We Are Made of Stardust - Peaches Monroe #1 (7 page)

Given my fuzzy recollection of the previous evening, moving my head was not advisable. Something smooth and hard was pressed under my cheek.

Dalton Deangelo? And his chiseled chest?

No.

By the feel of it, the hard thing was just my non-sexy, non-smooth-talking, un-kissable laptop. I cracked open one gummy eyelid to see a dresser, blue and yellow with a distressed paint finish, piled with books. At least I was in my bedroom and not under the garbage truck that ran me over and dropped a load in my mouth.

I rolled back and peeled myself off my computer, surprised to feel only mild nausea.

What had I gotten into the night before? The last time I really drank with Shayla, we’d had tequila shots with two of the Australians working at her restaurant. The Aussies were an engaged couple who (I thought) looked like brother and sister, both six feet tall with shaggy, shoulder-length, honey-hued hair. I started calling them The Beautifuls after the first drink, and it stuck.

Shayla’s post-shift unwinding turned into a full-on party at our shared rental house, and while people set up a limbo challenge using a broomstick, and a frisbee challenge using our plastic camping plates, I retreated upstairs to my bedroom and partied down extra-hard on my laptop. That was the night I purchased an authentic German cuckoo clock via an online auction.

Since I already had a cuckoo clock, still tucked away in its shipping box and nestled in my Closet of Regret, I wondered what new thing had caught my drunken fancy the night before.

I opened my email to find a dozen confirmation messages.

Apparently, I’d joined the Dalton Deangelo fan club. An adrenaline blast of horror shot through me, making my brain throw up inside my head.

I closed the laptop to keep the awful truth quiet, and begged my fluttering heart to chill out. Dalton was a huge star, and he probably hired high-priced people to hire medium-priced people to deal with fan clubs. He was too busy running into bookstores and flirting with…

The thought of him kissing another girl sent a fireball of jealousy to my stomach. If only he hadn’t shushed me with his too-perfect finger, then his bumpy chest would be snuggled into the sheets next to me.

I know some people brag about living their life without regrets. How ridiculous. We all have regrets. Some of us just deny them better than others. I keep mine in the Closet of Regret, along with the afore-mentioned cuckoo clock, a fresh fruit juicer, and a pair of pink roller skates.

Shayla opened my bedroom door and meandered in, eyes half-lidded.

“Timber,” she said before falling onto the bed next to me.

“Can you be heartbroken over someone you just met? Is that even valid?”

Face-down, she muttered into my blankets, “I’ll buy you a hug. Get ready.” She threw one heavy arm over my body.

I groaned and patted her head, enjoying the feel of her silky, black hair. Since she turned fifteen, she’s been using a shampoo for show horses. Apparently, it gives horses and humans a glossy mane and tail, and though the product never did anything for me, Shayla could be its spokesperson.

Actually, she could be the spokesperson for anything. She’s absolute gorgeousness, from the nail beds of her always-pedicured toes to her full, naturally-ruby-hued lips and her golden eyes. Her skin is like chocolate milk next to mine, and her smile is dazzling, which distracts people from her secret shame, which is her unusually large feet. She claims to wear a size ten shoe, but if you catch hold of one of her new pairs, before she’s filed away or peeled off the size, you’ll find the number eleven.

“Shayla, I dreamed about your grandmother, Clever. She was dancing in her ruffled skirt, doing those high kicks.”

She chuckled and gave me a back pat. My father and her mother are cousins, which makes us some type of cousins, though she came from the fun side of the family. She insists I got lucky on the brains side, but she’s as smart as anyone I know.

“Hit the shower and I’ll get the coffee on,” she said. “That workshop starts in one hour and Dottie gets pissed if people come late.”

What workshop? I was about to suggest that Shayla was dreaming and talking in her sleep, but I remembered glimpsing a confirmation email about a workshop.

“Nooooooooo,” I cried.

Shayla rolled to her side and opened one golden eye, looking like a smug dragon. “You’re more fun after a glass or two of red, and I’m rather charming, if I do say so myself.”

“So, we’re going to a workshop in one hour? Rolling sushi?” My mouth watered at the idea of cool cucumber slices.

Shayla laughed. Her voice flat with irony, she said, “Yeah. Rolling sushi.”

“I want sushi.”

“There’s no sushi. We’re going to learn how to be captivating, and have men wrapped around our fingers.”

“I’d rather have sushi.”

