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  Really? Interesting. So, did that mean Brooke was so heartbroken that she couldn’t bring herself to celebrate after Jason did such an amazing job on their last one together? Or was it so awful that it led to their marriage’s demise? Maybe Millie was getting somewhere. And a good job on the up-swing, if she did say so herself.

  Millie nodded. “I do remember you saying that, but….”

  “All set, ladies?” The waiter popped over, his timing not so excellent this time.

  Brooke ordered a Cobb Salad. And more water.

  “I’ll have a screwdriver,” Millie said. “And the spaghetti.”

  Now, how could she dig more deeply into this birthday thing? Or this breakup-divorce-wedding-photo thing? Both, anyone? She turned her attention back to Brooke, noting her eyebrows were far less arched. Good. “So, why is it that you don’tcele—?”

  “With meat sauce, marinara, or meatballs?”

  Millie clenched her jaw. “Marinara.”

  “With garlic toast, garlic bread, breadstick or dinner roll?”

  Millie’s gaze swung to the waiter. “Breadstick.” She glared at him, willing herself not to hiss. “Thank you.”

  His grin faltered. Good. Maybe he could run along now?

  “I’ll be back to refill your waters. Unless you need anything else?”

  She ticked her head, no.

  Brooke smiled.

  The waiter backed away.

  Now, where was she? Oh, yes. Brooke’s birthday. Calling Jason. In truth, had Jason actually answered or called her back, she didn’t know what she’d have said beyond the first lie. She hadn’t had a lot of time to complete the scheme yet. Surprise was a general enough term and she’d planned on winging a party idea. Now he probably would never call her. On to another blind stab.

  “I love birthdays,” Millie said. “Every one. The bigger the better. Why did you stop celebrating them?”

  Not the smoothest transition, but hey.

  Brooke shrugged. “Lots of reasons. Getting older, being divorced, you know.”

  “No. I don’t. I mean, I always thought of birthdays as an excuse to get dolled up, make men drool, dance all night and try to guess which gift was a re-gift.” Vegas. The Bahamas. As Kiki, the possibilities had been limitless. Themes, location, A-list exclusivity. Her chest tightened. Man, her life had been fun. “Don’t you ever want to be pampered like a goddess for one day out of the year? Every year?”

  “No. Not me.” Chuckling, Brooke scrunched her chin up. “Simple dinner party is more my style. But, it doesn’t matter now. Maybe next year. Besides, it’s not that I tolerate you. You’re my friend. I hate it when people try to make things up to me, you know?” She finger quoted the air. “Why can’t people just be considerate? Because you can never make up for a wrong. For anything.”

  “Yeah.” Slice. She couldn’t believe how bad that hurt. Millie looked down and rubbed her nose, trying to get the sting out of her eyes. “I guess you’re right.”

  “Oh, no, Millie,” Brooke said, reaching across the table. “That came out wrong. I didn’t mean you, so much as generally speaking. Everyone. Like Jason. He would do that sort of thing all the time.”

  “Oh, I know.” Millie nodded, waved her hand through the air. That might be the first negative thing she’d ever heard Brooke say about her ex. “Still, I will be a better friend. You deserve a friend you can count on.”

  “I can count on you,” Brooke said. “In lots of ways.”

  If they didn’t get off this subject now, Millie might cry. “Have you ever had a Hollywood style birthday, Brooke? You know, glamour to the hilt, alike-it’s-1999 kind of party?”

  “No, I don’t think I know anyone who’s had that kind of birthday,” she said as their dinners arrived. “Sounds like something from a tabloid, but no one I know.”

  Millie snorted, then downed half her screwdriver. But, her call to Jason might not be a waste after all. Yes, he’d told Brooke about it, but she hadn’t actually told the man anything. Yet. Instead of trying to milk information from him, maybe she could enlist his help, unwitting help, of course. Hmmm. Glamour.

  Millie eyed Brooke. Limp hair, scant make-up, a clear need for a wax and facial. A day at a spa could do Brooke wonders. A new wardrobe and she’d be a whole new woman. What if Jason saw her looking amazing?

  Then what?

  Dinner. Nice, but not too fancy. Could be rather romantic and, if executed properly, Millie could create the circumstances she needed to finally match Brooke Munkle, in one fell swoop.

