“Why you…I can’t believe…” He had been playing her for a fool for years. He had never once intended to live up to his side of their bargain. Phil was finally sure of at least one thing—she was done with Christian for once and for all.
She stood up with her keys in her hand. The old Phil might have cried, but ultimately she would have forgiven her cheating fiancé and agreed to forgo law school in order to salvage their relationship. But Phil wasn’t that person anymore. She headed for the door.
“Wait a minute.” Christian stepped in front of her. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“I’m leaving you.” Phil gave him a level glare. “I should have done it a long time ago.”
“Now, hold on, babe,” he protested. “I told you we can work this out. Think about all the good times we’ve had. Remember our first apartment—how hot it was? Or the Christmas we only had ten dollars to spend on gifts?”
“So we went to the dollar store and you got me a glass bunny and I got you a bottle of designer imposters cologne,” Phil recited. “Yes, Christian, I remember all of that. But it doesn’t change the fact that I’m leaving you. I told you I can’t live on the past anymore—that I needed something for the future. Well now I’m going to make my own future. Without you.”
Christian dropped the soothing tone of voice. “Where do you think you’re going anyway? Gonna run back to computer boy?”
“I…I don’t know.” Phil crossed her arms over her chest. “For right now I’ll probably just go back to Nana’s house. I need time to think.”
Christian threw up his hands. “Fine. Good luck being able to sort yourself out with your sisters yapping and your grandma going nuts—I’ll be surprised if you can hear yourself think, let alone come to any kind of a decision.”
Phil tightened her grip on her keys. “You know, Josh likes my family. He had dinner with us last night at Nana’s and they like him too.”
“What?” For the first time Christian looked genuinely angry. “So you blew off my important office party to show off your boyfriend to your crazy family?”
“It wasn’t like that.” Phil was strangely gratified to have finally gotten a reaction other than mild amusement from him. But his next words shattered that.
“Dammit, Phil, I really could have used you there at that party last night,” he said, frowning. “It was damn inconsiderate of you to miss for something stupid like that. It didn’t look right, me being there without you.”
“It didn’t look right?” Phil felt like she was screaming but the words came out in a hoarse whisper. “Is that all you care about, Christian? Appearances? You and I are over and you’ve been lying to me for years but all you care about is that I show up at the right place at the right time on your arm?”
“Philly-babe, be fair.” He sighed. “I never said that. Now come on, put down your keys and let’s go to bed. I’ve got a long day tomorrow.”
“I’m not going to bed with you ever again. And I am not your ‘Philly-babe.’ Not anymore.” Phil pushed past him to the front door of the apartment.
“Fine,” he called after her. “You’ll feel different after a night at that mental institution your family calls a house. I’ll call you when you’ve had time to calm down.”
Phil didn’t answer, mainly because she couldn’t think of anything mean enough to say. For the second time that night she was left wondering—what the hell was she going to do?
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“Wow, you look like shit.” Cass clapped her hand over her mouth. “God, Phil, I don’t know what got into me. I didn’t mean to say that.”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s my new wish, or rather, my old one, reversed. Now instead of speaking my mind, the people around me have to speak theirs.” Phil pushed past her into the large kitchen. Someone had a pot heating on the stove, but thankfully the brown liquid bubbling gently inside it looked and smelled a lot more like hot chocolate than another one of her nana’s potions.
“Wait…what?” Cass shut the kitchen door and turned to stare at her. “You’re kidding, right? Not even the FG could be so stupid.”
“She did it on purpose. At least, I’m pretty sure she did.” Phil sank down at the table and put her head in her hands. “So I’ve been hearing people’s secret thoughts and darkest secrets all day long. It’s been horrible.”
“Oh, Phil, I’m sorry.” Cass wasn’t usually the affectionate type but she came around the table and gave Phil a quick hug. “That sucks.”
