“He seems really nice,” Jake assured her.
“Dinner will be better.” I smiled. “Just the two of you. It’ll be less uncomfortable without listening ears and Bitter Pill Pedra.”
Claud laughed shakily. “Yeah, what was that?”
“Ignore her. You didn’t come here for her. You came for Dustin and he seems really happy to meet you.”
She grinned, finally relaxing. “He did, didn’t he? Ahh,” she exhaled. “Let’s go explore and get something to eat. I’m starving.”
The guys knocked on our door half an hour ago to tell us they were ready to face the day, but Claudia and I had just woken up. We promised to meet them for breakfast at a café across the plaza and then rushed around the hotel room to get ready.
As we did so, Claudia chatted about Dustin.
Something niggled at me about how well things were going for her with her real father. Perhaps it was the cynic in me, or maybe I was terrified of my friend getting her heart broken, but it took everything within me to not warn her to be careful. I didn’t want to ruin this for her.
We dressed in shorts and tank tops since we’d woken up to a particularly hot day and headed along the plaza to meet Jake and Beck.
“So, Dustin says he wants to paint me.” Claudia smiled. Though her eyes were covered with oversized sunglasses, I could hear excitement in her voice.
“Would you do that?”
“Sit for him? Yeah. He wants to do a portrait.”
“Well, you’re beautiful and he’s an artist, of course he does.”
“Yeah, but also, I’m his daughter,” she added, a little indignantly.
“Of course. I just meant… of course he’d want to draw you, daughter or not.”
She grimaced. “I think he might have painted my mother nude. I asked if he painted her and he got all shifty and uncomfortable.”
I laughed. “Oh, he definitely painted her nude.”
Claud shuddered. “My mother. The disloyal muse.”
We crossed the plaza toward the café. “Have you spoken to your mom since you got here?”
“No,” she snorted. “My parents are pretending this isn’t happening.”
Typical.
“Well, my folks emailed last night asking about you. They hope everything’s going great with Dustin and said that they love you.”
“I adore your parents. Do you think they would adopt me?”
I would’ve answered but I was too busy staring across the street at the café. Sitting at a table on the sidewalk was my boyfriend and Beck. They weren’t alone. Two girls were sitting in my and Claudia’s seats and Jake and Beck were laughing.
Something unpleasant pinched my chest.
I felt a nudge at my shoulder and turned to look at Claudia.
She lifted her sunglasses off to meet my eyes. “Hey. You okay?”
I sighed, glancing back at the flirting girls and our flirting idiot male counterparts. “Jake and I are in a great place, but I thought the whole jealousy thing was behind me. But I see that girl, laughing into his face, and he’s not doing much to put her off and I want to kill him. He was like this in high school.” I wrinkled in my nose in annoyance. “And he used to accuse me of being a flirt.”
“You are a flirt.”
I frowned. “I am not.”