Total pages in book: 122
Estimated words: 114951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 575(@200wpm)___ 460(@250wpm)___ 383(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 114951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 575(@200wpm)___ 460(@250wpm)___ 383(@300wpm)
“Oh, yeah, I forget that she’s kinda famous,” Grace said, waving her hand at her friend like she was just an everyday person. “But yes, that is the one and only Mia Love.”
“You say that so casually like you didn’t fangirl so hard you nearly passed out the first time you met her,” one of the women at the table quipped with an arched brow. She was working on a delicate necklace, it looked like, her earthy-brown hands meticulously threading beads onto a chain. She had gorgeous black hair that framed her face in a flowy blowout, her makeup flawlessly applied like she was set to hit the runway rather than hang out at a friend’s house. “Hi, I’m Livia,” she said to me, her smile warm.
“And I’m Chloe,” the last of the unknown said, and the curvy little redhead popped right out of her seat and skipped over to me, crushing me in a hug. She had metallic pink eye masks under her eyes and brought a set for me, too. “I have heard so much about you. Welcome to girls’ night.”
“Thank you,” I managed, smiling despite the way my neck felt like it could fry an egg.
“So, you already know Maven and my connections to the team,” Grace said, placing my cookies at the center of the craft table before she invited me to sit. She immediately plucked one off the platter and took a huge bite, moaning with approval before she continued around a mouthful. “Livia here is Maven’s bestie and is now engaged to Carter Fabri.”
“She had his baby first, though. Scandalous,” Maven teased.
Livia threw a bead at her.
“And then Chloe here somehow softened our very own Daddy P into the mush ball he is today.”
“Is that how you’d describe him?” I asked, folding my hands tightly in my lap. I hadn’t thought to bring anything with me to craft night.
Idiot.
“Because I’m pretty sure I’ve seen him smile a total of two times.”
“He was even more of a grump before Chloe here, if you can imagine that,” Grace said.
Chloe beamed, pressing her fingertips into the eye masks above her cheeks. “It’s true. You should have seen the man at Disney World. You would have thought we’d dragged him to prison rather than the most magical place on Earth.”
“And this one,” Grace said, nudging Mia Fucking Love — I still wasn’t over that. “She actually grew up with Aleks Suter. And they started dating out of nowhere and had, like, the fastest engagement of all time.”
I remembered, though I wouldn’t dare say a word about it here. I’d followed their whole relationship, fawning over the photos the paparazzi leaked. I especially lost my mind over the one of them kissing on the beach.
“It was so romantic,” Chloe swooned. “I’ll never forget that speech he gave on the yacht when he proposed.”
“So… I actually have a confession,” Mia said, looking around the table with her lip between her teeth. She dropped her gaze back to her painting when she said, “What if I told you we were actually kind of faking it…”
Grace laughed. “Oh sure, so fake.” She rolled her eyes, but then her smile fell when Mia didn’t give in. “Wait. You mean to tell me it was all a publicity stunt?”
“I mean… kinda?” Mia winced. “Until it wasn’t. Obviously.”
“I knew it!” Livia snapped her fingers, pointing across the table at her literal popstar friend. “I overheard your publicist talking to Suter’s agent at your album release party in California, something about getting the money shot.”
“But you two are so in love!” Chloe whined.
“We are. And we were then, too. We were just also both really stupid and thought it was fun to torture ourselves thinking the other was just pretending to like us for a few months.” Mia shrugged. “Sounds crazy, but it was actually kind of fun.”
“You’re all crazy,” Maven said, looking around the table. “And that’s exactly why I love you so much.”
I smiled, looking down at the empty table in front of me. I decided to put on the eye mask Chloe had given me just so I had something to do with my hands.
When I looked up again, all eyes were on me.
Shit.
“Here,” Grace said, sliding a coloring page of Idris Alba over to me along with a box of colored pencils. “I don’t craft, either, but I like to color attractive men sometimes. I have a Keanu Reeves coloring book if he’s more your style?”
She tore a page out of that one and handed it to me as I laughed. “Thanks. I… I didn’t even think about bringing anything.”
“Do you do any kind of crafting?” Livia asked, working on her necklace again. “I’m a lover of fine jewelry, but Maven roped us into working on her wedding, and I absolutely hated that shit.”