Page 24 of The Sebastian Guarantee
And just like that, it was Phoebe or bust time.
Gripping the straps of his pack to steady the load, he jogged down the sidewalk in the direction of the bistro. It only took a few minutes to get there and a few seconds to zero in on Phoebe.
Oscar was correct. She wasn’t hard to miss.
Wearing her beret, she sat at a table on the patio littered with empty martini glasses. She held up her phone and snapped a picture of herself making a face like she’d stuffed her mouth with lemons.
“Phoebe,” he called, striding toward her.
She dropped her phone on the table, nearly knocking over a trio of glasses. “Sebby, you’re here! You’re really here!”
“Yeah, are you okay?” he asked and surveyed the scene.
“I’m more than okay, Seb. Come here.” Phoebe waved him in, then took off her glasses and pressed up onto her tiptoes. She rested her hands on his shoulders. “I’ve got something to show you.”
A tingle danced down his spine as her warm breath tickled his chin. “What are you doing, Pheebs?”
“This,” she purred. She batted her eyelashes like she’d been caught in a sandstorm, then busted out the lemon-sucker face.
“What am I looking at?” he asked, his voice growing hoarse. What was up with that? They’d been best friends for over a decade and a half. She’d touched him hundreds, no, probably thousands of times over the years. Why was this different?
“You, Sebastian Cress, are basking in my hot-girl face. I’ve been working on it. The more Ibetterthedrinkit gets,” Phoebe purr-slurred.
Oscar wasn’t kidding. This wasn’t tipsy Phoebe. This bordered on hold-my-hair-back, I’m-about-to-part-with-the-contents-of-my-stomach Phoebe.
“The more youdrink,thebetterit gets,” he corrected.
Her face lit up. “You agree.”
“Pheebs, Oscar told me what happened with Jeremy. I’m so sorry.”
She lowered herself, then wobbled. He gripped her waist and steadied her as she regained her footing.
“Jeremy Drewler is a . . .” She glanced down and tapped her foot five times.
She was bringing out the five-tap big guns.
“You remember what that means, right, Sebby?”
Hell yes, he did.
“Butthole douche nozzle,” he whispered conspiratorially.
As a girl,butt-holehad been Phoebe’s go-to foot tap naughty word of choice, while Aria had gone with the three-syllabledouche noz-zle. Put them together, and you’ve got what the girls had deemed the crème de la crème of foot-tap insults.
She abandoned the slightly terrifying hot-girl face. Staring up at him, her bottom lip trembled. Pain flashed in her blue eyes.Damn that drooling creep. He stroked her cheek. “Phoebe,” he whispered gently.
She held his gaze, and her lips tipped up, gifting him with the ghost of a grin before she shook her head like she’d just snapped out of a trance. She slipped on her glasses. “We’re not talking about Jeremy. I’m a woman on a mission, Seb, and the mission is to be more like that.” She returned to the duck lip eye-seizure expression. “Look at them,” she said, then gestured with her chin toward a table of stylish young women—stylish young women who were pointing their phones toward the beret-wearing woman contorting her face like she was experiencing an exorcism.
He had to get his drunk best friend out of there. “We should go, Pheebs,” he suggested, playing it casually.
Phoebe cocked her head to the side. “You don’t like my face?”
“It’s not that I don’t like it. I love your face. I always have. It’s—”
“My nerdy French farmer outfit?”
“Your what?” he eked out.
