Page 70 of Minted

“Sure,” Nikki says. “I am, too.”

Thankfully, dinner goes a lot better than their arrival. I make a point of moving the cheeseball to the table, where it’s the only appetizer, and we all carve off a big chunk of it. The girls love the turkey, and they get seconds, and Barbara eats lots of ham.

“That’s one of the only good things about Seren being out of town,” Barbara says. “I don’t feel guilty about eating meat.”

“Do you usually?” I ask.

“Always,” Barbara says. “Since I was a kid.” She shakes her head. “What? You don’t?” She laughs. “On our first date, you said you might give up meat.”

“I was just trying to get to Dave,” he says. “I knew he liked her, even then.”

“How?” Barbara looks genuinely curious. “I’ve always wondered that.”

“How many times do you think Dave set me up?” I arch an eyebrow. “In all the years I’ve known him?”

She shrugs.

“Never,” Ricki blurts, a green bean shooting out of her mouth and landing in the mashed potatoes in front of us. She freezes, her eyes glued to the big blob of green on the perfect mountain of white.

She looks absolutely horrified, so of course I can’t help laughing.

“You just spit in the potatoes,” Nikki says. “Say sorry!”

I shake my head. “Please don’t,” I say. “Earlier, I dropped a whole blob of gravy on the tablecloth. You guys are just doing me a favor.” I mock-whisper the next part. “I always feel like the proverbial bull in the china shop at fancy meals.”

“You do?” Ricki asks.

I nod slowly. “And you were totally right. Dave never once asked me to go on a double date, not before that one, and never again since. I knew the second he did that, that something weird was going on. Once I saw her, and I saw the way he looked at her?” I shrug. “I knew he was a goner.”

“That’s pretty cute,” Barbara says. “I just wish I’d known how Seren felt. I think I must’ve called and texted Dave twenty times. It was pretty embarrassing.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” I say. “If he hadn’t met Seren, you’d have been the hottest, smartest person he’d ever had the luck to meet.”

“I’ve never been able to measure up to my best friend, though,” Barbara says. “I’ve always been an idiot—for being such good friends with someone so much better than me.”

“You’re the kind of person who likes to build people around you up, and that’s something to be proud of. You’re also not afraid to surround yourself with excellence, and that’s also rare.” I shake my head. “But actually, that’s not what I was saying at all. I thought you were the cutest girl there, that night. You drank a little bit, and your cheeks turned pink, and you looked adorable.”

She throws one hand at me, like she’s batting my comment away. “Stop.”

“I mean it,” I say. “If I hadn’t needed to push Dave to action, I’d have asked you out.”

She meets my eyes for a moment, and then she blushes and looks down at the table. “Here. I’ll just take a few more potatoes.” She scoops up the green bean bite. “Oh, good. This one has a little bonus.”

The girls have been watching us like they watch their tennis balls, their heads whipping back and forth for our entire interchange, but now Ricki leaps in again.

“I can take that,” she says.

Barbara shakes her head. “I like to mix my food anyway.”

“But that one was in her mouth.” Nikki’s look of disgust is pretty funny. Especially for two girls who lived surrounded by rats and roaches for so many months.

“It’s just extra flavor,” Barbara says as she slides it to the side of her plate.

Then we all laugh.

“You’re not eating your cranberry sauce?” Barbara asks, looking pointedly at the maroon blight on my plate.

I poke it. “It makes things look prettier, but it’s kind of weird. It’s berries that are made into this gelatinous goo.”

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