Page 55 of Back in the Saddle

“Deal,” I agreed.

She did a finger wave, clutched her jacket back around her bosoms, and strutted off.

We climbed into the Sportage.

I pulled out as Raye announced, “Okay, we have feelers out. What time do you want to head out tomorrow?”

It was college football season, so unless my brother’s friends went to a bar to watch the games, our audience was captive.

“Say, ten o’clock brunch at Brunch Snob, then we roll out?” I suggested.

“In,” Raye said.

“In,” Luna parroted.

Harlow reached out and gave my thigh a reassuring squeeze, because we had feelers, but the night was a bust.

And then she said, “In.”

There it was.

I put it on and it didn’t feel like it fit.

But I was wrong.

Rolling with my girls.

It fit like a dream.

SIX

TWO QUESTIONS

When we got back to the Oasis, Raye went straight to her pad and her hot guy, and Luna came with me to my place to borrow some porn.

As for Harlow, she went right home because it was past her bedtime.

My best chick was an early to bed, early to rise type of girl, even if her shift didn’t start until eleven.

This was because, if she didn’t go to bed at 9:00, she wouldn’t wake up at 5:00 or 6:00, allowing her time to journal, make a complicated and highly nutritional smoothie, hit an early yoga or Pilates class, or that shit women did when they were trussed up to bungee cords and they bounced around a studio. Then she’d go home, make herself some oatmeal with berries or overnight oats with other healthy shit in it, tidy her house or clean a room, take a shower, perform makeup miracles, pick the perfect cute outfit, and hit SC. Always on time.

That was Harlow.

And it was awesome.

But knowing Harlow’s parents, particularly her ballbuster of a mother, it was also something else.

As for Luna, whose shift started at 7:00 a.m., so she had to be up super early just to make it in, it was totally her, when I offered a cocktail after she hit my pad, she accepted and settled in to gab with me until her glass was empty.

She then took her comics and boogied.

This left me cleaning glasses and thinking that Eric still hadn’t touched base.

“Fuck this noise,” I muttered, snatched up my phone and pulled up my texts.

He was a big boy. It was late, but if he was incommunicado for the night, he’d silence his notifications.

But I wasn’t playing this game.

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