  The idea took hold and consumed her attention. For the first time since being assigned to Brooke, she saw hope. She ate and plotted and only half heard Brooke’s lengthy story. Something about class, her paper, some romance novels? Nor could she later recap for AJ what they’d discussed for the rest of the meal. She was simply too excited. A breakthrough!

  Chapter Four

  “Hello?” Brooke groggily answered her cell phone, wondering what time it was.

  “Brooke! It’s Millie. Listen I’m sorry to wake you, but I couldn’t wait.”

  Brooke sat up. Sampson meowed his disapproval, but didn’t move from his favorite spot on her legs. It was still dark out. The clock read six. “Couldn’t wait? For what?”

  “I have a little surprise for you. What are you doing tonight?”

  The vibrancy in Millie’s voice whispered untold promise. Enough promise that Brooke’s date with a paperback Scottish brute paled in comparison.

  “Nothing, yet. What’s up?” If she wasn’t awake before, she was now.

  “Nope. Can’t tell.” Millie’s glee bounced through the line and into Brooke’s belly. “Let’s just say I found a way to make up for no-showing on you last week.”

  Brooke’s belly sank as though to say, “Oh yeah, that.” But it had been six days. Six days and not even a phone call. Brooke would do just about anything if it meant they were talking again. Angry at her or not, life without Millie in it sucked.

  “How long will it take you to drive from class to the mall tonight?”

  “Ten minutes or so.”

  “Perfect. Just don’t wear heels.”

  Heels? Did she ever wear heels? Brooke chewed a nail, contemplating her phone after they hung up. That giddy voice, her secretive tone. What was Millie up to? A movie? Nah. Dancing? Not likely. She was up to something good, though. A little treasure of some sort and Brooke was a sucker for a surprise. Her life needed some mystery.

  Brooke couldn’t get focused to save her life and the day crawled by.

  As class finally neared its end, one tiny part of her began to panic. What if Millie tried something extreme? Matching tattoos? Or worse, something desperate? How sorry was her friend? Brooke felt a sudden frenzy in her tummy. Not that she could think of any extreme or desperate example. After all, what was extreme when it came to Millie? Turn Brooke into a mail order bride?

  No. She was just being silly. Millie was spontaneous and flashy. Her surprise would be fun, Brooke reaffirmed, and her anticipation buzzed back to life. Tonight would be better than any romance novel. Anything would sparkle up Brooke’s typical Friday night, though. Sampson might be a good, albeit hairy, listener but spontaneous, he was not.

  “Promise me one thing,” Millie had said on their third call that afternoon. “You will let me do this. I need to do this and I need you to just sit back, relax and put up with my surprise. All right?”

  After the six day Millie drought, Brooke might have agreed to chubby nudist speed dating just to have her friend back. Sure, she’d been angry. Yes, she had put her foot down, so to speak, but six days? Come on.

  Clearly, if a few days absence bothered Brooke this much, she had grown too dependent on Millie. Who could blame her, though? Her family, parents included, didn’t approve of her divorce. Her sister, busy with two young kids, hardly called. Plus, when she’d left Jason after fifteen years of marriage, she’d also lost all her friends.

  Shope’s voice droned in the background of he
r thoughts. “…D-day marked the bloodiest….”

  At first, to be fair, no one had claimed a side. Not family, not friends. Probably praying the separation wouldn’t progress into the big “D” word. Who could blame their need for denial? She didn’t. How could she? She’d thought she was living a fairytale, too. For years. Until King Charming stopped bedding his queen. Even then, she kept hoping.

  When her own D-day had approached, the genders took sides. Wives for Brooke, an occasional husband thrown in for good measure. They phoned in offers of help, shoulders to cry on, ears to bend. But, when she took the offers—and man, did she—every one of them inevitably asked, what went wrong? She still didn’t have an answer. There wasn’t another woman. No secret gambling. No abuse or lies. She hadn’t met anyone new. Brooke couldn’t say what went wrong and, one by one, her supporters snuck out of camp.

  Sympathetic pats evolved into hesitating eye contact and changing subjects. Phone calls dwindled, went unreturned. Along with the house, the mini-van, most of his income, and all of their assets, Jason Munkle won sole custody of their friends.

