Page 12 of Fool Me

“Being perfect at everything,” Sadie groused. “I mean, he wore freshly creased work slacks and a Brooks Brothers dress shirt to a Saturday afternoon lunch date. Who does that?”

Ginny still perused the pics on her phone. “Someone who’s trying to impress you?”

“No, no, no, no. He’s secretly dating J. I’m nothing to him but a way to keep her happy. He’s acting too.”

Ginny offered up yet another photo of her and Grant at the festival. “He’s a super good actor.”

Taking her sister’s phone, Sadie squinted at the picture. She hadn’t seen this one yet. The two of them stood near the jewelry table with the earrings Grant had found for her. Sadie held an earring to her ear as she gazed into the small mirror the sales lady had provided, while Grant, directly behind her, gazed at her with soft eyes, a worshipful smile on his lips. It had to be a trick of the light or a distorted shot, because Grant hadn’t said one word about how the earrings looked on her. He’d only shown them to her to get her to stop jewelry shopping.

“I mean, check out his expression,” Ginny said. “Is that not the look every woman wants from a man?” She attempted to copy his lovestruck gaze until Sadie gave her a not-so-playful shove.

“Stop it,” Sadie said, putting the phone back into her sister’s waiting hand. “It wasn’t like that. I forced him to spend an hour straight jewelry shopping. That’s the face of pure boredom.”

Ginny squinted at her phone screen. “Wish my boredom looked like that.”

Sadie pursed her lips and turned to Monique for support, but Monique sat stock still, her mind apparently somewhere else entirely.

“So, he’s always perfectly dressed and groomed?” Monique said.

“Always,” Sadie said. “Trish said it took him half an hour to get his hair just right, and Carly said she once spotted a travel-size hand sanitizer in his pocket.”

Sadie’s oatmeal arrived. Usually her favorite, today the gooey pile of tan carbs disgusted her. But her sour mood had nothing to do with overcooked grains. Grant wasn’t all that famous yet, and social media turned on a dime. Hope remained, but she had only two dates left to spin this Titanic around and show the world the ugly side of Grant, the side she and her former roommates knew only too well.

A commotion erupted at the nearest table, where a middle-aged couple sat. Alice, a shy waitstaff who’d worked at Rick’s for as long as Sadie could remember, had tripped, probably on the purse carelessly left on the floor by the woman. In falling, Alice had dumped an entire tray of syrupy flapjacks, orange juice, and biscuit gravy onto the man. His shirt and slacks dripped with breakfast. In a flash, his faced burned crimson, and his veins pulsed grotesquely. He stood and let out a choice selection of swear words as he brushed biscuit pieces off himself.

Monique rose from her seat just as Rick appeared.

“Look what this idiot did,” the man yelled at Rick as he motioned toward Alice, who stood quietly sniffling into her apron.

“It was an accident,” Rick said, his voice calm and light. “How about we comp your meals, give you a voucher for the next one, and pay for dry cleaning?”

The man was beyond reason. “Forget it. We’re done with this dump. I’m just grateful the coffee’s always cold, or I’d have gotten burnt.” He jerked his head toward the door to signal to the woman sitting with him that they were leaving. Sadie thought the incident over, but just before storming off, he tipped the entire table sideways for good measure. Diners scrambled from their seats to avoid the wave of smashed plates and broken glass skidding toward them over the floor.

A thick silence hovered in the wake of their exit, before all three sisters rose to help with the clean-up.

Rick, smiling as ever, waved them away. “You ladies enjoy your breakfast while it’s hot,” he said. “This will only take a few minutes to straighten, and I’m happy he won't be coming back. Anybody who’d treat Alice like that over spilled syrup isn’t welcome here.”

As Rick got to work with his mop, Ginny’s phone came alive with beeping alerts. “Look, it’s already online.” She turned her phone to show Sadie and Monique the video. Sadie hadn’t even noticed their fellow restaurant patrons using their cameras, but several of them must have filmed the whole encounter. “This person even zoomed in on the guy’s popping neck veins. Gross. I mean, it sucks to get food dumped on you, but this is going to go viral. No clothes are worth the social media implosion he’s about to experience.”

Sadie and Monique made eye contact. The gears in her big sister’s brain were churning at the same rate as the gears in her own. They were each thinking about date number two. “But how could we make it happen?” Sadie asked.

“I think I know someone who can help. I’ll call you later.”

“Someone in the restaurant business?”

“Oh, no. That’s too tame. I’ve got another venue in mind.”

Sadie’s mood brightened. For once, she truly welcomed a plan of Monique’s. No one would describe her oldest sister as mean, but she had a sixth sense about what made people tick and how to get them to do the things she wanted them to do.

Buoyed, Sadie tried to enjoy her oatmeal, but still didn’t feel much like eating. In addition to disappointment over the first date backfiring so spectacularly, something else tickled at the edges of her being. Something worrisome. Something that felt a little like…guilt?

In all honesty, she’d had an okay time with Grant. His enthusiasm about literally everything at the festival had been endearing, like seeing the world through a child’s eyes. Despite her previous trips to the festival, he’d somehow made it feel like her first time there. At some points, he’d been so attentive she’d had to check herself, reminding herself he was acting and making sure she didn’t smile at him more than necessary. And, of course, as soon as they’d gotten back in the car, she’d reverted to stone-faced Sadie.

But the thoughts nagging at her weren’t guilt over being a little bit mean to Grant. After all, his boyish charm had been key to fooling her roommates, one after the other, into falling in love with him so he could break their hearts when it suited him. Was she supposed to feel bad about hurting his feelings by not smiling at him enough on their first fake date? Ridiculous.

She glanced up through her eyelashes first at Monique, busily texting someone on her phone, and then at Ginny, busily shoving toast in her mouth. Watching them, Sadie’s vague, guilty feeling began to congeal into a recognizable shape. How many Sunday mornings had they spent in this booth together since their parents had died after attending a party forhergraduation? How many times had her sisters helped her out of a pickle with money or advice or just plain making her laugh?

No, her guilt didn’t stem from Grant. She felt badly about her sisters. She hadn’t exactly lied to them when she’d insisted all those smiley photos with Grant were playacting, but she hadn’t been one hundred percent honest with them either. And that wouldn’t do. Succumbing to Grant’s fake charms would screw up her revenge plan and leave her vulnerable to the Golden Dumpster’s whims. But worse, it would betray her promise to the two most important people in her life, the two people who only wanted the best for her and would do literally anything for her.

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