The Supermodel's Best Friend (A Romantic Comedy) (3 page)

Maybe she was right. He hadn’t really let her
in, hadn’t tried hard enough. Three years was a long time, long
enough that he should be feeling more than relief—

But damn, she’d really confirmed his worst
fears. He’d been stupid to even consider marriage, however
theoretical that consideration had been. The only happy marriages
he’d ever seen were on TV. His father had been married four times,
and not once to his own mother. And his current stepmother… His
thoughts skated away from Heather in disgust.

No, he didn’t have a clue about women or
happily ever after. He was a product of his genes and his
environment, nature and nurture, and he wouldn’t forget it.

Thank God he’d found out in time.

He stood up, wiped some Dr. Pepper off his
jaw, and began cleaning up the mess.

“I never liked him,” Fawn told Lucy in the
middle of their Sunday morning water aerobics class.

Lucy kicked her right leg behind her and
smiled at her best friend. The water was chest-high, just enough to
support her breasts while she jogged up and down the lanes with the
dozen other women in the pool.

“Yes, you did.” Following the instructor’s
lead, Lucy leapt out of the water as though she was shooting hoops,
took a deep breath, jumped again. “You thought he was hot.”

Six feet tall, Fawn could jump high enough to
flash the bikini line she’d displayed on the pages of
Sport’s
Illustrated
when she was nineteen. The other women, some in
their eighties and barely able to raise their arms above the
surface, watched her with awe and affection. “I still didn’t like
him.”

“You could’ve said something.”

Fawn snorted. “As if you would’ve
listened.”

Lucy started to protest then caught the look
in Fawn’s eye. She turned and jogged after her neighbor, a
sixty-something woman in a red tankini with biceps like Michelle
Obama. “Well, I wish I would have.”

The class began punching the air over their
heads again and Lucy and Fawn joined them. They were younger than
most of the other women by several decades, but they liked the
plus-sized instructor and the friendly atmosphere.

“That’s okay, Lucy. Nobody can take advice
about their love life. Look at me, do I ever listen to you?”

“You dumped Craig McPherson in seventh grade
when I told you he’d called me Little Orphan Annie.” Lucy’s hair
was bobbed, curly, and on the reddish side, so it wasn’t the first
time she’d heard that name.

“That wasn’t advice, that was
information.”

Lucy kicked at the water—one, two, one,
two—like a slow, buoyant chorus girl. “Well, I wish you’d had
information for me about Dan early on. I feel like I’ve wasted
eight years of my life. Who knew he was sappy and impulsive? Would
you have ever guessed?”

“No way. He was about as sappy and impulsive
as you are.”

“Exactly! At least, he seemed to be.” Lucy
punched the water. “He has a calendar with appointments extending
ten years into the future. Mine only goes two.”

“And he really loved that house.”

Lucy snorted. Obviously, there had been some
problems between her and Dan she hadn’t been willing to
acknowledge. “Nevertheless, he’s not willing to marry me to get
it.”

“I didn’t mean it that way. Obviously, I
thought he loved you too. I hoped he did, anyway.”

“I don’t. It would make me think even less of
him to think he could do that to somebody he cared about.”

Fawn floated closer. “I’m so sorry.”

“Pffft. The main problem here is biological.”
She waited for a buoyant old lady in a daisy swim cap to jog past.
“Once I turn thirty-five, my womb is pretty much elderly. Getting
through a pregnancy brings on more interventions. I hear it all the
time from women at work.”

“Elderly! You’re in your early thirties!”

Lucy grabbed Fawn’s slender arm and pulled
her over to the edge of the pool. “Quiet, please. I was speaking
from a gynecological perspective.”

“Your hoo-ha isn’t elderly either. I’m sure
it’s lovely.”

Lucy snorted into the water. “Thanks. Right
back at you.”

“You’ve got plenty of time to have children.
We both do.”

“You do. You’ve got your sperm donor all
lined up. Mine just shacked up with a nun named Brittany.”

Fawn wiped wet hair out of her eyes. “Don’t
call Huntley that, please. He’s sensitive about being
objectified.”

