Page 56 of Rivals
“Relax. No one here cares who you are.” Nina jerked her head toward the backseat. “There’s a hoodie back there if you want it.”
Daphne twisted around to grab the hoodie, frowning as she tugged it over her head. “I didn’t think you were the type to wear pink tie-dye.”
“The hoodie is Sam’s. Really, the whole car is Sam’s,” she explained.
A few minutes later they pulled into a parking lot alongside a stucco building. The sign overhead advertisedtacos!in electric yellow letters, except that theChad burned out, so nothing remained butta os!
“Trust me, this is the sobering-up food you need rightnow,” Nina assured Daphne, who looked deeply skeptical. “You’ll thank me tomorrow when you don’t wake up with a killer hangover.”
The taco place was exactly as it had always been: colored lights strung from the ceiling, peeling plastic booths, and squirt bottles of so-called “special sauce” on each table, though Nina was pretty sure the sauce consisted of nothing more than ketchup and mayo mixed together.
The woman behind the counter flashed them a wide smile. “What can I get you?”
“A taco sampler and an order of nachos, extra cheese.” Nina reached for her wallet at the same time Daphne withdrew hers from her clutch. “I’m not letting you pay; you’re broke,” she said bluntly, but Daphne still shoved her credit card toward the machine.
“You’re broke, too!”
“Aren’t you two funny!” The cashier clapped in delight. “I remember what it was like to be out with my best friend when we were young and poor. You know what? This one’s on the house.”
Daphne isn’t my best friend,Nina wanted to protest, but there were free tacos on the line, so she said nothing.
A few minutes later they were seated at a corner booth, platters of food heaped before them. “Oh my god,” Daphne exclaimed through a mouthful of taco. “What is this and why is it the best thing I’ve ever eaten?”
“Barbacoa, and you’re starving. But also, these tacos are magic.”
Daphne nodded, licking sauce from her fingers. Nina was quite certain that Daphne had never displayed such appalling manners in her life. But there was no one else in the entire restaurant, except an older couple who were pushing a dog in a baby stroller and feeding it slivers of beef. Not exactlythe type of people who might take photos and sell them to a gossipsite.
Nina’s phone buzzed; she glanced down at it and frowned.
“Is that your parents?” Daphne asked. “Everything okay?”
“It’s Sam, actually.” Nina hesitated, but Daphne would learn this eventually from Jeff, if she didn’t know already. “Marshall broke up with her last night.”
Daphne clucked in sympathy. “Poor Samantha.”
“Like you care,” Nina replied, to which Daphne lifted one shoulder in a shrug. The pink-and-white hoodie looked so weird over the skirt of her emerald-green dress.
“I may not know Samantha the way you do. But I know what it feels like to lose something you care about.”
“Right. How’s all of that going?” Nina asked cautiously.
“You mean, the fact that we’re poor and on the brink of becoming commoners?” Daphne began shredding a tortilla into tiny pieces, letting them fall over her plate like confetti. “My parents are panicking, and focusing evenmoreof their anxiety on me. I wish I didn’t live at home,” she added in a whisper.
It was hard not to feel a tiny bit sorry for Daphne. She might be a self-obsessed monster, but wasn’t it inevitable, with parents like that?
And wasn’t Nina using Daphne’s self-obsessed monstrousness for her own ends right now?
“What about you?” Daphne asked. “How did your parents react when you told them your financial aid was pulled?”
Nina flinched at the question. She hadn’t realized how cash-poor her parents were—they’d poured all their savings into her mom’s fledgling e-commerce business, which was growing, but not yet profitable. Now Julie was quietly looking into selling the business.
“You can’t sell out to some corporation!” Nina hadprotested. Her mom was so proud of her company; she’d been working on it for years, had built it from the groundup.
“Honey, it doesn’t matter. Your education is more important,” Julie had assured her, but Nina knew she was putting on a brave face.
She needed to take down Gabriella before her mom gave up the company she’d worked so hard to build.
“I don’t really want to talk about it,” she muttered.