“Sushi doesn’t give hand jobs in the back of fancy cars while a chauffeur drives you around.”

I cleared my throat and pulled myself up to sit. “I guess I didn’t hold back any details last night, did I? Oh, the pain of the bare-assed truth in the morning light.”

She patted my knee. “Don’t be so dramatic. You met a hot actor, and he turned out to be a twatwaffle, and now you’ll go to this workshop and move on with your life.”

“Some life.”

We both glanced around my room, at the stacks of books on my dresser and on the floor.

“Peaches, are there any books left in the actual bookstore?” she teased.

“What did I pay for this non-sushi workshop?”

“It’s non-refundable.” She jumped up from my bed and started browsing through a stack of books. “This looks good.” She flipped to the end to read the last page, as she always does. It makes me want to tackle her to the ground when she peeks at the ending, and I swear she does it half the time just to antagonize me.

I rolled out of bed and took myself to the bathroom for a hot shower and a big glass of water.

As agonizing as the workshop sounded, it was something to do, to keep my mind off Dalton Deangelo. As I washed my hair, I thought about his bumpy abdominal muscles, and how some other girl would be enjoying them. Maybe he was showering with her right now! Euch, what a pig.

I sincerely hoped that the dinner rolls he ate the night before were converting to fat at that very moment, because I’m mean like that.

~

The workshop was at the Beaverdale Community Center, and we took Shayla’s little Rav. Thanks to coffee and toast, I was feeling human.

We parked the Rav in front of Black Sheep Books, and we both hissed like angry cats at the window display of our enemy as we walked by.

“They have dead flies in their front window,” Shayla said.

“Figures.” I narrowed my eyes at the red-painted bricks. Just as Superman has his Lex Luthor, Peachtree Books has Black Sheep Books. I have, on occasion, threatened to burn them to the ground, but they had it coming.

“Doesn’t look very busy in there,” Shayla said.

The little store was full of customers—at least five people—but it was good of my best friend to demonstrate her loyalty by lying.

I pushed my sunglasses up my nose, enjoying the sun on my pale skin. Catching glimpses of myself in shop windows, I liked what I saw. After I turned twenty-two, I stopped looking like a pudgy teenager and turned into a voluptuous woman. My blond hair had darkened through my teens, and I’d recently started getting highlights put in at my hairdresser’s.

That morning, most of my favorite clothes were in the laundry, so I’d put on my favorite turquoise dress with a black belt. The brilliant shade of blue brought out my eyes and made me look neither tan nor pale, and the hem line ended at the exact perfect spot above my knee—the almost-skinny stretch. Around my neck, I wore chunky wood beads that tied in with my cork-soled sandals. Not bad for a hangover morning.

Shayla wore jean cutoffs and a striped shirt with a wide neck, falling off the shoulder.

A man in a city-worker reflective vest wolf-whistled at us from where he was kneeling on the sidewalk, tugging out a dandelion by its root.

“For shame, Lester,” Shayla said to him. “I’m your cousin.”

Lester wiped the sweat off his brow with the back of his hand, his thick bicep tanned and rippling beneath the sleeve of his tight, bright-white T-shirt.

“The whistle was for Peaches,” he said, grinning. “She ain’t my cousin.”

I linked arms with Shayla and giggled like we were thirteen again and talking to out-of-town boys at a softball game.

After we were past hearing range of Lester, Shayla said, “They can smell it on you. One night with a man attracts more men.”

I shoved her away. “Gross.”

“Not literally, dumbass. You just wait, though. This is going to be your summer. Grandma Clever taught me to trust my intuition, and I can feel it in my bones.” She poked me in the arm with one fingertip. “The object of your ladyboner lust will be back. Dalton Deangelo is going to call, and you should give him another chance.”

I glanced back over my shoulder at Lester, who had been following my butt with his eyes and looked away quickly. He had such broad shoulders, and he was always tanned from the landscaping work he did around town. I did not care for the Birkenstock sandals he wore with wool socks, but that was just a wardrobe flaw. I’d never considered Lester Dean as a dating option before, but he was recently separated from his wife, and not that much older than me—barely thirty. An older man was certainly intriguing.

“What do you think of Lester?” I asked Shayla.

“Irrelevant. Dalton Deangelo will call.”

She pulled open the glass door of the community center and we stepped into the brutally air-conditioned space, the air so cold it gave me goose bumps. My father would have freaked out over the waste of taxpayer dollars.