“He can’t hear me unless his servants swim at
the Berkeley Y,” Lucy said. “Besides, if he’s that touchy he should
be in therapy. Hell, with his family’s loot he could afford a
full-time shrink.” She grinned. “Dr. Minion.”

“It’s not all in his head. Women have been
after his money his whole life. It’s important that he knows I’m
not like that.”

“I didn’t say you wanted his money, just his
DNA.”

“It’s all the same to some women.”

Lucy made a rude noise. “I don’t know any
women like that. Sounds like sexist bullshit.”

“They’re really out there. Women are always
throwing themselves at him because he’s rich, just like men chase
me because I’m a model.” Fawn hugged her arms to her chest, looking
chilled. “It’s horrible the way people use each other.”

“That’s life. Everybody uses someone else in
one way or another. We’re just biological organisms, dependent upon
one another, mortal and insignificant.” Lucy rested her arms on the
edge and let her legs float up behind her. “No point getting upset
about it.”

Fawn braced her hands on the edge of the pool
and lifted herself with effortless grace. “Either you’re lying to
yourself or you didn’t love him.” She got to her feet and walked to
the spa.

Lucy watched her long-legged runway stride
for a moment, unhappy with her accusation but not entirely
disagreeing with it. She knew her feelings for Dan had been, well,
somewhat tepid.

But her feelings for the life they almost had
together, the family they’d planned, ran deep and fierce. Her
relationship with Dan had been—or she thought it had been—based on
respect, friendship, and psychological compatibility. It should’ve
been just fine for living together, buying a house, raising
children, growing older together.

But sexual compatibility was more important
than she had realized. She’d ignored the fatal flaw in her
relationship with Dan, their boring sex life, thinking it was just
a small negative in her calculations of their total
compatibility—like, say, five percent. Nothing close to a
deal-breaker. And really, what did
he
have to complain
about? He got more than he wanted, poor baby. Then had the nerve to
feel sorry for himself and find solace elsewhere.

Lucy really should’ve asked Fawn what she’d
thought of him a long time ago, saved herself a lot of wasted time,
effort, and embarrassment.

She crawled out of the pool and staggered to
her feet. She needed to find someone new. Soon. Given that her
childbearing years were limited, and she admitted that biological
drive was mighty strong, she might have to settle for a man who was
eighty percent compatible, or even seventy-five. If they were
motivated and mature, that was more than enough to live together in
peace for a few decades.

A few? Not even. Just until the children were
in college, though if they wanted help paying for graduate school,
it would help if their parents weren’t estranged. Surely there was
a man out there who was as practical as she was.

She just needed to find one before her
“lovely hoo-ha” was as old as her fellow water aerobics
classmates.

Slipping into her Old Navy flip-flops, Lucy
wrapped a small white towel around her hips and glanced over at the
spa, noticing her two other best friends were there with Fawn. They
kept glancing over at her. Betty and Krista only came into the pool
to recover from their Flirty Girl Fitness class. Putting on a
one-piece black Speedo was flirty enough for Lucy.

She joined them with a sharp look at Fawn,
noticing that their conversation came to a halt when she slipped
into the water.

“Fawn told us everything,” Betty said, her
plump arms stretched out to either side. She wore a skimpy
lime-green bikini in the exact same color as the streaks of color
in her chin-length bob. “Sucks to be you.”

Krista, who was sitting rigidly upright so
the water didn’t touch her hearing aids, reached forward and
pinched Betty’s arm. “Don’t be that way.”

“Yow!” Betty glared at Krista. “What the
hell!”

Krista scooted away from Betty’s
under-the-surface kicking, her white halter swimsuit exaggerating
her broad, light brown shoulders. “Show a little sensitivity, Betty
Hsu.”

Stepping into the spa next to Fawn, Lucy
gasped at the thrill of the hot water and sank down to the seat.
“She said the same thing when I told her I was marrying him.”

“Show some sensitivity?” Fawn asked.

“No. ‘Sucks to be you.’”

Eyes twinkling, Betty shook her head. “Except
then I really meant it. I never did like him.”

“Neither did I,” Krista said.

Lucy sighed with feeling. “I really could’ve
used this information earlier.”

Fawn caught the others’ skeptical gaze. “As
if she would have listened.”