  Debbie Johnson-Hines, dame of wives poker night, summed it up. “I don’t know what you did to lose Jason, honey, and I suppose it’s none of my business, but whatever it was couldn’t have been a small thing. You have to understand, they’re uncomfortable around you. They aren’t sure who you are anymore.”

  Brooke still wished she’d smacked the collagen right off the woman’s lips. She couldn’t, though. It just wasn’t in her. She’d mustered a gasp. Brooke never had the nerve for violence. Besides, she’d been too stunned to do more than leave, stuttering a goodbye. Sure, everyone began thinking the worst. She’d heard the whispers. Selfish, superior, frigid.

  Brooke got the blame.

  Shope’s chalk screeched over the blackboard. The clock on the wall had to be broken. Brooke drummed her fingers. She pretended the girl who’d called her fifty was absent instead of doodling, as usual, two feet away.

  To think, in the beginning, she’d actually fooled herself into thinking they’d be the first couple in history to rise above the pettiness of divorce. They’d stay friends. Her need for acceptance and empathy from her peers had clawed at her. She’d resisted. She refused to blame him for her choices. She rose above it.

  Jason did not. He never corrected the flying assumptions. Very upstanding of him. She could just see him, cowing his head, a simpering nod, never saying a word against a single accusation sent Brooke’s way. Nope, Jason never defended her honor. If he had, Brooke wouldn’t have become so stranded. So isolated that she actually considered calling the whole thing off and groveling back into his good graces.

  Maybe that had been his plan, to starve her out, her very own fall of Rome.

  Then along came Millie. Just in time. She’d plowed into Brooke’s world. Everything changed. Not a big bang change either. Incremental, uncomfortable at first. Then easy and new and before Brooke knew it, she was focused on her new business, taking classes and no longer thought about Debbie’s simpering nods or anyone else’s.

  If Millie had a surprise for her, Brooke would trust her. Hold her breath, plug her nose and dive in. She trusted her to read her papers, she trusted her when Millie dragged her to a new restaurant. Plunked her in front of a new TV show or into a new pair of shoes. Perpetually late, sometimes thoughtless, she was the truest friend Brooke had ever had.

  The flash of black on white under her nose snatched Brooke’s thoughts back to class, which was ending. She slipped her graded paper, another miserable B minus, into her bag and forced herself to walk, not run, for the door. Shope offered his typical farewell, reminding them of their assignment, comparing their lives to desperate victims’ decades past.

  She just left. Got in her car and headed for Meadow Wood Mall. Seeing that B, though, got him back in her head. She imagined Elliott sitting in Shope’s darkening office, desk lamp highlighting his mighty red pen’s scholastic slaughter. Loathing his job and taking it out on students. Did her meager grade make him feel like a bigger man? Hah.

  Blinker flipped, she pulled into traffic. “He probably doesn’t even read the things,” she said to herself.

  Not once had she gotten comments or suggestions, after all. No explanations along the margins. Which rankled her. How could she improve if no one told her how to? Probably liked it that way, though. Or, maybe he didn’t care, just slapped a letter on them in random order. Alphabetical. Alan through Faust, an A, Finch through Munkle, a B, and so on.

  Wait, was that her turn back there? She glanced in her rearview mirror. No. Good.

  Of course, he’d have to switch his system around to keep a system like that up. Otherwise, the average would look skewed. Too many fails.

  Humph.

  She’d put her soul into those papers. Well, not her soul exactly, but a lot of work. A lot of stress for so many B’s. She kind of hoped he did hate his job. Shope was probably a pain to work for. It made her feel better, too, imagining he had better things to do than sift through historical regurgitation that couldn’t possibly merit an A.

  Thank God she hadn’t admitted that paper was hers.

  The car behind hers honked.

  Brooke winced and waved at the driver, whose hands were up in the universal come on dummy. She knew, she knew. Wouldn’t get any greener if she watered it. She pressed the gas pedal.

  What did she care what Elliott thought, anyhow? She wasn’t taking the class to ace it. She was there to learn about an era from which she was building a business on. Namely, what the memorabilia she sold meant to people. Context. Besides, he didn’t even know she was in the class. She had said she found the paper when she’d given it to him. So, it wasn’t as though he’d rushed to his seat and read every last word, hands gripped in ecstasy. Judging her the whole way through, laughing or nodding or any of the other things she’d spent far too much time picturing.

