Lucky Break (14 page)

The girl turned around slowly, flipping her blond hair out of her eyes to smile.

“Flan Flood,” Jo said, “this is Cookie Monsoon.”

Cookie Monsoon was standing in front of me, nibbling on a banana skewer that my own flesh and blood had grilled, wearing an Alexander McQueen maxi that was too close for comfort to my own DVF. Oh. My. God.

“Nice to meet you,” she said in a supersweet voice. When she smiled, it was like someone had taken a hatchet to my chest. “I started training today for the New York triathlon, and Jo just about killed me. What are you, Wonder Woman?”

I shook my head, still stunned.

Then she leaned in to whisper in my ear—Cookie Freaking Monsoon was whispering in my ear! “Is it just me, or does Jo act scarier than she needs to?”

Was this wrecking ball of a human being actually trying to confide in me? I guessed this party didn't need Fat Witch brownies. Here was the fattest witch in the world—except she wasn't acting like a witch at all, and she was actually really pretty and cute. Who did she think she was? And how dare she act like she didn't know who
I
was?

Oh, wait—what if she
didn't
know who I was? What if Alex hadn't even mentioned me at all?

Immediately, I started sniffing around for him. Of course he'd be spending spring break with this … replacement. Had Camille's text about the Knicks game been a total lie?

I knew Cookie was staring at me, waiting for a response, but I was too stunned even to open my mouth.

“So, where do you live in the city?” she filled in
after a pause. “I'm in the West Village, on Jane Street, but I go to school up at Spence, so I have to hustle all the way uptown every day. It's kind of a drag.”

Why wouldn't she shut up? Why did she just keep talking so that every word she said felt like a nail in my coffin?

“What brings you to Australia?” she blabbered on cruelly. “I'm visiting my—”

“Um, I have to go. 'Bye,” I blurted, then turned and ran as quickly as I could, as far away from Cookie as possible.

I was gasping for breath by the time I reached the water. The tide was super low, perfectly matching my spirits. My legs throbbed. My heart ached. I collapsed in a heap on a rock, realizing with a sniff that I'd bolted so quickly out of the party, I'd left my bag inside. I didn't even have my phone to SOS text SBB. And there was no way I was going back in there.

“Flan? Is that you?” I looked up to see Dave, who looked concerned, but whom I really didn't want to see right now. “What happened?”

I shook my head. I couldn't talk. I tried to mentally will Dave to go away, but instead he sat down and put his arm around me. We sat like that for a minute, with him just holding my shaking shoulders. Then, without
warning, I felt his hands on my face and his big lips on mine. It was all,
all
wrong.

“No.” I pulled away quickly. “I don't want to. I can't.”

“You need to forget about that other guy,” Dave said firmly. “I can help you.” He came back in for another kiss, this time starting out by shoving his tongue between my lips.

“Hey!” I leapt up. “I said no, I meant no.”

“Whatever,” he said, sounding annoyed, like I was the one acting inappropriate. “Your loss,” he scoffed, throwing up his arms. He stood up. I didn't even look at him.

I could have ripped into him about how out of line he was, but I didn't even feel like wasting my breath. I was already so exhausted. When Dave stormed back toward the party, I sank back down on the rock, not even caring that my dress was getting ruined by seaweed and wet sand.

All I could think about was Alex and Cookie, Cookie and Alex. Tonight—scratch that, this whole week—had been absolute torture. I'd exhausted three continents and still, I had failed. It was the end of spring break—but I was still broken.

Fresh-baked cookie?” the Manhattan-based flight attendant said, leaning over my seat and lifting up a cloth napkin to reveal a basket of warm chocolate chip cookies. My stomach turned as I caught a whiff of their straight-out-of-the-oven goodness. I pulled the hood of my gray Pleasure Principle T-shirt over my head and practiced disappearing.

“
No
,” SBB commanded the flight attendant, pushing the basket away and covering my hooded ears with her hands. “Absolutely no
cookies
! Come to think of it, no desserts of any kind. Say, you don't happen to have any Energy Glide on this jet, do you? Wild berry flavor maybe?”