“If you’d all said it, I might have. I might
not have done anything differently, but I always want to have as
much information as possible when I’m making decisions, especially
major ones.”

Fawn, Betty, and Krista laughed, avoiding her
eyes.

“What?” Lucy demanded.

Fawn put an arm around her. “You wouldn’t
have considered my stupid little opinion to be information. More
like—what did you call it when I told you my multivitamin was
totally making me have more energy?”

Lucy sank a few inches into the water.
“Confirmation bias.”

Betty nodded, pointing at her. “Like when I
told her that hairdo made her look like a middle-aged man and she
said that was just because I knew she’d had it done at QuickieSnip.
As though its utter horror had no objective reality.”

“So says the Chinese girl with green hair,”
Krista said.

“As if the Hippie of Color would ever go to
QuickieSnip,” Betty snapped.

Krista, who had one German and one African
American parent, patted the halo of dark curls she’d pulled up with
a tie-dyed bandanna. “It’s beside the point. People don’t listen to
trash about their significant other. You love who you love, no
matter how stupid.”

Lucy sighed. “You still should have told me
how you felt. You’re my best friends and you’ve known me forever. I
don’t have a mom or a sister or whatever to tell me, so I rely on
you guys.” Her father, an associate professor at Berkeley, was way
too self-absorbed to think she might need anything from him. What
little social skills he had were exhausted with his new wife.

Fawn pulled her closer and squeezed. “I’ll
remind you of that next time you’re dating a loser.”

“
I
never hid how I felt about him,”
Betty said.

“Yeah, but you’re gay,” Lucy pointed out.

Betty rolled her eyes. “That is so
prejudiced. I can love men.” She jerked her thumb in Fawn’s
direction. “I love Huntley.”

“He bought her an island for her birthday,”
Lucy said.

Betty lifted her chin. “I loved him before
that.”

Fawn sighed. “Me, too.”

The three mortals turned their attention to
the supermodel. “So, you set a date yet?” Betty asked.

“Let’s not talk about my life today. Lucy’s
having a crisis,” Fawn said.

Lucy pushed Fawn’s narrow hips aside and
stole the best jet. “Nope. Not anymore. No thanks to any of my
friends
.”

Krista, staring at Fawn, had moved on. “It’s
like a movie. Everything’s happening so fast. I mean, to propose
after only two months!”

“Good thing he accepted,” Lucy said.

Fawn’s sharp fingernails poked her Lycra-clad
ribs. “We’re so happy we’re having a fabulous destination wedding.
As soon as all of you can take a week off at the same time.”

Krista adjusted a hearing aid. “A week? To
get married? Is that some East Coast blue-blood thing?”

“As soon as gay people start creeping in on
the action, straight people go crazy,” Betty said.

“There’s no way I can take a whole week off,
Fawn,” Lucy said. “I’d never be able to catch up on the paperwork
when I got back.” She was a process analyst for a biotech company,
and the labs worked 24/7.

Fawn sat up tall and gave them the haughty
stare she used for couture. “This will be the only time in our
lives that I know the three of you will let me cover all the
expenses for a real vacation. Lucy’s idea of getting away is
playing poker in some dive in Silicon Valley—”

“Those guys down there are fucking brilliant.
Some of them—”

Fawn slapped her bony hand over Lucy’s mouth.
“And Krista never takes any time off because she’s a workaholic who
lets evil, stupid people walk all over her.”

“I happen to like my job.”

“And finally, Betty,” Fawn continued. “You’ve
put every dime you make in some stupid bank account that you
probably plan on giving to your parents, even though they never
wanted you to be the awesome, successful blogger you have grown up
to be, not to mention a gay one.”

“I haven’t given it to them
yet
,”
Betty said quietly. “They have a few decades to evolve.”

“In conclusion, the three of you are going to
take an all-expense-paid vacation for an entire week, exact date to
be determined, culminating with the ceremony uniting me and Huntley
Bernard Sterling III in holy matrimony.”

They stared at her and let the bubbles rise
up around their nearly naked bodies while her declaration sunk in.
The determination in Fawn’s voice was obvious and Lucy, for one,
was rather mesmerized by the words “all-expense-paid.”