Kylie frowned at her friend. “So you’ve said. Look, I know it’s totally none of my business but—”
“But you plan to stick your perfect little nose in it anyways.”
Kylie bit her lip and grinned. “Um, I might’ve told Trace to tell Mike to back off. Not that he’ll listen, obviously.”
Lulu made a big show of tossing her hair over her shoulder. Even though it was too short to really toss. “Well of course not. Who could resist this?” She gestured with mock confidence at her body.
Kylie laughed at her friend’s lighthearted take on the whole thing, but the tinges of worry remained as the two of them headed over toward the stage where Trace and his band were warming up. Kylie heard the unmistakable thrum of Mike’s bass guitar, so apparently he’d been located.
It was still a few hours until showtime so the arena was sparsely populated. They sat in front-row seats. When Mike winked down at Lulu, Kylie looked over at her. The expression her friend wore was hard to read, but she was pretty sure it said more than “hooking up for lack of anything better to do.”
“Hey, Lu?” She waited until she’d reluctantly dragged her eyes from the stage before she continued. “Just, um, be careful, okay? I know you’re a big girl and can make your own decisions, but I also know how fast hooking up can turn into a whole lot more. And the next thing you know, you’re face down in a vat of mint chocolate chip.” She attempted a smile. It wasn’t easy with the object of her own heartbreak strutting his ass up and down the stage right in front of her face.
“I appreciate the concern. Really, I do.” Her friend nudged her shoulder. “And I get where you’re coming from. But I promise, it’s not anything to stress over. Just two people enjoying each other’s company while it lasts.”
For a few minutes neither of them said anything. They just watched the private show as Trace and his band worked to get the sound equipment and their earpieces working correctly.
“So…we never got to finish our talk the other day.”
Kylie had to work to pull herself out of the song Trace was singing. It was a warm day and she was beginning to feel kind of strange. Like she was in a fog and was having delayed reactions to pretty much everything.
“Huh?”
“When we got tacos. Hannah called about the Darla thing and we kind of got off track.”
She turned and gave her friend her full attention. “That’s right. Remind me what exactly we were talking about?”
Lulu’s eyes darted toward the stage and then back to her.
“Oh.”
“Yeah. So anyways, I was talking to Mike about everything that happened last year and I wanted to tell you what he said.”
Every organ in her body had a reaction to Lulu’s words. Her heart began the out-of-rhythm-beat-skipping thing it did whenever someone wanted to discuss the part of her life she tried so hard not to.
Kylie pulled as much air into her lungs as she could manage. Letting it out slowly, she forced a grin for her friend’s piece of mind.
“It’s fine, Lu. I know he went into rehab with Gretchen. I know they’re together or whatever. I’ve dealt with it.”
She knew it was a half-truth, and it sucked telling it to the one person she’d always been able to tell everything to. But she was trying her best to make it the truth. Her hope was that, if she said it enough times, eventually it would be. One day in the very distant future probably, but the only thing she could really do was try.
Lulu’s face scrunched in either pain or concern. Kylie couldn’t tell for sure.
“See, that’s the thing. Mike’s version is a little, uh, different from the mass media version.”
Kylie’s eyes had drifted back toward the stage. She could feel Trace watching her as he sang. Her inner fangirl threatened to come out and sing along. She stuffed a gag in that chick’s mouth and returned her attention to Lulu.
“I’m sorry. I’m kind of out of it today. You were saying?”
“Kylie, I need you to focus, okay? And not on his ass in those damn jeans.”
She scoffed. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Her friend grinned. “No. No you don’t have any idea what I’m talking about. Because you’re paying more attention to him than me. Wonder why that is, Miss I’m-So-Over-It?”
Heat filled her cheeks and she glanced down at her hands in shame. She was tired, and not just because she hadn’t slept a freaking wink last night. She was tired of holding up the heavy-as-hell billboard sign full of lies about how over him she was. So she dropped the damn thing and let it smash into a million pieces.