The Fidelity Files (Jennifer Hunter #1)(78)

Zo? laughed affectionately at me. "Um, yeah, Jen. Sorry, you're not that good of a liar."

"So you've known all along?" Sophie asked.

Zo? leaned back against the couch. "Well," she admitted, "I didn't know exactly what she'd been up to, but I knew something was different. She hasn't been the same for a few years."

I sat staring at my friend in complete astonishment. All this time I thought I was fooling everyone. And I almost was. Everyone except Zo?, that is.

"Plus," she continued, "I ran into that guy Nate Evans last year at the movie theater. Remember the guy from Stanley Marshall who you tried to set me up with a few years back? Well, anyway, he told me that you quit, like, months ago."

"But..." I couldn't even begin to make sense of what she was saying. Here I was thinking I would have to go through one more round of relentless questions from another close friend, but in all actuality it was the other way around. "Why didn't you ask me about it? Why didn't you confront me when you knew I didn't work there anymore?"

Zo? took a deep breath. "I don't know. I figured you were doing your own thing. And when you wanted to talk about it, you would come to us. So I just let you be."

"Wow." Sophie was bemused, looking just the slightest bit jealous that Zo? had so easily broken part of the code when she had been in the dark this whole time.

"But good for you, though," Zo? offered. "I must admit, it's kind of nice not having to speculate on what you might be up to anymore. For a while I convinced myself you were stripping at that club down the street from here. But honestly, I stopped trying to figure it out about six months ago."

"So you think it's a good thing?" I verified.

She nodded. "Sure. I mean, I don't blame you for wanting to do it. After what happened with your parents."

My shoulders slouched and I nodded softly. "Right."

Sensing my discomfort, Zo? quickly changed the subject. "So what are you getting ready for now?" she asked, gesturing toward the wet towel clinging to my body. "Another night of flirting with the unsuspecting?"

I stood up and hiked the towel higher around my chest. "No," I said quietly. "I'm ...well, I'm going on a date, actually."

Both of my friends simultaneously jumped off the couch with more uniformity than an Olympic synchronized-swimming team. "What?" Sophie screeched.

"It's that guy from the plane, isn't it?" Zo? speculated with exhilaration.

Sophie turned to her. "What guy from the plane?"

"Jen met this cute guy on the plane back from Vegas and they totally hit it off, and she told me that she wasn't going to call him, but I knew she would."

"Well, you just know everything these days, don't you?" I asked, walking toward my bedroom.

The girls followed shortly after, like two dogs persistently pursuing a toddler snacking on crumbling pretzels.

"I know you, Jen," Zo? stated proudly. "You think no one knows you. But you are so wrong. You're more readable than you'd like to admit."

"Not to the men she seduces," Sophie shrewdly pointed out, wanting so much to compete in what she now perceived as a "Who knows Jen better?" competition.

"That doesn't count," Zo? replied. "They have so much testosterone running through their bloodstreams, I doubt they would notice if she wrote, 'This is a setup' across her forehead in red lipstick. Fooling an idiot male with a hard-on who's had sex with the same woman for the past twenty years isn't exactly a challenge."

"Well, know-it-all," I began self-importantly as I stepped into my closet and began riffling through my ten thousand outfit selections. "Turns out you're wrong. I didn't call him. I bumped into him at the Range Rover dealership."

"And you decided to finally listen to the universe," Zo? pointed out.

I bit my tongue in defeat. "Okay, so you were right about that."

Zo? plopped down on the bed with a bounce and smiled proudly. Sophie, slightly more dejected and feeling very out of the loop, settled with less celebration into the seat next to her.

"Soph," I said, sensing her feeling of exclusion. "I'm so useless with these things. Will you please just pick out something for me to wear? Or I could be in here all night."

Sophie's face immediately brightened as she eagerly rose to her feet and waltzed into the closet to perform her civic duty as the fashion-adept friend.



WHEN JAMIE called my personal cell phone to let me know he was just pulling up in front of my building, I quickly interrupted him. "I'll come down," I blurted out before he could even finish his sentence, most likely leaving him with the suspicion of dead bodies that I had yet to clean up after, or a variety of illegal drugs laid out on the coffee table awaiting proper measuring and packaging, or possibly even an estranged husband who thought I was going out with the girls this evening. But truth be told, I wasn't quite ready to let him into my house yet. Giving him my address had been hard enough. But the thought of having him walk around inside my home made me just the slightest bit nauseous.

I began to pack my Marc Jacobs clutch with all the essentials: breath mints, keys, lip gloss, credit cards, cash, ID... and, finally, my personal cell phone. I stopped and stared down at my Treo, lying lifelessly on the kitchen table. I reached out to grab it and then slowly recoiled, as if the small, metallic device was threatening to scorch my skin upon contact. For some reason this moment, this seemingly insignificant decision, seemed like a major turning point in my life. I took one last glance at the phone and then triumphantly zipped up my bag and slung it over my shoulder.