Spoiled (30 page)

“Oh, my God, you are my new favorite person.” Max chortled.

Brooke bit her lip. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t see that,” she said. “Nobody in here saw it, did they?”

She looked around. Anyone who’d been eavesdropping immediately looked the other way. Neil Westerberg started whistling idly
at the ceiling.

“Hey, Brooke,” Jake called out with a grin. “What’s that random, unclaimed bag doing sitting on the floor? I don’t think it
belongs to anyone. I should probably throw that out, right?”

“He rules,” breathed Max, who then turned crimson, as if she hadn’t meant to say that out loud.

“Yes, absolutely, Jake,” Brooke said. “Dispose of it. Unattended baggage can be dangerous. I learned that at the airport.”

“Oh, snap, you can totally see her from the costume room!” shouted Julie Newman.

Everyone ran back to the picture window that faced the parking lot. In the distance, Shelby Kendall was red with irritation
as a tow truck driver loaded her Mercedes onto the flatbed. Gallantly, he opened the passenger door to his truck. Shelby shot
him a look of purest poison before fishing a Wet-Nap out of her purse and wiping down the seat, then trying to wriggle up
onto it without her Herve Leger
micromini riding up over her nether regions. In the process, Shelby’s ankle turned roughly in her four-inch heels, and she
appeared to shout something very foul indeed.

“I’m sorry,” Brie whispered. “Did I make it worse?”

Brooke opened her mouth to answer.

“No,” Molly’s voice said firmly. “You made it satisfying.”

“Really?” Brie said, excitedly. “Because I also had an idea that we could—”

Brooke put a hand on her shoulder. “I think, for now, this is enough.”

She met Molly’s eyes and smiled. It was time to move on.

“
AND BREEEEEEEEATHE,”
intoned Trixie, the petite blonde yoga instructor with shoulders the size of apples.

Molly sucked in a lungful of air as her right foot slipped out of position and slammed onto her mat. She’d imagined that her
first weekend of being actual buddies with Brooke would involve lying out by the pool and marking up a copy of
Lucky
magazine with those cool little “YES!” stickers. Instead, she was standing in the middle of a softly lit wood-floored studio,
wearing a pair of lululemon yoga pants and a snug tank top (both gifts from Brooke) that were drenched with sweat. It was
over a hundred degrees in the Bikram yoga classroom, and although everyone glistened with sweat, nobody else had it raining
so hard down their faces that it could qualify as class-four white-water rapids.

Molly wiped the perspiration from her face and tried her pose again. The instructor, along with Brooke and the sixteen or
so other spandex-wrapped students in their class, was grabbing an ankle behind her head and pulling it forward while balancing
on the other leg, but Molly couldn’t even get her foot high enough to get a good grip on her toes. Her leg just didn’t go
in that direction.

“And now, tree pose,” the instructor said in a strange half-hum.

Everyone gracefully lowered their feet and then pulled the other leg up, resting their heels on their upper thighs and raising
their hands skyward. They all made it look easy: Brooke, the teacher, Matthew McConaughey up there in front, the busty toothpicks
with dry, unmussed hair, and the one busty toothpick who Molly hadn’t realized was pregnant until she twisted sideways and
revealed a bump like a beach ball. Molly’s foot slid down to her knee. She suspected even the gestating fetus was more adept
at this than she.

“Beauuuuutiful,” purred Trixie, coming around behind Molly. “Feel your roots.”

She shoved Molly’s pelvis forward and cranked her leg up high into her groin. Molly bit back a yelp and flailed as she tried
to hold her balance.

“Are you maybe still out to get me?” she whispered to Brooke, who looked like she was trying not to laugh.

“Yes,” Brooke whispered back. “It’s murder by posture correction.”

“Swaaaaay, with the breeze,” Trixie said. “Beeee the palm treeeee.”

Molly obliged, and promptly toppled over.

“No, you have to
be
the palm tree, Molly, not chop it down,” Brooke hissed, now giggling uncontrollably.

