Page 105 of Lemon Crush

“That’s why I’m going to tell it,” Kingston responded smoothly. “Your last movie was about an alcoholic bounty hunter who was really a prince and his pansexual alien sidekick, right?”

Chick blinked at Kingston and, instead of looking insulted at the dig, he playfully fanned himself with his hand.

“He knows my work,” he whisper-shouted loud enough for the rest of the table to hear, making Bernie chuckle.

“I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’ve got no problem with that,” Gene said, surprising absolutely no one. “I’ve always thought there should be a movie about us.”

Kingston gave Wade a wide Cheshire Cat smile.

“Rick feels that we’ve been rope-a-doped,” Lucy began tactfully.

Since Rick was merely staring at us with suspicion, either Lucy was psychic or they’d talked about their issues beforehand.

“We were here to nail down the car for the race, and now we’re…what? Adding team members? Starring in a reality show?” Lucy hesitated and then smoothed out his neatly trimmed beard. “On the other hand, we do look good on camera. Fine, we’ll be in your documentary, Haywood. I won’t memorize lines though. I tell Gene all the time, I’m all about organic moments and improv comedy.”

“As long as you don’t aim your camera at August,” Chick teased, his knee bumping mine under the table.

I gave him A Look for throwing me under the bus, my already tense shoulders somewhere up around my ears. “I’m not afraid of cameras.”

“She used to run from them at book signings like they’d actually steal her soul,” he confided to all his new besties. “Evaded every video interview her publisher ever set up for her and rudely deleted candids from other people’s phones like she was on the run from the law.”

“She’s always been like that,” Bernie confided right back. “Her mother had more photo albums than I’ve ever seen in one place, but finding her in them after the age of ten is a Where’s Waldo situation. And getting her to stand still for a picture with me has always been next to impossible.”

“I take pictures,” I defended. “I like those Snapchat filters because they put makeup onforme.” And give me back the defined chin of a twenty-year-old. And sometimes kitten ears.

No one was listening.

“But she did that movie with us when you were kids.” Kingston sounded skeptical. “She was the star, if I remember correctly.”

“She wore a wrinkled-old-lady mask for that,” Bernie reminded him.

“You’re all snitches, this is slander and it’s not that big a deal,” I said, louder than I meant to. “I don’t take good pictures, that’s all. I never have.”

Unlike my mother, who’d looked like a fairy in every candid, and my photogenic sibling, who’d actually had a modeling job when she was fourteen, I was forever caught blinking or chewingor posing in a way that mysteriously created two extra chins with the occasional unibrow.

“That’s not true. I’ve got a good one right here.”

Every head slowly turned in Wade’s direction as he pulled out his faded leather wallet.

“One what?” Chick asked.

He looked disgruntled by the attention, but it didn’t stop him from passing a worn photo over to Chick. I tried to grab it and destroy the evidence out of habit, but they were both too fast for me.

My throat tightened. “Is that Mom’s wedding?”

I was on the beach, a long skirt flying behind me in the breeze, my hair down and my head thrown back in laughter.

“It’s an older one, I know. I have one of you with Phoebe too, from that housewarming party a few years back, but it’s on my computer.”

Wade had a picture of me in his wallet? He’d had it foryears?

Suddenly breathless, I glanced around, hoping no one could see the flush surging into my cheeks. The guys were all looking between us and each other with varying degrees of speculation. Gene seemed the most startled, though he covered it more quickly than I could.

It’s not only of you,I chided myself.Morgan and Bernie are both in the background.

Still, I was the focus of the image. And I didn’t remember it being in Mom’s wedding album. Had he taken it?

“Why don’t we get to August’s caveats?” Kingston said smoothly, unexpectedly saving the day.

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