Delilah Green Doesn't Care(Bright Falls #1)(114)
Astrid smiled, her nausea dissipating, thank goodness. When she’d told Claire and Iris about Pru Everwood’s call—about Innside America, how Pru’s grandkids were coming into town to help the older woman manage the whole affair, Natasha-freaking-Rojas—her best friends had promptly squealed with glee and helped her prepare for today’s meeting with the Everwood family. Granted, prepare entailed several nights at Astrid’s house, open wine bottles littering her coffee table while she worked on her design software and Iris and Claire grew increasingly giddy and obnoxious, but still. It was the thought that counted.
Today, they’d insisted on her meeting them for breakfast at Wake Up to fuel her with, as Iris put it, “bagels and badassery.” Astrid would be lying if she said she didn’t need a little badassery right now. She nodded at Claire and moved toward the front entrance, hand reaching for the tarnished brass handle. Before she could give the first tug, however, the turquoise wooden door flew open and something slammed into Astrid, yanking all the breath from her lungs and sending her flying backward.
She landed hard on her butt, palms scraping on the cobblestones, and a burning sensation grew in the center of her chest before slithering down her belly.
“Oh my god, I’m so sorry.”
A voice sounded from right in front of her, but she was frozen, her legs splayed in a most inelegant fashion, the right heel of her favorite shoes snapped in half and hanging on by a literal thread, and—
She squeezed her eyes closed. Counted to three before opening them again. Maybe it was a dream. A nightmare. Surely, she was not sitting on her ass on the sidewalk in the middle of downtown Bright Falls. Her pencil dress—her gorgeous, lucky, just-shy-of-a-grand pencil dress that made her ass look amazing—was not covered in very hot, very wet, very dark coffee right now. Three soggy paper cups were not spinning on the ground around her, a drink carrier was not upturned in her lap, pooling more liquid all over the dry-clean-only linen, and there was most definitely not a woman with a tangle of short golden brown hair, light denim overalls cuffed at the ankles, and rugged brown boots standing over her with a horrified expression on her face.
This was not happening.
“Are you okay?” the woman asked, holding a hand out to Astrid. “I was in a hurry and I didn’t see you there and, wow, that dress really took a hit, huh?”
Astrid ignored her babbling, ignored the hand. She concentrated instead on breathing. In and out. Nice and slow. Because what she really wanted to do right now was scream. Loudly. In this woman’s face, possibly accompanied by a nice, firm shoulder shove. She knew she shouldn’t do any of those things, so she breathed . . . and breathed.
“Are . . . are you hyperventilating?” the woman asked. “Do I need to call someone?”
She kneeled down and peered into Astrid’s face, her hazel eyes narrowed. Her face was almost elfin, all delicate features with a sharp nose and chin, and her short hair was shaved on one side and longer on the other, swooping over her forehead and filled with messy tangles like she’d just woken up. She had a nose ring, a tiny silver hoop through her septum.
“How many fingers am I holding up?” she asked, presenting two fingers.
Astrid felt like responding by holding up one important finger, but before she could, Iris and Claire and Delilah spilled out of the café, all of their eyes wide when they spotted her on the ground.
God, was she still on the ground?
“Honey, what happened?” Claire asked, hurrying over to help her up.
“I happened,” the woman said. “I’m so sorry, I was coming out and not watching where I was going, which is just so typical of me and I feel so horrible and—”
“God, will you shut up?”
The words fell out of Astrid’s mouth before she could think better of it. The woman’s eyes went wide, perfect winged eyeliner arching upward, her raspberry red mouth falling open in a little O.
Claire cleared her throat and tugged on Astrid’s arm, but Astrid waved her off. Goddammit, she was going to get up on her own, preserve what dignity she had left. Passersby on their way to work or out for coffee stared at her, all of them probably thanking the gods or whoever that their mornings weren’t going as badly as that poor lady with the ruined dress and scraped-up palms.
She hobbled to her feet, the woman rising with her and twisting her hands together, wincing as Astrid whipped off her broken shoe and inspected the ruined heel.
“I’m really—”
“Sorry, yes, I got that,” Astrid said. “But your sorry isn’t going to fix my dress or my shoe right now, is it?”
The woman tucked her hair behind one ear, revealing several piercings lining the delicate shell. “Um. No, I guess not.”
Something that felt like despair, as irrational as it might be, flushed Astrid’s cheeks and clouded into her chest. This one thing. That’s all she wanted, this one morning to go perfectly, but no, this disaster of a woman with her cute hair and her nose ring had to come barreling into her life at the worst possible moment, obliterating any chances at perfection. Her fingertips felt tingly, her stomach cramped with nerves, and her words flowed forth in a panoply of venom and annoyance.
“How could you possibly not have seen me?” Astrid said.
“I—”
“I was right there, in ivory no less.” Astrid fluttered her hands down her now decidedly not ivory dress. “I’m practically glowing.”