The Fourteen Day Soul Detox (11 page)

“Oh my goodness gracious,”
she covered her mouth, “You are so excited to see this guy.”

“Shut up.” I smacked her
leg. “Will you text Beza and make sure everything is okay?”

“Everything is okay,” she
groaned. “She would have called if there was a problem, mama
hawk.”

“Just do it,” I said.

After a minute she said, “Sarah
is fine, everyone is fine. Eat a muffin.”

After she stuffed a muffin in my hand,
I took a small bite. It tasted decent but it wasn’t in the same
universe as the muffin I ate yesterday.

In the parking lot, we slowly moved
along as people imitated cars and walked in the middle of the road.

“There!” Susan shouted,
pointing to a car backing up. “Yes, it’s right in front!”

After shifting into park, I ran my
hands over my face. “I am so nervous. I hate you for doing this
to me,” I said into my hands.

“Oh, get over it. If you
humiliate yourself and he hates you, you’ll only have to see
him every day until Sarah graduates from high school.”

“I fire you, you are officially
fired,” I said.

“Bitch, you can’t fire me,
I’m a self-employed best friend,” she said while hobbling
out of the car. Yet again, the bottom half of her belly fell out of
her tank top.

“Sweetheart,” I said
crossing over to her. “Just roll your shirt up so it looks like
you’re wearing a bathing suit.” I grabbed up the
material, folding it up.

“My stomach will get burned. My
belly hasn’t seen the sun in months,” she said, even
though she raised her hands so I could help her.

“I have sunscreen in my purse,”
I said, pulling the blue glue-stick shaped container out.

“Of course you do, sometimes I
swear you and Beza have twin souls,” she said.

“I’d take that as a
compliment any other day,” I grumbled.

“Oh get over it. This is how Beza
says she loves you,” she said, rubbing sunscreen over her
belly.

“I would have preferred a card,”
I said.

Kids ran all around the grassy park
that led up to the rocky cove. A little girl in a yellow polka-dot
dress tried to get a red and blue superhero kite into the air. She
ran around, throwing it up repeatedly, while her mother and father
sat on a blanket, cheering her on.

“Does that type of scene make you
sad?” Susan asked, pulling my attention away from the family.

“What type of scene?” I
asked as we walked down the sidewalk toward the beach.

“The happy family. You were
staring,” she said, nodding back to the family on the blanket.

“Logan and I weren’t ever
really like that family,” I said, shrugging. “It would
have been you, me and Beza watching our kids from the blanket
anyway.”

“I guess that’s true,”
she said, her jaw clenching after she said it.

“He was a good dad,” I
said, looping my arm through hers.

The beach was painted in colorful
blankets, with people moving in a chaos of movement. The cove was
almost completely surrounded in man-made tubular rocks, the heavier
waves passing the placid cove by. Babies bobbed on floaters next to
their parents in the water, while the children ran in every
direction.

Immediately, I spotted Sarah’s
iridescent purple one-piece. She was cartwheeling about while the
beach-goers on nearby blankets turned to watch her. Beza sat a few
feet from her, snacking on some grapes and cheering every time Sarah
landed.

“There’s Aiden playing with
a girl and her dad,” Susan said, pointing to the water. “Is
that the guy?”

Looking to where she was pointing, I
saw Patrick, kneeling down in only board shorts, building a sand
castle with Kay and Aiden.

“Oh my goodness, you’re
blushing. It has to be him,” she said. “And wow, the boy
is ripped. What do you think, gym or hard labor?”

“Gym, he comes to the school
every day in a suit,” I said.

“That’s… different.
Okay so, suit or board shorts, what do you like better?” she
nudged me.

“I can’t decide,” I
said.

“He builds a mean castle too,”
Susan said before taking a sip of her smoothie.

“Does he? I wasn’t looking
at the castle,” I said.

Right then, probably catching sight of
two women staring at him, Patrick looked straight at us. His hand
went over his brow to block the sun from his eyes, and then he waved
with a huge grin growing across his face.

“Oh, look, he’s so happy to
see you,” Susan said.

“Shut—”

A small body hurled into mine, making
me take a step back.

“Mommy!” Sarah said while
she got a death grip around my waist.