Shayla continued, “Once you two start dating, you can invite me along to exciting Hollywood parties.”

Hollywood parties? No, I didn’t think so. Meeting Dalton had been fun, but all that nonsense he’d said about us being stardust seemed ridiculous—ridiculous like the cheesy lines Drake the vampire always said to his waif-like love interest of the week.

Shayla and I travelled down a corridor and found the room of our workshop. The hand-lettered sign read:

Charm - A Workshop for Ladies!!

Your teacher: Dottie!!!

Shayla and I took two seats at the back and checked our phones for messages before the class started. People milled around us, taking their seats.

A woman’s hand, short-fingered and covered in jewelry, snatched my phone from my hand. “What if I’d been a handsome fellow?” she asked.

I stared up at her, my jaw dropping open. She had pale skin, beautifully wrinkled with laugh lines, bright pink lipstick, and twinkling blue eyes. Her hair was chin-length and as pink as her lips. As pink as a Halloween wig.

She continued, her words clear and crisp with spaces between, like little bells ringing, “You. Won’t. Find. Him. If. You’re. Texting.”

I reached for my phone. “Maybe he’s texting me right now.”

The women seated around us laughed.

The pink-haired lady, who looked to be around seventy, tucked my phone into the pocket of her flower-patterned dress, and strode up to the front of the meeting room.

“He’s not texting you. You wouldn’t be here if he was. It’s Sunday, and you’d be doing the crossword together in bed.”

A lady near me sighed.

The pink-haired lady continued, “My name is Dottie Simpkins, I’m seventy-two, and I drive a convertible with a bumper sticker that says ‘If the sun’s up, the top’s down.’ I’ve been married six times, and if you take all my advice today, I guarantee you can cut that number in half, minimum.” She stepped up to an easel that held a number of poster-sized cards and flipped over the front one to reveal a drawing of a mermaid. “Lesson One. Keeping your legs together.”

I turned to look at Shayla, my expression asking her what the fuckity-fuck she’d gotten us into. She batted her dark eyelashes at me, her gold eyes amused.

I whispered, “You’re the worst.”

Dottie snapped her fingers. “Young lady! You, in the turquoise. Thank you for speaking during the session and thereby volunteering to do the demonstration.” She clapped her hands together. “Up, up. Up from your chair and join me here. You seem like the type who learns better by doing than by being shown.”

I scowled at Shayla as I shuffled past, giving her my best you’re-dead-to-me look.

Dottie pushed one strand of cotton-candy-pink hair behind her ear and stared at my legs as I walked up.

Nodding, she said, “You probably don’t like the feeling of your thighs rubbing together, do you? You walk like a cowboy.”

I put my hands on my hips, my face flushing hot with embarrassment. “Maybe I have dry skin and I wouldn’t want to catch myself on fire.”

The group of ladies seated—about two dozen, most of them well over forty—laughed at my comment. At this, Dottie seemed to relax, giving me a wink and a smile that made me feel pretty. I’d heard about the woman before, from another class Shayla had attended, and now I could see what she meant about Dottie’s terrifying yet magnetic personality.

“Let’s all stand for this,” Dottie said.

The women set their purses on the chairs and we formed a standing circle in the open half of the room.

She continued, her words still like bells, but running together now like an entrancing melody. “Ladies, stretch your bodies up tall and shift your weight over your heels where it’s supposed to be. Relax your toes and let them be light as air, light as little helium balloons. If a sheet of paper could slide under your toes, you’re doing it right. Now, I want you to close your eyes and own the ground beneath you.”

In the silence that followed, the chatty part of my brain started up a monologue.
This is my ground, my space. You don’t shush me, Dalton Deangelo. Nobody shushes me on my ground.

“Encourage your chattering mind to be still,” Dottie said, as if she’d been reading my thoughts. “Keep standing and owning your ground. Keep your toes light and your spirit will soar. Here’s another thought: Be yourself, because everyone else is taken. Fat or thin, be your wild, wonderful, unique self. Now when you’re ready, I’d like you to gently open your eyes and take a look around, not at the carpet in this room or the furniture, but at what matters. Have a look at the people around you, and all of their beautiful faces. Our lives are all different, yet we share in this tapestry of life. Fate has tugged on each of our threads today, and here we are together. Why? Because it was meant to be. Now gently open your eyes and look around at the beauty and collective wisdom in this room.”