“You have no idea.” Phil tugged at the hair scrunchy holding her hair in a bun at the nape of her neck. “I got to hear how one coworker is afraid of killer clowns and how another has a massive Electra complex.” She ticked them off on her fingers as she went. “The lady across the hall that always steals my paper is a kleptomaniac. The cutest guy in my office is gay. The old lady that runs the filing department matches her eyebrows to the color of her underwear. My boss is addicted to Internet porn—and not just any porn—really skuzzy, bizarre porn.”
“There are different levels of Internet porn?” Cass raised a coal black eyebrow at her.
Phil shivered. “Trust me on this. But that’s not even the best part. The head of the BB&D human resources department likes to wear women’s underwear under his suit. Josh is in love with me and has been for years and Christian is cheating on me. Which is why I’m here.”
“Whoa.” Cass sank down at the table beside her. “Back up, Phil. You totally lost me on those last two.”
Phil sighed and ran both hands through her loosened hair. “What—you mean my best friend being madly in love with me or my fiancé cheating?”
“He cheated on you? With who? I knew he was a rat bastard.” Cass glowered and Phil fervently hoped her sister wasn’t going to say, ‘I told you so.’
“With a woman at work. Another attorney who in his words is ‘smart and funny and sexy as hell.’ Whereas I am just dependable old Phil who’s willing to put up with anything.”
“You’re not, are you? Willing to put up with it?” Cass demanded.
Phil spread her hands. “Here I am. I left him.”
“Good for you!” Cass thumped her on the back. “I’m proud of you, Phil. There’s no way you ought to stay with that cheating asshole.”
“Well, it’s not like I didn’t cheat on him too. With Josh. In the mall. In the dressing room at RipTide” She put her head in her hands.
“You what? Details—I need details.” Cass pounded on the table with one hand just as the cocoa on the stove boiled over with a hiss. She got up hurriedly to rescue the pot. “So tell,” she went on, pouring the hot chocolate into two mugs and bringing them back to the table.
Phil sighed. “All you need to know is that we did things…intimate things. Things I’ve never done with Christian. Oh, God.” She bit her lip, trying to rid herself of the hot image of her best friend on the floor in front of her, kissing and tasting her.
“You’re getting red. It must have been good.” Cass pushed the mug of hot cocoa towards her. “Come on, fess up.”
“All right, it was pretty damn spectacular. But, it left me so confused.”
“What’s to be confused about? In a nutshell—you cheated on Christian but he cheated on you first. They guy you cheated with just happens to be tall, dark and handsome—and he’s madly in love with you. So you leave Christian to be with Josh. The end.”
“No that’s not the end!” Phil put down the mug of scalding cocoa and buried her head in her hands again. “When did my life turn into such a freaking soap opera?”
“The minute you were born,” Cass said. “Seriously, Phil, belonging to this family practically guarantees you a daily allotment of drama. It’s amazing you’ve managed to live as normal a life as you have for as long as you have. But face it—the weirdness finally caught up with you. Why don’t you admit Christian is an asshole and own up to the fact that you want to be with Josh?”
“I don’t want to just leave one guy for
another!” Phil protested. “I don’t want to be like Alison from my office, just roaming from man to man like a lion preying on antelopes in the Serengeti!”
“Oh, that’s the slut girl at your work?” Cass was familiar with Phil’s coworkers from many sisterly bitch sessions.
Phil nodded. “The one with the Electra complex.”
“Uh, yeah. Well, listen Phil—news flash. There’s a big difference between being the office slut and staying with one man for practically your whole life and then finding out he’s an asshole and dumping him for a guy who actually cares about you. That doesn’t exactly qualify you as a man eater, ya know?” Cass took another careful sip of cocoa. “So why don’t you just admit you want to be with Josh and get on with your life?”
“Because it’s not that simple.” Phil slapped her hand on the table, sloshing hot chocolate over its smooth wood surface. “I’ve only had feelings for Josh for the last two or three days. How do I know that I wouldn’t just be getting together with him on the rebound?”