“Angel.” I squeezed her to
me. “I missed you, my love. Did you have fun with your aunt
Beza?”

“Oh my goodness, she runs so
fast!” Beza panted. “Hey baby,” she said, giving
Susan a kiss.

“How did you manage to get her to
let you do braids in her hair?” I asked, touching the two
French braids in her hair.

“Aiden told me that she wanted
braids like his, but we settled for these. Does this mean you’re
not mad at me?” she asked as her head settled on Susan’s
shoulder.

“Oh, I’m plotting my
revenge, you just wait,” I said.

“I really like him.” Her
eyes glowed as she talked. “He’s only thirty-four,
divorced for three years, very smart, funny, and healthy. Aiden loves
him. He has a steady source of income—”

“Beza! I don’t need you to
write him a dating profile for me, okay?” I whispered at her.
Patrick was walking up the beach toward us with the kids jumping
around him, vying for his attention. “What did you do? Give him
a questionnaire?”

She pinched her lips together in an
amused smirk. “You give me no credit.”

“Oh, I’m giving you credit
for a lot of things,” I grumbled, before taking a long sip of
my smoothie.

Sarah grabbed my cup from me and took a
big sip. With a loud, “Pah!” she spit the smoothie out
onto the sand.

Susan laughed really loudly, and then
held out her smoothie. “Drink this one, baby.”

“I thought you had a cold,”
I said.

“No, I just said that because I
didn’t want to touch your weird neighbor,” Susan said.

Taking Susan’s smoothie, Sarah
took a big sip and kept drinking.

“Can I have some?” Aiden
lisped out as he caught up to Sarah. “Hey, can I have some of
that?” Then he turned to Susan. “Mom, Sarah’s not
sharing!”

“Tough,” Susan said.

“No, we need to share, Sarah, you
can have it for ten more seconds and then it’s Aiden’s
turn. Then you can have it after Aiden,” Beza said. After ten
seconds, she held her hand out to Sarah.

“Sarah,” I said in a
warning tone when she didn’t hand the smoothie over. “You
listen to your aunt or you’re not going to get anymore
smoothie,” I said.

Sarah finally gave it up as Patrick and
Kay joined us.

“I’m Susan, Beza’s
wife,” Susan said, holding her hand out to Patrick.

“Patrick. Nice to meet you,”
he said with a big, genuine smile on his face as he shook her hand.
“And this is Kay.” He put a hand on his daughter’s
back.”

“Nice to meet you, Kay,”
Susan said.

“I don’t have class with
Aiden, but I play with him on the playground sometimes. I like boys;
I don’t think they’re gross. We’re friends.”

Susan chuckled. “That’s
good to hear, Kay.”

“Hey,” Patrick said to me.
His blue eyes practically twinkled in his tan face.

“Hi,” I said, giving him a
half grin.

“Hey kids, I have snacks on the
blanket,” Beza said smiling and herding the kids away from us.

“You look really nice,”
Patrick said when the group had walked away down the beach. A small
smile played on his lips.

“Thanks. If I return the
compliment, are you going to think I’m a perv?” I asked,
glancing down at his perfect chest and smiling back.

His grin got wider. “Probably,
but I don’t mind.”

I blew out a laugh, then looked away
and bit my lip. “So, I’m sorry my friends are stalking
you. I swear I had no idea Beza was going to do this.”

He laughed, running his hands over his
blond head. “I’d mind more if she wasn’t trying to
set me up with a gorgeous former pop star.”

“Oh no!” I covered my face
with my hands. “She did not tell you that!” I peeked out
of my hands to find him grinning widely at me.

“So, you’re famous?”

“No, not at all. It’s
really not what you’d think,” I said.

“I’m very curious,”
he said.

“Okay fine, I’ll tell you
while we walk.”

He chuckled.

“See, you’re already
laughing at me.”

“Nah,” he said, looking
over.

Turning toward where our group sat on a
big blanket, I exhaled an almost-laugh and started walking. “So,
Susan and I grew up with this girl named Vanessa. The three of us
were inseparable since we were in, like, first grade. Vanessa lived
with her mom in Coral Beach, but her dad was a big time music
producer in LA. Every summer, she went to stay with him and met all
these pop stars and went to these fancy parties. So obviously,
Vanessa was obsessed with the music industry and was always writing
songs and making us perform them with her.”

