Page 26 of Plays Well With Others

“Want me to wrap this for him?” I ask.

“That would be great. Thank you,” Sophie says, then her gaze catches on a small, delicate chain with a sparkly heart on it. She urges her friend over. “Oh, Aud, come see this.”

While I wrap the not-selfish-after-all gift, the tourist ladies leave with a wave and one of them gives a final, “I solemnly swear I won’t go to Fisherman’s Wharf.”

Fable punches the air. “Victory.”

I shake my head at her in amusement while the girls try on the heart necklaces. I’m surprised, though, when they turn to me rather than their phones, with Sophie asking, “How do we look?”

“Like friendship goals,” I say, grateful to have been asked.

Sophie wraps her arm around her friend—Audrey, I’m guessing—and squeezes. They remind me of my friend group. I might have lost all skills at interacting with adult men, but I can hang with the girls no problem.

“I’ll get these too,” Sophie says. “On me.”

“Oh my god,” Audrey says, then throws her arms around her friend. “Thank you.”

“Now that isnot aselfish gift at all,” I say.

While they keep the necklaces on, I enter their purchases in my tablet and swivel it around for the phone swipe.

“Enjoy,” I say, and once they leave, they snap selfies outside in front of the store.

Hurrah!

Maybe I can turn my fortune around with teenagers leading the way. Let that be a reminder that I should always behave with customers.

It’s just Fable and me in the store now. “They’re adorbs,” Fable remarks from the counter. “They almost make me want to be seventeen again.”

I shudder as I head to a display shelf to tidy up some bracelets. “Nothing could make me want to be seventeen again. I’d have to go through my marriage a second time. No thanks.”

But Fable stares dreamily out the window of the store. “If I were seventeen again,” she muses, “I’d bet Calypso would play me in the movie of my life.The Badass Jewelry Designer Makes it Big Time.” She likes this game, and she whips her gaze to me, appraising.

“Better give me someone good,” I warn her. “Last time we played this, you gave me Brynnie, a woman best known for selling vagina-scented candles. And you just gave yourself someone at least ten years younger than you who won an Emmy at age seventeen.”

“Shhh. Don’t give my age away,” she says.

My phone buzzes from my back pocket. I grab it. Carter’s name flashes across the screen, and my cheeks flame. That’s a weird reaction, but the weirder one is the flip in my stomach. Talk about seventeen again—I feel like I’m back in high school. “I need to take this call,” I say to Fable, then I duck into the tiny office in the back of the shop and answer as I shut the door.

“Hey,” I say, trying to sound cool, like I’m not replaying last night’s hot mess moment. I’ve had enough hot mess moments to make a reel lately.

“Hey there,” he says, and I try to read into his tone in those two words. Does he think it was weird when I bit my lip? Like I qualified for an Internet meme of mockable lip-biters?

I need to fix things, stat, especially since I can’t read his tone. “Listen, Carter,” I say, just diving in, unrehearsed. “About what I said last night at the party. I was just having fun, and I don’t want you to think—”

But, now that I’m here, I don’t know what comes next.I don’t want you to think I was undressing you all night long? Oh, and this morning, too, when I returned home from the pajama-party-kidnapping and finally took care of the ache between my thighs while picturing you?

I squirm over that memory.

But it’s such a good memory that my mind goes blank, and my body feels a little melty.

“I’m glad it worked out. I could tell that guy was putting the moves on you and you didn’t want him to,” he says.

Ohhh.

He was simply superheroing last night while I was going all vampy. I really messed up. “I mean, it was just the champagne talking,” I say quickly. “That thing I said.” God, why can’t I repeat it in front of him?

Because he’s the reason you’ve been low-key horny for twenty-four hours straight.

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