“Look, Phil.” Cass sounded like she was nearly out of patience. “You’ve only had feelings for him that you let yourself acknowledge for two or three days. But I saw you two together last night. There’s a spark there I never saw between you and Christian. Let me ask you something, how do you feel when you’re around Christian? Or how did you feel before you knew he was cheating?”
Phil wiped up her spilled cocoa with a napkin, keeping her eyes on her task. “Well, anxious, I guess. Worried, nervous, ignored, slighted, dull, unimportant…” She looked up. “I guess I could go on but I don’t want to.”
“Uh-huh.” Cass didn’t look surprised. “And how do you feel around Josh?”
Phil shrugged. “I don’t know. Happy. Safe. Respected. Funny, smart, good at what I do, intelligent, stimulated, sexy…” She trailed off, surprised at the number of words that came to mind when she thought of her best friend.
“Are you beginning to see a pattern emerging here?”
“Well, yes. But that still doesn’t mean I ought to jump feet first into a new relationship. Except…”
“Except what?” Cass took another sip of cocoa, watching Phil over the rim of the mug.
“Except I have to give Josh an answer by tomorrow or he’s leaving for California and never coming back.”
“Come again?” Cass asked. Phil explained about the job interview in Sacramento. “Okay, Phil, now I agree with you. Your life really is a damn soap opera.”
“See?” Phil spread her hands. “So what am I supposed to do?”
“Get in the car tonight, drive to Josh’s apartment and jump his bones,” her sister said. “No, wait.” She held up a hand as Phil started to protest. “First take a shower and put on my little red silk nighty—then drive over and jump his bones. It’s much more effective for seductions than those grungy old sweats you have on.”
“That’s not exactly helpful, Cass.” Phil crossed her arms over her chest.
“Well, hell, Phil—what do you want me to do?” her sister exploded. “You sit here whining to me that the guy who was never right for you is history and the perfect guy, the one who loves you, the one who can’t take his eyes off you whenever you’re in the same room together, wants a relationship. And yet you say you don’t know what to do! I wish I could have such cut and dried problems.”
Phil recoiled from her sister’s outburst. “Well, I’m so sorry I inconvenienced you by telling you about my life. I won’t bother you any further.” She started to take her mug to the sink.
“Wait, Phil, I’m sorry.” Cass put a hand on her arm and sighed. “You know I didn’t mean to say that. I don’t know what got into me.”
“I do.” Phil sank back down in her seat. “It’s my stupid reversed wish.”
“Oh, right. Well, before you deal with either Christian or Josh, I’d say you need to get that taken care of first. What a mess.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” Phil mumbled. “But I’m sorry if I was getting on your nerves.”
“You weren’t,” Cass assured her. “It’s just…I’ve got problems of my own right now.”
Phil gave her a small smile. “Those problems wouldn’t have anything to do with a certain reluctant male model that we scared off in your studio the other day, would they?”
Cass blushed. “Leave Brandon out of this. He’s…well, I’ll deal with him later. But you know, Phil, you’re not the only one with wish issues. My social life is in the toilet and my art…well, I have artist’s block or something. I have this huge showing coming up at the ICU gallery but nothing is coming out right lately. And worst of all, my twenty-third birthday is coming up next month and with the FG already pissed off, I don’t know how I’ll make a wish that won’t backfire.”
“Why not wish to become un-blocked then? You’re always saying how art is the most important part of your life.”
“Hello? Which is exactly why I don’t want our fairy godmother to have anything to do with it!” Cass exclaimed. “It’s about the only part of my life she hasn’t managed to screw up in some way or other. And I don’t need her to start now. She might make it so all I could paint was cute kitty cats and fuzzy bunnies.”
“As opposed to hot male nudes, like Brandon?” Phil tried to hide her smirk and couldn’t. Her sister slapped her lightly on the arm.
“Ahem. Speaking of hot male nudes, Miss ‘Did It In The RipTide Dressing Room,’ I almost forgot—Josh brought you something. He said he didn’t think it was a good idea for him to show up at your apartment so he wanted me to make sure you got it.”