Molly rolled onto her back and grinned. “I am being a palm tree. After an earthquake.”

Brooke snickered harder, and her foot slipped. She collapsed on all fours beside Molly.

“I’m being a banyan,” she said.

“I have never hated trees more than I do right now,” Molly panted. “When we get home I’m going on Amazon to buy a ton of paper
I don’t need.”

“Brick will be so happy when you become a lumberjack out of spite.”

They cracked up again.

“Ladies, if you can’t be
quiet
trees, then please leave us.” Trixie frowned.

Brooke looked startled for a second, then threw a mischievous glance at Molly and shrugged. “Okay, then.
Namaste
, babe.”

“I think I pulled every muscle I own.” Molly winced as she lowered herself into her seat.

“That means it’s working.” Brooke beamed, setting down their tray, loaded with two coffees, a half-dozen doughnuts,
and enough napkins to clean up after large-scale food fight. “Here, have a bear claw. The sugar high will distract you from
the pain.”

“This doesn’t seem like your usual breakfast,” Molly noted as she took the pastry.

“Today’s my cheat day,” Brooke said around a mouthful of jelly doughnut. “Besides, I sweated off, like, six pounds of water
weight in that class.”

Brooke shoved the rest of the doughnut in her mouth and drank in the Farmers Market’s dingy but quaint open-air courtyard,
edged with food stands selling everything from tacos to fresh oysters to Middle Eastern food, and packed with a similarly
diverse sampler tray of Los Angeles residents. A woman dripping with gold jewelry tapped her cell phone with the tip of a
long acrylic nail as she tried to eat a fruit plate. Two old men, dining on pancakes at the rickety iron table next to them,
were arguing about whether the Dodgers needed better relief pitching. In front of them, a couple was cooing at each other
in Spanish over crepes. And to the right, an Asian family ate bagels and passed around sections of the
Los Angeles Times
in companionable silence. It reminded Brooke of coming here with Brick when she was a kid. He would read to her from the
trades while she colored.

“I like it here,” Molly said, interrupting her people watching.

“I thought you would.” Brooke beamed, feeling like a proud hostess whose dinner party has been a great success.
“These are the best doughnuts in Los Angeles. They even make them shaped like dinosaurs, for kids. Brick bought them for me
every weekend when I was little, while Kelly had her spa mornings.”

Brooke gazed down at the cruller in her hand, then shook herself like a dog climbing out of a pool.
I am tired of thinking about that woman.

Her yoga bag buzzed. Brooke reached in and grabbed Molly’s phone. Danny’s name flashed on the screen, accompanied by a photo
of him with an arm slung around Molly and wearing a Notre Dame baseball cap. She handed it to Molly, who bit her lip, then
handed it back.

“I’ll call him later.”

Interesting
.

“Interesting,” Brooke said, deciding this was no time to censor her internal monologue. “I thought he was supposed to be your
boyfriend.”

“He is,” Molly said. “But it’s not like we could get into much of a conversation right now.”

“What, you’re worried those two old dudes are going to overhear? They can’t even hear each other.” Brooke scoffed. “Dish.
What’s up with the hayseed?”

“He’s not a hayseed,” Molly reminded her.

Brooke waved a hand. “Potato, po-tah-to,” she said. “Listen, I made the decision to give up a personal life this semester
for the good of my career. The
least
you can do is entertain me with your boy problems. Besides, maybe I can help.”

She folded her hands underneath her chin and tried to look supportive, like Tyra Banks during the segments on
America’s Next Top Model
where she counseled models to stay strong in the face of bad weaves or homelessness. Molly made a grunting noise and stuck
a piece of doughnut in her mouth.

“I’m just starting to wonder if the long-distance thing is doomed to fail,” she said eventually. “Not seeing him every day
has been so much harder than I thought it would be.”

“Should we have him come out and visit?” Brooke asked. “Ooh, we could throw a party! A
real
party. No grown-ups. We can play all those fun drinking games you were telling me about. Do you think I can get away with
wearing my tennis whites for beer pong?”

