Page 5 of A Lucky Shot

Cass gave a weak smile and hoped this time would be different. “Good,” she said.

“It’s been forty seconds of wedding planning talk and it’s already stressing me out,” Jill said, fanning her face. “New topic. You guys seem tired. Rough morning on set?”

Libby wobbled her head, and Cass shrugged. Yesterday had gone long. Again. Then Terry, the show’s production coordinator, had called her that morning to solve an emergency wardrobe issue on her day off. Granted, no one else could fix the ripped costumes with her speed or skill.

But it was the same the week before, and the one before that. Until there was a year and a half of back-to-back films and tv shows without a vacation under her belt.

Cass yawned just thinking about it.

“So, it wasn’t a date keeping you out last night?” Jill asked.

Dating in your thirties? That was the opposite of stress relief. Besides, she was busy. With work. And her friends.

It had nothing to do with a certain someone ghosting her and bruising every part of her already fragile ego. She was getting enough questions from her mom.

“That’s the last thing I need,” she said.

“But it would be nice to get laid again,” Libby said. Her dry spell was even longer than Cass’s.

“You have men falling all over you, Elizabeth. You can say yes every once in a while.”

“Or at least have some fun,” Jill replied, pulling back her ashy blonde hair into a low ponytail before diving into her pancakes. “You two have been going at a thousand miles an hour for as long as I’ve known you.”

Cass shrugged. “You met me at a busy point in my life.”

“A year and a half is longer than a bit. And not all dates end in flames.”

The last date she’d been on ended in a pathetic fizzle, complete with slinking away without saying goodbye.

But the night hadn’t been a total loss. The night Cass had finally declared she was swearing off Nick Martin for real, she met one of the best friends she’d made in her life. While Nick had collected numbers from various women that night, Cass had finagled a woman’s number, too, and Jill had been welcomed into the fold of friends like she had been there since elementary school.

Libby brushed off the hint. “Don’t talk about the Flames. They suck.”

“That may be, but you both still deserve a break,” Jill said.

Enter the champion of work-life balance. Cass jutted out her chin. “We do deserve some fun. I’m ordering extra whipped cream.”

“Whipped cream just leads to yeast infections,” Libby said.

“Ew! I had different plans for the whipped cream.”

“For once, whipped cream is not the answer. I know exactly how to fix this.” Jill sat straighter, her eyes sparkling. “We’ve been talking about going on a girls’ weekend forever. Just the three of us.”

It would have been the five of them. But Raina hadn’t left her kids for more than a couple hours, like her husband was a third child she needed to supervise, and Phoebe was on an open-ended honeymoon and had given no indication of when she was coming home. Cass sighed at the thought of two more friends, slipping into acquaintances.

“Vegas or Vancouver? I bet I can find cheap flights,” Jill continued, cutting into her thoughts. Her phone was already in her hands, scrolling deals.

A weekend getaway would be amazing. Candlelit bubble baths were all well and good, but this relaxation called for a bit more than that. Plus, even for an indoor cat like herself, it had been a long, snowy winter, and a change of scenery could be the ticket.

“Think Alex will let you out of his sight for three whole days?” Cass asked to gauge if Jill’s interest was sincere.

“Alex doesn’t let me do anything. Besides, I like it when he gets a chance to miss me.”

“Love it,” Libby said. “Next weekend?”

Jill looked horrified. “I was thinking later this summer would be a perfect amount of time to plan a spontaneous weekend.”

“It’s March. Six months from now is not spontaneous. Anyway, I hate Vegas. I vote for Vancouver,” Libby wheedled. “C’mon. We’ve been talking about having a girls’ weekend for a year.”

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