“What? When? Why didn’t you say so before?” Phil jumped out of her chair.
“Simmer down—between you telling me about your klepto neighbor, your cross-dressing boss, and your cheating fiancé, it kinda slipped my mind.”
“It’s the head of HR that’s a cross dresser,” Phil corrected absently. “My boss is addicted to Japanese Internet porn. The skuzzy kind.”
“Oh, right. Well, anyway.” Cass got up and returned with the signature hot pink and aqua blue RipTide plastic bag and dropped it in her lap. “There. Satisfied?”
Phil looked down at the bag with something like dread growing in the pit of her stomach. What would she find when she opened the bag? Would it be the pale peach bikini that had seemed to float so indecently on her body? Or, even worse, the fire engine red mesh suit that showed everything? Had Josh bought it for her to remind her of what they had done?
“Well, go on—open it,” Cass said impatiently.
With trembling fingers, Phil untied the drawstrings and opened the bag, peering into its depths. There was a piece of paper on top of the folded fabric and when she moved it aside, she breathed a sigh of relief.
Neither pale peach or fire engine red greeted her gaze. Lying in a demure pile was the sky blue polka-dotted bikini that Josh had found for her. The first one she had tried on. She drew it and the paper out of the bag, a big silly grin spreading across her face from ear to ear. Somehow if Josh had bought her one of the other bikinis she’d tried on, it would have been almost as bad as having him deliver her magical wish-induced éclair.
“What does the note say? And what are you smiling about?” Cass demanded. Wordlessly, Phil handed her the note.
Hope you’ll wear this tomorrow so I can see how well it matches the color of your eyes. Josh.
Cass read it aloud and frowned. “Matches the color of your eyes?”
“When it’s sunny and there aren’t any clouds, Josh said my eyes are this exact color of sky blue.” Phil nodded at the bikini.
“But…” Cass looked from her to the bikini and back again. “I don’t understand. How does he know that? He’s non-fairy—he shouldn’t notice that your eye color changes with the sky.”
“I know. But he does. You saw for yourself last night—he notices and hears all kinds of things.”
“Notices what, my darlings?” The kitchen door opened with a flourish and their nana, wearing a fuchsia silk su
ndress and an enormous straw brimmed hat strode regally in. The fact that it was full dark outside didn’t seem to deter her at all but Phil knew Nana would have worn a parka to the beach or Bermuda shorts to the Arctic Circle if it suited her. Wearing a sundress out when there was no sun was nothing.
“Phil’s new boyfr—ah, friend notices things he shouldn’t be able to without fairy blood,” Cass said, wincing and rubbing her shin under the table where Phil had kicked it. “He noticed that her eyes change to match the sky.”
“He can also hear us talk when we mention our fairy godmother,” Phil added. “And he noticed that I hate éclairs. Something that completely slipped Christian’s attention, by the way.” She frowned, remembering the night of her birthday and the incident at the Italian restaurant.
“He noticed your éclairs?” Cass raised an eyebrow and Phil nodded.
“He got me a cheesecake for my birthday because he said he knew I hated éclairs.”
“Damn.” Cass was obviously stumped.
“Language, Cassandra.” Nana shook a finger at her and frowned reprovingly. But she had a distracted look on her plump face and Phil wondered if she’d heard anything she and Cass had been saying.
“Nana,” she asked, “Are you all right?”
“It’s nothing, Philomena, just that I appear to have stepped in an unmentionable substance.” Nana grimaced and examined the bottom of her dainty satin fuchsia mule.
“Stepped in dog shit again, Nana?” Cass asked.
“Cassandra!” Nana sighed, as though giving the language issue up as a lost cause. “Well, as a matter of fact, I did. I was out gardening and those nasty little poodles of Mister Clausen’s had nearly dug a hole right under the fence between his yard and mine.” She said it as though there was nothing strange about gardening at ten o’clock at night.
Phil felt her heart give a thump, remembering the potion she had buried among the zinnias. “Oh, uh, did any of them get through?”