Count Your Lucky Stars (Written in the Stars, #3)(21)

“No blaring music, got it.”

“How about you? Any pet peeves I should know about?”

Olivia smirked. “Somehow I don’t foresee you leaving the toilet seat up, so not really.”

Margot cringed. “I feel like there’s a story behind that.”

Unfortunately. “Brad was constantly forgetting to put the seat down. I got up to pee in the middle of the night and fell in. I’m talking legs up in the air, ass all the way down in the bowl.”

“Oh, shit.”

“It was awful. I had one of those Ty-D-Bol cleaner tablets in the tank, you know, the ones that turn the water blue? It stained my skin. I walked around looking like a Smurf from the waist down for two days before I got to the store and bought a better loofah.”

Margot clapped a hand over her mouth, muffling her chuckle. “It’s not funny. It’s just . . . the visual.”

“It’s a little funny,” Olivia conceded.

“Not that I picture it being a problem, but note to self, never leave the lid up. Anything else?”

Olivia folded her list in half and ran her nail down the seam, forming a sharp crease. “Should we talk about bringing people home?”

Margot fumbled her phone. “What?”

“If I wanted to have a couple friends over.” She didn’t have many close friends, not anymore, but she’d had Kira over for drinks once or twice, and Margot obviously had a tight-knit circle of friends.

“Friends.” Margot nodded quickly. “Oh yeah. That’s—that’s totally fine.”

“Cool. I would text you first, if you weren’t home. You know, so you wouldn’t walk in and wonder who these strange people were in your apartment.”

“Same.” Margot blew out a breath that ruffled her bangs, the flush along her cheeks not quite fading. “I’d, um, do the same. If I have my friends over.”

She kept underscoring that. Friends as opposed to some alternative—

Wow. Okay, Olivia could see where her initial question might’ve been open to interpretation. Not that she planned on having dates over. Olivia had done casual exactly once, and look how well that had turned out for her. Not that she’d known it was casual at the time. Not that it mattered. The point was moot.

She wasn’t going to be bringing anyone home unless they were friends, and what Margot did was her business. Olivia didn’t need to know, and she wasn’t about to ask.





Chapter Six




“It’s open!”

Margot let herself inside Darcy and Elle’s apartment for game night, leaving her boots at the door. No shoes inside was Darcy’s rule, not Elle’s, but one Margot was happy to follow. As much as she enjoyed playfully ruffling Darcy’s feathers, Margot had zero desire to discover what Darcy would do if she were to track dirt on the impeccable—if not impractical—cream-colored carpet.

Sitting on the floor with her back to the door, Elle didn’t so much as lift her head when Margot entered the living room. “There’s wine in the kitchen. Don’t worry, it’s the good stuff.”

By good stuff, Elle meant of the boxed variety, as opposed to Darcy’s favorite wine, the price as difficult to stomach as the name was to pronounce. Good was a bit of an overstatement in Margot’s book, but she’d take Franzia any day over a glass of wine so expensive she’d feel guilty drinking it.

“You do realize I could be anybody, right?” Margot veered to the right, careful not to slip as she stepped from carpet onto the kitchen tile, her socks offering no grip. “I could’ve been a murderer for all you knew, and you invited me in.”

“Murderers don’t knock, Margot,” Elle said from the other room.

“You don’t know that.” Margot searched the cabinet for something sturdier than Darcy’s thin-stemmed wineglasses. Game night called for durability, not delicacy. “I’m sure that’s what they want you to think. Lull you into a false sense of security all while hiding in plain sight.”

“You’ve been watching too much true crime again, haven’t you?” Elle sounded amused.

“It was a true-crime podcast, actually.” Margot grabbed a stemless glass from the back of the cabinet and filled it with rosé before returning to the living room.

“I thought I heard voices.” Darcy stepped out from the hall. “Brendon and Annie still aren’t here?”

Elle shook her head. “Not yet. They had to stop by the nursery, remember?”

“Excuse me?” Margot must’ve misheard her. “Did you just say nursery?”

Darcy snickered. “I’m going to finish this report. If I’m not out by the time they get here, come get me.”

“Um, hello, can we please address what you just said about Brendon and Annie stopping by a nursery?”

“A plant nursery, Mar.” Elle giggled. “Oh my God. If you could see your face.”

“Okay, color me confused. It’s game night. What do we need plants for?”

Elle gestured to the coffee table, and for the first time, Margot actually examined everything Elle had laid out, beyond the gel pens and Sharpies. A spool of twine rested beside a pair of scissors, two differently sized hole punches, and a stack of cobalt-colored card stock. Two boxes of flat-bottomed glass globes had been shoved beneath the coffee table beside a folded plastic tarp.