Once in a Lifetime(9)

“What do you like?”

“Anything.”

Aubrey nodded. She’d found that this was rarely actually true: In fact, it usually meant that the person wasn’t a reader at all. “What’s the last book you read and enjoyed?” she asked, looking for a hint just in case she was wrong.

“Uh…I can’t remember.”

Nope, not wrong. Aubrey directed her to the latest Nicholas Sparks. After the sale, she went back to the demolition.

The other day, she’d put a bucket of books just outside the store. They were gently used cookbooks, encyclopedias, and miscellaneous nonfiction. The cookbooks had vanished almost immediately. The other books still sat out there, and despite the fact that she had a big FREE sign posted, every day at least one person would stick his or her head in the door and yell, “Are these really free?”

Today it was a twentysomething guy wearing a ski cap, down jacket, bright yellow biker shorts, and round purple sunglasses, à la John Lennon. Mikey had been a couple of years behind Aubrey in school, and by the looks of things, was still a complete stoner.

“Dude,” he said. “Are these books really free?”

“Yep,” she told him.

His brow went up, and he surveyed the store. “So…is everything free?”

“Nope.”

“’Kay. Thanks, dude.”

At the end of the day, Aubrey tallied the sales, got the day’s new arrivals stocked and shelved, and locked up. Seeing the lights still on in the flower shop, she moved down two doors and knocked on the back door.

Ali opened up, wearing a T-shirt, jeans, an apron, and lots of flower petals. She smiled and pulled Aubrey in. “You’re just in time. Leah brought over her leftovers, and I’m about to inhale them all by myself.”

Leah operated the bakery between Aubrey’s bookstore and Ali’s flower shop. She was sitting on the counter near Ali’s work space, licking chocolate off her fingers. “Better hurry,” she said. “Ali wasn’t kidding. There’s two kinds of people here, the quick and the hungry.”



Not needing to be told twice, Aubrey moved toward the bakery box and helped herself to a mini chocolate croissant. No one made them like Leah. “Oh, my God,” she said on a moan after her first bite. “So good. I’ve been tearing up that back wall and am starving.”

“I hate you,” Leah said.

Aubrey felt herself go still and, out of a lifetime habit of hiding her feelings, schooled her features into a cool expression that she knew was often mistaken for bitchiness. “What?”

“You just worked for hours without getting a speck of dirt on you?”

Aubrey looked down at herself. “Well—”

“And your hair is perfect,” Ali broke in, taking in Aubrey’s appearance. “I hate that about you.”

Leah nodded.

Both of them had businesses running in the black, hot-as-hell boyfriends who loved them madly, and their lives on track. And they were jealous. Of her.

It was just about the nicest compliment they could pay her, and she went back to breathing. She should have known they weren’t being mean—neither of them had a mean bone in her body. “Lifelong habit,” she said. “Being perfect.”

Leah laughed and offered another goody from the bakery box. “You could at least get chunky. Or a little dirty, just once in a while.”

“I don’t usually get dirty.”

Ali shook her head. “Back to hating you, Wellington.”

Aubrey smiled now and reached for the last mini croissant at the same time as Ali. “I’ll totally fight you for it,” she said.

Ali grinned. “I could kick your skinny ass, but since the croissant will just go straight to my hips, it’s all yours.”

Aubrey took a bite of the croissant, licked her fingers clean, and then pulled her laptop out of her bag. “I finally got Internet, and I’m trying to decide what to name my Wi-Fi. I’m torn between FBI Security Van and Guy in Your Tree. Any opinions?”

Leah snorted chocolate milk out her nose.

“How about Pay for Your Own Effing Wi-Fi, You Cheap Ass?” Ali asked.

They laughed for a few minutes, cleaned up their croissant crumbs, and then Leah dropped the bomb. “Heard about Ben,” she said.

Aubrey nearly dropped her laptop. “Um…what?” Her heart was thundering, but she was telling herself that they couldn’t know. No one knew. Not even Ben himself.

Leah was looking at her oddly. “The whole tossing-your-drink-in-his-face thing at the Love Shack the other night,” she said.

Oh, that. Aubrey relaxed. “It was an accident. I was aiming for Ted.” She took a side look at Ali because one of the most weaselly, shitty things Ted had done was sleep with both Ali and Aubrey while letting them each think that he was single. And they hadn’t been the only women he’d done that to, either.

Aubrey had recovered quickly because…well, she knew men were jerks.

Ali had been thrown for an emotional loop, and, clearly remembering just that, she smiled grimly. “I hope you ordered a second drink and corrected your error.”

Aubrey shook her head. “I got…discombobulated.”

“You?” Ali asked. “Pissed off, yes. But discombobulated? That’s not like you.”