you mean?” I asked, taken aback by the smile I heard in her voice.
“He was not the right man for you,” she told me.
“You’re just telling me this now? Some friend you are,” I teased.
“You know the right man for you. Silas says he’s there with you now.”
I shook my head in astonishment. I couldn’t believe Silas had spouted off about me so much since returning. “What else has Silas said?”
“That’s it. You’ve lost your sanity, are working on some stupid face cream―his words, not mine―and are making googly eyes at some boy from your past.”
“Googly eyes? Did he really say that?”
“No. That was me. He said you were throwing yourself at him, but I can’t imagine you doing that. I would like you to throw yourself at him—this boy from your past who you’ve loved for too long.”
It had been Raisa who I’d called my sophomore year after losing my virginity for all the wrong reasons. She’d been the one to reassure me it was all going to be okay. That fate had a way of taking control and leading the way.
I wasn’t sure I agreed, but I did believe fate had led Truck to my sister, and I thought, maybe someday, fate would fix the hole in my heart that had been left behind by Dawson. Throwing him back into my life wasn’t the way to do it, though. Instead, it felt like the hole was being torn wider and wider. Just thinking of our two almost-kisses from the night before heated my body and picked at the gaping wound.
“How’s the research going?” I asked, changing the subject.
“It isn’t the same without you. This Waverly person is making her own googly eyes at Silas when she’s supposed to be helping me,” she pouted.
I felt selfish for leaving her on her own when she was so close to a breakthrough, but how long could I survive watching others achieve their dreams without acknowledging my own? I hadn’t realized it until I’d been in my own lab, but I’d slowly been withering away at Stanford.
As if she read my thoughts, Raisa said, “I’m glad you’re working on your own passion. How is it going?”
I was in the middle of explaining some of the nitty-gritty details of the formulas and the lack of colony-forming units when Jada popped her head into the room with a smile on her face. There was no sign of the despondent friend I’d seen the night before. This was the normal, go-full-tilt-or-not-at-all Jada I knew best.
“Raisa, I gotta go,” I told her.
“Okay, but don’t let me hear news about my friend from someone else again,” she said quietly.
“I’ll try to keep you in the loop the best I can.”
We hung up, and Jada grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the stairs. “Coffee first. Yuriko’s design studio second. Then, I think we should go to the spa and leave all the men and the worries of the world behind us.”
It sounded like a good plan to me.
♫ ♫ ♫
Yuriko was Jada’s exclusive clothing designer. Jada had been working with her for years. These days, Yuriko’s label was starting to show up on all the best runways and in the high-end stores. But it was Jada who’d first found her and encouraged her.
When we walked into Yuriko’s studio, I was stunned. The trendy SoHo loft was brick and metal that you could barely see because it was covered with drawings of people and clothing. The pictures were so beautiful they could be art themselves instead of simply design sketches.
Jada and Yuriko ducked their heads together, flipping through a whole series of pictures while I wandered the room. They finally called me back to look at the two Jada had pulled out. Both of the dresses screamed Roaring Twenties and had black lace layered over colored silk, but that was pretty much where the similarity ended.
“The burgundy one will look fantastic with your coloring,” Yuriko said to me with a smile.
I played with the ends of my braid while I looked at the sketch. All I could see were dollar signs that I wasn’t sure I could afford, and Jada read me like she’d read me for years when it came to money and extravagant purchases.
“This is my treat,” she said.
I hated her spending money on me almost as much as I hated Jersey doing so. I’d never wanted to be the person who took advantage of her friends.
“I can almost hear your wheels turning,” Jada said with