Rusty Nailed (Cocktail, #2)(8)

“You touch that jelly and I’ll punch you in the throat,” Sophia warned, her mouth set in a grim line.

“Ladies, let’s not get violent so early in the morning, shall we? I haven’t even had my coffee yet,” I said, just as the waiter brought my coffee. “Okay, never mind—fight it out, you two.” I laughed, leaning back in my chair.

Sophia stuck her tongue out at Mimi, which carved a small smile into her tiny face. Mimi was darling as always this morning, clad in a plaid miniskirt, kneesocks, and a turtleneck sweater. Give her some pigtails and a backpack and she’d look like a Filipino schoolgirl—an outfit I’m sure her fiancé, Ryan, would love.

Yep, Mimi and Ryan were engaged. Like a scene from a romantic comedy with a twist, Mimi and Sophia had met their knights in shining sweaters on the same night. Best buddies to my Simon, Ryan and Neil had fallen head over feet for my ladies. After a little switcheroo, mind you. So between Jillian and Benjamin, and now Mimi and Ryan, wedding fever had hit my little circle in San Francisco.

But part of my circle was broken. Broken up, rather.

As Sophia and Mimi bickered, I noticed again how tired Sophia looked. She wasn’t sleeping well—not that I could blame her.

When she first told us that Neil had cheated on her, we didn’t know what to do. Our first instinct was to set fire to his car, something Simon wisely talked us out of. Arson charges are a hard thing to have following you the rest of your life.

For a brief and crazy moment we considered breaking into the studio during one of his broadcasts and telling his viewers that they got their sports news from a cheating dick, but again, wiser heads prevailed.

So Mimi and I simply stood by our friend as she fell apart.

It started when I got a call from Sophia late one night, after midnight. She was swearing nonstop; sailors all over the world would have been proud. I could only catch occasional phrases like “* cheater” and “the nerve of that f*ck” and “balls are in my pocket.” By the time she walked over to my apartment and came up the stairs, the swearing was beginning to calm down and the tears were falling fiercely. She pushed away my offer of tea, sucked back some scotch, and told me what had happened. By the time Mimi made it over, it was all out on the table.

Neil had had dinner with an old girlfriend; dinner turned into after-dinner drinks; after-dinner drinks turned into kissing. Or a kiss, depending on who was telling the story. Regardless, that’s what caused her to flush his car keys down the toilet.

We were all stunned. They’d seemed so happy; perfectly matched and twisted in the best of ways. Neil was the local sportscaster for NBC, great looking, sweet, lovable, an all-around great guy. Who was a cheater, something no one saw coming.

She broke up with him immediately, livid. She refused to see him, refused to take his calls, refused any attempt through Simon or Ryan to have any contact with him at all. She was mad, then got really sad, and now she was . . .

Well, it was weeks later and she was sitting in a diner in her pajamas with her gorgeous red hair in straggles around her puffy face, wearing no makeup and fifteen extra pounds, and was making a town out of jelly. A musical child prodigy, she was a cellist for the San Francisco Symphony. One of the most beautiful and accomplished women in all of San Francisco was now making it snow in Jelly Town. God, no—not with dandruff, but with sugar packets.

“Sophia stop, stop—stop!” I yelled, grabbing her hand and spraying sugar snow everywhere. “This is enough. No more pouting, no more hiding. This is ridiculous!”

“Yeah!” Mimi chimed in.

“Seriously, this has gone on long enough. I don’t want to go all Afterschool Special here, but my God, woman, wash your hair!”

“Yeah!” Mimi added.

“You’re f*cking hot, and you’re f*cking great, you’re a f*cking catch. And if f*cking Neil doesn’t get to have you anymore, who cares, because you’re f*cking awesome,” I finished.

“Fuck, yeah!” was Mimi’s contribution.

The table fell silent. Sophia played with one last sugar packet, running it along her fingernails, then stopped to really look at them. Bitten down to the quick, jagged, polish peeling. She sighed, and then looked up at us, two big tears rolling down her cheeks.

“I hate him,” she whispered, drawing a shuddering breath. “And I miss him.”

“We know, sweetie,” Mimi said, drawing Sophia’s hand into hers.

I leaned over and gave Sophia my napkin, which she used to wipe her eyes. She looked down at her sweatshirt, rumpled and stained.

“I kind of stink,” she said with a grimace.

“We know, sweetie,” Mimi said again, which cracked a smile out of Sophia for the first time in a while.

A little pink crept back into her cheeks. She pulled a ponytail holder out of her purse and wrapped her messy hair back into a bun, out of her face. She glanced up as the waiter came to bring our food, her eyes growing huge when she realized the mounds of food she’d ordered. Once he had left, she unfolded her napkin and tucked it in her lap.

“Okay, no more wallowing. I ordered it, so I’ll eat it. But starting this afternoon, no more wallowing includes no more eating like a thirteen-year-old boy.”

“Boys that age have to eat like that. They have to keep up their strength for their many boners a day,” Mimi said matter-of-factly, separating her blueberries from her raspberries, then lining them up on the side of her plate like tiny cannonballs. Sophia and I stared at her as she went on to explain the extreme impact of boners on the social lives of junior high boys. As related to her by her fiancé, apparently an expert.