  Oh no. That was her turn back there. Yes? Great.

  She banged a u-turn and shook her focus back to Millie. Yes, her friend. And her friend’s make-it-up-to-her surprise. Maybe she’d ask Millie about Elliott. She had told her about him last week at dinner. Well, in part. Not the Blue Eyes part, or the assistant part. Or the butterflies. Still, Millie knew some of it. Thankfully, Millie hadn’t sniffed out that details were missing or Brooke might’ve had to lie to fill in the blanks.

  Brooke didn’t lie well. Made her twitchy.

  For whatever reason, she didn’t want Millie to know the whole truth. Tonight though, maybe she’d spill it anyway. Get some advice. About her grades, particularly. How could she word it?

  Pulling into a parking spot outside mall entrance five, Brooke felt lighter already. With her entourage of confidence, Millie would know what to do. Millie could make a pair of sweats look grateful just to be on her. She’d know exactly what to say to end all this wasted energy thinking about, wondering about, some guy who, belly flutters aside, didn’t have a shot in the world with her.

  Or her with him.

  He probably didn’t even want one after the way she’d left.

  Brooke locked her car, ignoring the defeat that last part inspired. “There,” she said out loud. “Solved. Now, get yourself together, go in, find Millie and have some fun.”

  Ten minutes later, Brooke stood blindfolded and cursing herself for trusting Millie, somewhere in the vicinity of the mall food court. Don’t peek? Brooke gritted out the promise. Anything to get this over with. Not fun.

  Millie squeezed her hands. “Promise if you hate anything, anything at all, you will tell me. Immediately.”

  Had to be a shopping spree. Conversations past after a marathon of Pretty Woman and ice cream flurried in her mind. “I promise.”

  “Promise me you will remain open- minded.”

  Uncertainty quivered over Brooke’s shoulders. Millie had far different taste from hers. What if she didn’t get to pick the clothes? “I promise.”

  “Okay. Now, promise me you will, under no cir
cumstances, question why or how I am able to do this, and you will accept what I am doing as a gift that is in no way intended as an insult.”

  Insult? Um, okay. Maybe not a spree. Worse? Visions of scissors and hair dye slashed in her head. Queasy dread prickled her belly. “I promise?”

  Millie began bouncing, up and down. Blindfold or not, six inches height difference were a recipe for a fall. Luckily, before she yanked them both downward, Millie stopped.

  “Wait right here.”

  “Right here? Blindfolded?” Either Millie didn’t hear her or was adding tortured silence to the surprise. For both their sakes, it had better be the former.

  Scents of fried hot dogs and warm pizza wafted to her nose. Her stomach growled above its unease. The whir of shoppers milling around her amplified with every passing second. Brooke rubbed her flaming cheeks. “No one’s looking,” she told herself. “No one here knows you.” How embarrassing! “You never promised not to get furious about being stranded for people to point and laugh at you.”

  “Don’t worry,” a man’s voice said, warm breath on her neck. “No one is laughing.”

  Brooke stiffened, forgetting how to breathe. Did she know that voice? Was it Blue Eyes? Time seemed to suspend along with her capacity to think straight. Her hands rushed to uncover her eyes but Millie’s stopped them. “Hey! No peeking remember?”

  “But, I—I.” She fought to peer out of the blackness.

  “Nope. Uh-uh. Now, come along. There you go, walk slowly.”

  “Who is that? Who’s with you?”

  “No one. Just me and you.”

  “Where did h—?” Did she know that voice? Or were her collegiate insecurities coming back to nibble? Millie certainly wouldn’t bring him, of all people. “Where did you go? Who’s with you?”

  “No one and I’m not telling where. It’s just us. Well, for now.”

  “Millie, where did you go?” Better yet, where did he go?

  “Uh-uh. I can’t tell you. But, in about seven more steps, you will see for yourself.”

  She didn’t want to take any more steps. The odor of acrylic, the whiz of a blow dryer, closed her coffin. She already knew. A makeover. And she had promised.