I sneaked a peek at the flight attendant, who was chewing her brightly lined lip. It might have been the first time any passenger had turned down her fresh-baked cookie offer.

“I can check in the back, sweetie,” she said to SBB, before turning to the row behind us with her basket of cookies.

“Ohhhh,” SBB said worriedly. “Why didn't I take JR's advice and pack a bigger supply of Energy Glide? I thought I needed the suitcase space for my Gryphon belted cape, which of course was totally wrong for the beach—”

I cleared my throat, preparing to speak for the first time all day, other than when the TSA security guy had asked me if I had any explosive materials in my carry-on.

“We'll be back in Manhattan in, ugh, fourteen hours. I'm sure you can get your Energy Glide fix there.”

“Well, it can't come quickly enough,” SBB said, fidgeting nervously.

My thoughts exactly. We'd been airborne for less than an hour, and I was already going stir-crazy. With nothing to do but stare out the window and listen to SBB yap on about her protein ratio, my mind couldn't stop running over all the awful details of last night.

“How much more muscle mass do you need for
Gladiatrix
?” I asked her, trying to shake up my mind's only subject, even though I was just about at the limit of my capacity for body-mass-index talk.

SBB made her hesitant lip-pursing face for a minute, then said, “Actually, I don't need the Energy Glide for weight gain anyway. I'm just a
little
bit addicted.”

“What?” I said. “I thought that was the point of that nasty gel.”

“It is,” she said, looking down at the cut of her own biceps with an admiring glance. “Or anyway, it was. But … the truth is, Flan, I met my goal when I weighed in with Jo this morning.”

“
What?
” I said, not sure whether I should smack her or hug her. “Why didn't you tell me? SBB, that's huge! Congratulations.”

“Thanks,” she said, reaching for the airline magazine in the seat pocket, pulling it out, and realizing that her face was on the cover. “Huh. Well, I guess I didn't mention it today because I know you're still recovering from last night. You've been having such a rough week, Flannie. I didn't it want to seem like I was rubbing it in that I met my goal.”

I patted her massive quad. “That's really sweet, SBB. But seriously, you don't have to shield me from your success just because I'm having a hard time. I'm proud of you.”

“Thanks,” she said. “Now all I have to do is mass maintenance until the first read of the script next
week. Once Holly Hendrix—she's the casting director, total hater, one of those unmarried early thirties types—anyway, once she sees the evidence of my commitment,” she said, flashing me another shot of her biceps, “she'll have to eat her five-syllable words. Hmph!”

“You'll show her,” I said noncommittally. I could feel myself starting to zone out of the conversation. Maybe SBB could just talk me into some sort of fourteen-hour-long trance….

“And the best part is,” she continued, unaware of my waning interest, “Jo's agreed to help me. We're going to webcam.”

“I used to webcam with Alex,” I said robotically, remembering his smile when we'd first connect from our respective computer labs at school. I was always supposed to be doing my French oral practice, but whenever I saw Alex's screen name—FFslaxguy—online, it was impossible to resist IMing him. I couldn't help wondering if he'd already changed his screen name to something honoring Cookie.

SBB sighed. “See, there I go again, getting all wrapped up in my training,” she said, turning to me. “Let's make the rest of this flight all about you. What do
you
want to talk about? What do
you
want to do?”

“Disappear,” I said, pulling my hood up again.

SBB flopped my hood back down a little bit more aggressively than she needed to. “Instead of that,” she said, flipping to the back of the in-flight magazine. “What do you say we watch a movie?”

“I guess.” I sighed. “But no romantic comedies. No tortured love story dramas. No kissing,” I said petulantly.

“
Okaaaay
, do you allow human beings in the movies that make your list? Jeez, scratch that idea.” She slid the magazine back into the seat. “I could show you a card trick. I learned a really impressive one from David Blaine when we were at the Magic Castle in L.A.—”

I groaned. “Card tricks make me think of Dave the Creeper—and I never want to think of him again.”