I glanced over at him, and shrugged.
“So, for Vanessa’s eighteenth birthday present, her dad
offered her full use of the studio and their staff so she could
record a single. And she said she wanted to share it with us.”

I looked away, remembering. A hot
feeling rimmed the underside of my eyes and I shook my head to rid
myself of it. “Anyway, we did fantastic, the studio loved us.
We’d been performing Vanessa’s songs since we were ten,
so we were just natural together. We recorded an album, did a short
tour opening for another group, one of our songs got popular, and
then we quit.”

“Why did you quit?” he
asked.

I laughed. “Beza actually.”

He furrowed his brow. “How’d
that work?”

“Well, on our tour, we opened for
this boy band called ‘Dream Big’.”

“I’ve heard of them,”
he said.

“Listened to them, did you now?”
I asked.

He shook his head. “Nah, of
course not,” he said with a big ‘I might be lying’
grin on his face. “Okay, so Kay likes them.”

“Well, yeah, they were famous
even back then and we had one hit song. We basically played that song
over and over and over again.”

“And Beza?”

“Was the girlfriend of the lead
singer in Dream Big, she was an international supermodel then, pretty
famous.”

“Oh, I see where this is going,”
he said.

“Yeah, Beza and her boyfriend was
this media darling couple, and when she fell head over heels in love
with Susan, the press went crazy. Actually, Beza’s boyfriend
was a pretty great guy. I think they were more friends than really
romantic; he basically just told her that he was glad she was happy.
But the newspapers and tabloids made Susan out to be this lesbian
home-wrecker. And at that time, homophobia was a lot more mainstream,
you know? Susan was getting a lot of grief—random people
calling her names and spitting on her. Some people sent the studio
hate mail for her. One of the letters was so messed up the studio had
to call the cops. Vanessa, Beza and I sat down one day and decided it
wasn’t worth it. So, we all came home to Coral Beach and Beza
broke her contract and quit modeling completely.”

“Do you regret it?” he
asked, bumping me with his arm.

“Quitting? No.” I shook my
head. “I do regret that we stopped singing though.”

“You know, now that I think about
it, I faintly remember that scandal,” he said.

“I’m not surprised. The
tabloids kept it going for a long time. They only really left Beza
and Susan alone when they threatened to sue three different magazines
for libel and defamation of character.”

When we reached the blankets, I looked
over to where Beza sat with Susan leaning against her.

“Don’t think that hiding
under that pregnant woman is going to keep you safe, Beza!” I
yelled at her.

“
Don’t you want to love
me, baby? When the sun goes down,
” she sang at me then
ducked behind Susan when I threw a handful of sand at her.

“Hey,” Susan said as she
got smacked with the sand. She pointed at Aiden, who was now holding
a ball of sand in his hand too. “Don’t you dare follow
your aunt’s bad example.”

He chucked the ball of sand at her, and
then giggled furiously as he ran to the other side of the blanket
while Susan tried to get to her feet. She lumbered after him as he
ran in a circle around the blanket.

Susan ran straight over our little
picnic at Aiden, which seemed to surprise him. He squealed with
laughter and it took him a second to run away. She managed to get in
front of him and stopped him by tickling him, sending Aiden into a
fresh bout of giggles.

Sarah popped another grape in her
mouth, stood up and walked up the beach to the large vacated area
behind our blanket.

“Where’s she going?”
Kay asked.

“I think she’s going to do
a routine,” I said. To Sarah, I yelled, “Angel, is there
food in your mouth?”

“No,” she said, striking a
pose with her hands held up to one side. She moved through the
choreography in graceful, exact movements. She did several tumbles
before ending with a front tuck, her purple iridescent bathing suit
painting a line of color across the beach. Turning around, Sarah
lifted her arms and moved them through the choreographed poses.

“Wow,” Patrick said,
looking at me with wide eyes.

“Yeah, she’s really good,”
I said, not taking my eyes off her.

“Is she just making that all up
as she goes?” he asked.

“Uh, no, I’m pretty sure
that one was a floor exercise from the qualifying rounds at the last
Olympics. She just exchanges the really hard moves for ones she can
do,” I said as Sarah did three aerials in a row and another
flip.