Tomboy (The Hartigans #3)(53)

Busted.

She took the other woman’s hand. “Fallon Hartigan.”

“You have the most amazing skin,” she said, peering closer at Fallon. “If I had your skin, I wouldn’t put anything on it, either, besides moisturizer. You have got to tell me what you use.”

“Whatever is on sale at Target.” Which was about as specific as she could get beyond the white bottle with the green writing and an illustration of a butterfly on it.

“You’re killing me, Fallon.” Marti sighed dramatically and slapped her hand over her heart. “I am dying right here of jealousy. Are you really a nurse like they say, so you can keep me from keeling over?”

She didn’t mean to laugh, but it was hard not to. The woman was seriously over-the-top. Gina and the girls would adore her. “Yeah, I volunteer here, but I work at St. Vincent’s.”

“Go you,” Marti said as she fiddled with the strap of her crossbody bag decorated to look like a pair of owl eyes. “I am euphemistically between jobs at the moment, meaning my post-doctorate unpaid internship has not resulted in a job offer so I am living with my parents. Again. It’s awful. Nothing like moving back home when you’re twenty-seven.”

Considering that was Fallon’s personal nightmare and where she would have ended up had Frankie not moved in with Lucy, she could commiserate. “That sucks.”

“Tell me about it.” Marti stepped in close and lowered her voice. “So you and Zach, huh? What’s going on there? Wait.” She held up her hand and shook her head. “Don’t tell me. It’s none of my business. Sorry, bad habit. My family is a little in everyone’s business, which is really annoying when your boyfriend of the moment works for your dad. That’s not awkward at all.”

Fallon was laughing for real now. Just the idea of dating one of the probies in her dad’s firehouse made her want to hurl. And the questions from her mom would be intense, to put it mildly.

“Now that, I can totally understand,” she said once she caught her breath. “My mom is like a one-woman Spanish Inquisition.”

“We must be related somewhere along the family tree, and as such, you need to take this.” Marti reached into her bag and pulled out a small card. “Good for one mani-pedi and a personal styling session at Dylan’s Department Store.”

Her stomach, still a little sore from laughing, sank like a lead weight. Here, female human who obviously doesn’t understand this whole how-to-be-a-real-woman thing, let me fix that mistake, the card practically screamed at her.

“Thanks, I’m not really…”

“Oh no, take it.” Marti waved the card in her direction. “It’s the friends and family card, and I have a ton of them because Dylan’s is an Ice Knights sponsor and they give a ton of these freebie cards to the team. It’s not like my dad is going to go do a mani/pedi, even though he could totally use one, so they end up with me. You never know when you’ll want a fun girls’ day and—” Her face fell, and she crumpled the card in her hand. “Oh my God. I just realized what I did.” She closed her eyes, tilted her chin skyward, and let out a sigh before focusing on Fallon again. “I am the queen of saying the wrong thing the absolute worst way. I did not mean that you needed a makeover. Shit. After all of the comments you’ve been getting online.” She paused and seemed to register what must have been a look of total confusion on Fallon’s face because that was what she had swirling about inside her head.

Comments?

Marti grimaced. “And I did it again. Because you haven’t seen today’s comments. And now you’ll go looking for them, or at least wonder about them, and it’s all because I’m a giant dumbass with six toes on my right foot. Thanks, Dad.”

Something clicked in Fallon’s head as she looked at the dark-haired woman with the sixty-mile-an-hour mouth. “Dad as in Coach Peppers?”

“Yep.” Marti nodded. “Of all the creepy things to pass down to your kid, six toes has to be the weirdest. I don’t know. Maybe a third nipple. But I’m off track. Please forgive me. I didn’t mean to be a bitch about the whole makeover thing. Sometimes—okay, most times—my mouth moves way faster than my brain. I’m sorry.” She grabbed Fallon’s hands between hers. “Really, I am.”

In the emergency room, a person got used to reading people on the quick and discerning the lies—from the embarrassing, like I don’t know how that action figure got there, to the awful, like it wasn’t my husband, I walked into a door—in ten words or less. So she didn’t need the billion-and-half that had come out of Marti’s mouth in one long, run-on sentence to realize the other woman was being sincere.

“It’s okay,” Fallon said. Because what was she gonna do? Scream about the tyranny of pink lipstick and false eyelashes? “That whole girlie-girl thing is really not my thing, but my friends and I do a Paint and Sip night once a week or so. You should come.”

“Oh, I am in.” She dropped Fallon’s hands and gave her a quick hug. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go sink Blackburn for the fifth time today.”

“You don’t want a signed puck, do you?” She was the coach’s daughter and dating—sorta—a player, so getting a signed puck should be the equivalent of Fallon getting a signed Waterbury Fire Department calendar (not that she wanted one, because ewwwwwwww).