“Motion denied,” SBB said, scratching her chin. “And you probably don't want to meditate, because that will make you think of what a terrible time you had in Thailand, right?”

“Omigod,” I said, slapping my forehead. “I just got an external glimpse of what an absolutely miserable person I've become. I can't believe this. I'm so negative. This isn't me. This is all Alex's fault. And Cookie's. And Kennedy's. And—”

“Okay,” SBB interrupted. “Instead of pointing your pretty little fingers—though personally, I wouldn't
mind sticking all of this on Kennedy—maybe what we need to do is turn off the pressure cooker.” She mimicked turning a switch on the side of my head down low.

“It's not working.” I sniffed.

“I'm starting to feel like this is all
my
fault, for only giving you a week to get over him. I shouldn't have put a timeline on your emotions.” She put a hand to her chest. “I mean, what am I, a presidential nominee? Some day, maybe—Washington does love its actors, you know?”

I shrugged.

“What I'm saying, Flannie, is you're just going to have to heal on your own time. So your sadness spills outside of spring break.” She gave a Woody Allen shrug. “Who cares? Whenever you do get over it—”

“If I get over it,” I butted in.

“
When
you get over it, I will throw you a party so fantastic you'll forget we ever even had this silly argument.”

“I hope you're right.” I sighed.

“Of course I'm right,” SBB said, flexing her pecs and her delts and her triceps and some other muscle group near her neck that I never even knew existed. “Do I need to use force to get you to tell me what I want to hear?”

“Okay, okay—you win,” I made myself say. “I
will
get over this, and when I do, you
will
throw me a party.”

“A
fantastic
party,” she corrected.

“A fantastic party. Jeez, I can't wait until you get this part so you can start taking your energy out in the gladiator pit instead of on me.”

SBB grinned and snuggled her head into my shoulder. “From your mouth to Holly Hendrix's ears.”

Hey Flan!” a chipper voice greeted me Sunday evening when I went to pick Noodles up from the Village Kennel Club. It was Pam Austin, the owner of the kennel, and possibly Noodles's second biggest fan in the world.

“Hi Pam,” I said, stepping over the series of doggie gates to get to the front desk. But Pam didn't hear me; she'd already ducked into the back room to grab Noodles. For a place that housed up to twenty dogs at a time, Village Kennel Club always managed to smell like cinnamon and vanilla. “Thanks for bending the rules for me,” I called to Pam.

My flight from Sydney hadn't landed until seven, and usually the Kennel Club was closed for pickups after six on Sundays, but Pam had agreed in advance to let me pick Noodles up as soon as I got back to the city. I was especially grateful now, seeing as how SBB
had taken a connecting flight from JFK to Montreal to see JR. And my whole family was still in the three other corners of the world. And none of my Thoney friends would even land from their Paris flight until almost midnight tonight.

I really didn't want to have to go home to an empty house, but I figured, armed with Noodles, my dark foyer would be a little bit easier to handle.

“Here he is, Mr. Noodley Noo!” Pam sang in her dog voice. She appeared back behind the front desk with my happy, squirming Pomeranian in her hands. She held him out to me, and when I lifted him to my chest to give him a hug, my heart swelled with love. Noodles showered me with such a forceful slew of kisses, I had to sit down.

“Ooh,” I said, taking in his freshly bathed fur. “A new blue collar. That's a good color for you, Noods.”

“Well, I have to tell you,” Pam said, leaning over the desk conspiratorially, “it's not just the collar making him look so good. While you were off gallivanting all over the globe, Noodles had a very busy week himself.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. He looked like the same old guy to me.

“Let's just say he unleashed his inner Romeo.” She nodded. “That's right. Your Noodles fell in love.”

I gave Pam a bewildered look. Not because Noodles wasn't lovable—he was! But because with everything else this week … it was just such ridiculous timing.

“Frances will be very sad to see him go.” Pam said. “Do you want to meet her?”

“Oh,” I said. “I hadn't really thought about it, but … okay. Sure.” When Pam disappeared into the kennel a second time, I turned to Noodles. “You fell in love with a dog named Frances? Who is this girl?”