, she wouldn’t have a problem anymore.
“That’s not the worst of it, by the way,” she continues. “I messed up big-time when Callie insinuated that I would be attending our reunion by myself.”
“What do you mean?”
“I told Callie to put me down for two. Two super-in-love, coupletastic people, of which I am one.”
“I’m sorry…what?” I question on a shocked laugh. “You told Callie you’re in a relationship?”
She nods.
“You do realize you’re not in a relationship, right?”
“Don’t judge me, you jerk.” Ava pokes me in the chest with one pointed index finger. “Help me.” She sighs and stares up at me with big puppy-dog eyes. “I have sixty days to find my freaking boyfriend and no prospects on where to start.”
A weird pain tightens in my chest, but other than lifting a hand to rub at it, I don’t pay it much mind.
“Actually, less than sixty days,” I add instead.
“Ugh. Shut up,” she retorts. Then, like lightning, an idea strikes her. “Maybe you could do it!”
“Be your boyfriend?”
“Pretend to be my boyfriend,” she emphasizes.
“No,” I decline with a shake of my head. “No thank you.”
“What? Why not? You’re single right now, just like me. It’s not like you have to worry about a girlfriend getting mad.”
“True,” I agree. “Actually, I’m pretty sure this is the first time in forever that we’ve both been single.”
“Are you sure about that?” She tilts her head to the side. “What about when you broke up with Sarah?”
“You we
re already dating that douchebag Blake.”
“He wasn’t that bad.” She snorts, and I give her a pointed stare. “Okay, fine, he was a dick.”
“And when you broke up with douchebag-dickwad, I was dating Dana.”
“Gah. Dana.”
“What was wrong with Dana?”
“She was clingier than dog hair on a wool sweater.”
I laugh at that. She’s not wrong. Dana was so clingy, I found myself getting excited about dentist appointments because it was about the only time I could be alone.
“Wait…when did you break up with Mandy?”
“Two years ago,” I answer. “Not too long after you ended things with Matt.”
“I guess this really is the first time we’re both single,” Ava responds with a shrug, but then quickly reverts back to freaking out. “But hell’s bells, I need to break that cycle stat.”
“Going to your high school reunion without a boyfriend isn’t that big of a deal, Ace.”
“First of all, you need to stop calling me Ace. Your name is Luke. Not Logan. It makes zero sense.”
I shrug. “Well, after you made me watch all seven fucking seasons of Gilmore Girls, I think I have a right to use whatever I want from that awful show.”
“You loved that show, you big liar.”
“I tolerated it because you love that show,” I correct her. “Now, stop avoiding the subject at hand. Why the hell do you think you need to take some random guy home with you to feel validated?”
“Actually, I was trying to take you home to feel validated.”
“Ava.”
“Luke, if you knew Callie Camden and the crap she put me through when we were teenagers—” her voice rises with each word “—you’d one-hundred-percent understand that it’s a big deal. A big fat fucking deal.”
My face softens a little as I think of all the stories Ava shared with me throughout college about Callie. I know she put my girl through the wringer. It’s not out of the ordinary for someone to have a little PTSD.
I move from the kitchen to the living room and wrap my arm around her shoulders, tucking her close to my side. “How about, instead of standing in my apartment and drowning your sorrows in alcohol you don’t even like, we go to the Halloween party and try to enjoy ourselves? Forget about fake boyfriends for a while.”