“Isn’t that the only socially acceptable thing to do?” Molly teased. “And I didn’t mean he needs to visit right away, I meant
more… I just want to
talk
to him, but it’s been so hard. Like, last night, we had an appointment to Skype. But he never showed. So I call him, and
he’s in bed and he says he thought I meant eight
his
time, which… seriously, they’re time zones, not instructions for building a particle accelerator. He felt
really bad
, though. And then I felt guilty for being so annoyed.”

Brooke leaned back in her chair and stared up at the blue sky thoughtfully. Tyra would cope with this by telling a story about
how modeling in Paris when she was fifteen was much harder than anyone else’s pain. But the closest Brooke had gotten to Paris
was using plaster-of to make a mold of her own face in art. It had taken two days to get it
out of her hair. Although come to think of it, that had required great strength of character.

“And then of course there’s the Slurpee,” Molly continued before Brooke could share her life lesson. “It was so sweet. And
so
Danny
. But if I had to choose, I would pick the phone call over the gesture, you know?”

“Hmmm,” Brooke said, nodding in what she was pretty sure was a supportive and sisterly way. “I’m sure the Teddy McCormack
situation isn’t helping, either.”

“Brooke, I told you—”

“Please,” Brooke said, holding up a silencing hand. “He friended you on Facebook, like, practically the first day of school.
He’s into you.”

Molly scrunched up her face. “You’re basing this whole theory on Facebook?”

“No,” Brooke said. “He also gets all moony-eyed around you when he thinks you’re not looking, and he brought you a cupcake
the other day at lunch. Boys don’t just bring girls baked goods for no reason.”

And also, Arugula gave me that picture of you guys hugging, but I can’t tell you that.

“Hmm,” Molly said, leaning forward in her chair and resting her elbows on her knees. Brooke detected the faintest flush on
her fair skin.

“And, if I may be blunt,” Brooke continued, “you’re not doing Farm Boy any favors, tying him down to a girl thousands of miles
away who keeps looking at another boy’s arms like she wants to floss her teeth with them.”

She punctuated this advice with a flourish of her hands, a move she’d picked up from Brick when he played the deputy district
attorney in
Trial by Fury.

This time there was no doubt that Molly was blushing. “I do not,” she insisted. She sat back in her chair and began chewing
on her thumbnail.

Brooke rolled her eyes. “Okay, if you say so. But there are at least a couple other girls at Colby-Randall who do. So, obviously,
I’m not telling you what to do with What’s-His-Nuts, but I think it’s my duty as your sister to warn you that if you
do
like Teddy McCormack, the clock is ticking.”

Brooke felt bad that she was, in essence, telling Molly to swoop before Arugula got there. But blood was thicker than smartwater,
wasn’t it? Plus, Brooke had long ago made a vow never to stand in the way of true love if she could help it, and Grass-fed
Half Orphan Makes Painful Choice to Leave Hayseed for Adequate Guitarist was
much
more romantic than Popular Genius Seduces Lab Partner for Fun.

Molly looked thoughtful. She drained the last of her coffee. And then she said the one thing Brooke wasn’t anticipating.

“Can we just go shopping now?”

Brooke jumped up, delighted. “We
are
related!” she crowed.

Besides nostalgia, one of the reasons Brooke liked the Farmers Market so much was because it was attached to The Grove, an
outdoor shopping mall as artificial as the
Farmers Market was authentic—it had fountains that exploded in Vegas-style choreographed routines set to pop music, and a
tram that ran from one end of the shopping center to the other, like it was too hard for car-dependent Los Angelenos to walk
more than a hundred feet. But the store selection was good and it was the best place in town for celebrity sightings. Brooke
once saw Sean Devlin from
Lust for Life
at the Crate & Barrel and he was so cute in person that she’d had to sit on a Blake leather lounge chair for twenty minutes
before she felt strong enough to walk. (She also bought the chair.)