“She’s on my permanent shit list.”
“Did your boss appreciate it more or less than he enjoyed getting cheesed with you?”
“Ugh. What did you hear?”
“Sabrina. You claimed him at House of Curry. People are speculating you’ve done way more than dusting yourselves in powdered cheese.”
“Devi saw, didn’t she?”
“Devi saw, and she swears I’m the only person she told.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. “Can we get back to Emma? Did she enjoy her trip at least?”
“I don’t know. She hasn’t said much about it. Even to Theo.”
“Are you two okay?”
Laney was the one who ultimately spilled the tea to Emma about who was driving the go-kart that damaged the statue of Ol’ Snaggletooth, the miner, and that Theo ultimately went to jail for about ten years ago. It was a short stay, but it was hard on the whole family to watch him go through it.
And when Laney purses her lips again, I start to breathe.
“I don’t know if she’s okay with anyone right now. Including herself. It’s like seeing rain come from the sunshine.”
“You have to tell me these things,” Emma shrieks in the other room.
Theo says something quietly enough in response that I can’t understand him.
“Of course I can fix it, you big doof, but you’re going to have to give the IRS way more money than you would’ve if you’d told me. Do you like throwing money away? Wait. Stop. Do not answer that.”
I gulp.
Laney winces.
None of us are worried about Theo’s finances. The biggest reason Emma’s wedding implosion video went viral was because it simultaneously outed Theo as GrippaPeen.com’s most popular adult entertainment star, who’d previously only appeared on-screen faceless with his penis out while spouting inspirational messages and knitting hearts.
As for wasting money—he footed the bill for Emma’s wedding, since Chandler asked him to pay for it, and of course Theo didn’t hesitate, even if the two of them have never gotten along well.
Laney’s hinted he upgraded everything about her solo honeymoon as well, though I haven’t asked if that was before or after it turned into a solo vacation.
This Emma?
The screeching, angry, apparently sad Emma?
That’s the exact opposite of who Emma normally is.
And I still feel a crushing guilt for not telling her the secrets I knew about Chandler.
Laney squeezes my hand. “Any progress on getting your new boss to reconsider all of the changes? And I swear I won’t add any snarky comments about the helpfulness of powdered cheese.”
I grimace. “No. And the worst part is that I get it.”
“But you’re still organizing meals to his house and asking people to come have their baby showers and report card celebrations at the café.”
“Guilty.” I am one hundred percent on a mission to make sure Grey has it shoved in his face just how much the whole town loves the café and how much we love each other.
“Did Yolanda really tell him about the time you got busted up on Marmot Cliff after you’d had seven shots of espresso in an hour?”
“Yes, and she also told him you refused to join us because you were studying for a trigonometry test on a Saturday night,” I tease.
“I have so many more food fights to start.”
In true Laney fashion, after starting the food fight at House of Curry this week, she paid for a professional crew to clean it top to bottom the day after the party. She also paid for all of the food that was lost.
When she added the tip, Nani Parvati invited her to come back and start food fights every week.
I love this town. And my friends.
I just wish I didn’t feel so weird around Emma right now.
She’s always been the first person to tell me it’s okay when I’ve fucked up, the first person to tell Laney to be patient with herself when Laney was stressing with her own brand of parental-inspired perfectionism, and the first person to worry she’d unintentionally hurt someone’s feelings when she was trying to compliment them.
I should’ve realized Em’s stress over the wedding wasn’t normal.
She asked Laney to babysit Theo in Hawaii for the week leading up to the wedding.
That’s not like Emma.
It turned out well for Laney and Theo, but it’s still not like Emma.
“You didn’t answer Decker’s text about the college yearbook photo he found with your grandpa and Grey’s grandparents hanging out together,” Laney says.