“A few times a week, huh?” she teased. “That sounds like dating.”
“No dating, we just hang.” I rinsed out my coffee cup and put it in the dishwasher. “He doesn’t love going out in public, which was the case even before he was a celebrity, but now it’s even worse. People just stare with no shame. Women flirt outrageously. Guys ask for stock tips.”
“Really?”
“Yes.” I laughed as I went up the stairs. “He runs in the park super early to avoid having to deal with people, but there’s this group of old ladies who gather in the park to do their Prancercise, who call themselves the Prancin’ Grannies, and they adore him. They prance right up to tell him all about their single granddaughters.”
Millie snorted. “Stop it.”
“His own mom is even worse.”
“Does she still have the shop downtown? The one that sells all the crystals and candles?”
“Yep. Mystic on Main. She’s constantly trying to set him up on dates with her customers.” I entered my room and flopped back onto my bed. The glow-in-the-dark stars I’d pasted on the ceiling were still there, as if my parents had known I’d be back. “Like she’ll call him and say she has a computer problem at the shop, or she can’t reach something on a high shelf, and when he shows up to help, there isn’t really a problem, but there’s a woman she wants to introduce him to. He gets so mad.”
Millie laughed. “Does he ever talk about Zlatka?”
I ignored the little bolt of jealousy that always shot through me when I thought about Hutton and Zlatka, a stunning Lithuanian supermodel and the latest Bond girl. They’d dated for a few months this past spring, and the media had eaten it up. “No.”
“I wonder if it’s true what she said about him.”
My belly cartwheeled. “I have no idea, and I’m not asking.”
Millie laughed. “No, I guess there’s no way you can be like, ‘Hey, I heard you like to tie women up and boss them around in the bedroom.’”
“People just like to talk.”
“Especially about that stuff,” Millie said. “Although if you see any whips, chains, or blindfolds in his closet, let me know. It seems so opposite his quiet personality, but you never know what people are like behind closed doors.”
I was curious about that closed door but needed to focus on my problem. “Anyway, what am I going to do about tonight?”
“Why go at all? Just don’t show.”
“Because I’m catering some appetizers, which I had to beg to do, because the reunion chairwoman wanted to go with one caterer, and she didn’t want everything vegetarian. But I thought it would be good publicity.”
“Maybe you can just drop them off.”
“I don’t want to be that person, Millie.” My voice rose as I sat up. “I don’t want to be intimidated by people. I want to prove to myself that I can hold my head up in front of Mimi Pepper-Peabody, even with terrible bangs.”
“Okay, okay.” Millie’s tone was more gentle. “Who the heck is Mimi Pepper-Peabody?”
“She’s the reunion chair, a girl I went to school with. Beautiful, popular, you know the type.”
“A mean girl?”
I sighed. “That’s tricky. It’s not like she was outwardly mean to my face, but she had a way of cutting you down without looking like she was doing it. If I got a bloody nose in class, instead of privately asking me if I needed a tissue, she’d yell out, ‘Ew! Felicity’s nose is gushing buckets of blood, and it’s so gross!’ And everyone would either laugh or say how disgusting it was.”
“Um, that’s outwardly mean.”
“Yeah, I guess it is.” I played with the frayed hem of my T-shirt. “But she was so popular, she could get away with anything.”
“Well, tonight’s your chance to tell her to go fuck herself.”
I laughed. “That’s not my style.”
“Fine. So go show her that being popular in high school doesn’t mean shit once high school is over. And you never know, maybe she lost her looks. Maybe karma caught up with her and all her hair fell out from bleaching it too much. Maybe she has ten big warts on her nose.”
“Nope. I see her around town and she looks the same as she did back then.” I could see my reflection in the mirror over my dresser. “And so do I.”
“Still. She can’t make you feel bad about yourself if you don’t let her.”