Page 64 of Spark

She looks around. “Yes, but she’s in the minority. Most of us don’t believe for a second what Cooper said about the breakup. We all know he embellished it to make himself look good.”

“In his song, you mean?”

“No, besides that, he’s telling everyone at the show he broke up with Ruby because she cheated on him. With you.”

I scoff. “That’s not what happened. Ruby broke up with him, and she never cheated on him.”

“I figured. I know a narcissist when I see one. I was married to one.” She smirks. “But even if it did happen that way, I certainly wouldn’t blame Ruby for doing whatever she had to do to get with you. Nobody would blame her for that.”

I don’t know what to say to that, so I say nothing, and a moment later, we reach the guest house. Inside, hallelujah, I discover the friendliest of faces: the perfectly symmetrical one that’s owned by my lifelong best friend. When I enter the guest house, Savage is sitting in a chair with a hairdresser working on him, looking like he’s in good spirits.

“Look at you!” Savage calls out when he sees me bounding toward him. “Hot damn, KC, you’re looking fine as wine! Wooh!”

“Same to you, brother. You look like a goddamned rockstar.”

“I try.”

I take a seat next to him, and we chat for a bit while the hairdresser finishes her work, and my handler scrolls on her phone. But when the work on Savage is completed, and both women have stepped outside to make phone calls, I quickly tell Savage the tea about my exchange with Cooper.

“He’s such a dick.”

“The worst.”

“Have you seen Ruby yet?”

“Not since we drove here together this morning. She texted me she’s getting ready in some far-off guest room with Laila.”

“Yeah, Laila told me.” He arches an eyebrow. “So, how’s it been going with Ruby the Roomie? Mission accomplished yet?”

I flap my lips together. “We’re still BFFs.”

“Fuck.”

“On day one, right after Ruby got to my place, things looked really promising, man. In fact, I stupidly thought the mission was going to be accomplished that very night. But then things stalled after that, for reasons I don’t understand, and I haven’t been able to steer them in the right direction again.”

“What the fuck have you been doing every night for almost a week, when she’s been lying next to you in bed—singing her lullabies?”

“That’s the thing. She hasn’t been sleeping next to me. She got herself a goddamned air mattress. So now, it’s like we’re nineteen again, and she’s got a boyfriend, and I’m the depressed bestie who dropped out of college who visits her on weekends and sleeps on her goddamned floor.”

“How did you let this happen? What about the insomnia thing? I thought Ruby was going to cuddle you to?—”

“She said she’d still help me with that, if needed. But I keep forgetting to fake insomnia because I’m having so much fun talking to her. It feels like old times, man. We talk and talk and never run out of things to say. I mean, that’s the good news andthe bad news, I guess. We’re genuinely having fun together.”

Savage grips his newly coiffed hair for emphasis. “Did you not listen to me at all?” he shouts. “I told you to make things sexually charged. I told you to?—”

“I did! Savage, I swear, I executed your plan perfectly, on day one. And it was totally working. But then, I don’t know,everything just kind of went straight back into the friend zone from there, and that’s where it’s stayed.”

He sighs. “Tell me exactly what you did on day one, when you were cooking with gas. Tell me every fucking thing.”

“Dude, I was a Jedi Master. When she first arrived at my place, I had my fridge stocked with all her favorite foods, and I had bouquets of her favorite flowers sitting nice and pretty on my?—"

“What the fuck? No, no, no! I asked what did you do to seduceher, ya dumbfuck, not romance her.”

“I was getting to that.”

“We’re not at the romance stage of the plan yet, remember? We’re at the seduction phase. The fling-as-endgame phase.”

“I know that.”

---